In connection with the recent publication of the second volume of Memoriales y cartas del Conde Duque de Olivares (edited by Sir John H. Elliott and Fernando Negredo del Cerro and containing the unpublished correspondence between the Cardinal-Infante and the royal favourite during the years the former was governor of the Habsburg Netherlands), on 3 June 2021 the Fundación Carlos de Amberes is holding a course entitled La defensa de Flandes en tiempos del Cardenal Infante Don Fernando (1635-1641). El desafío militar y la voz de sus protagonistas (The defence of Flanders during the period of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand (1635−1641). Military challenge and voices of the main actors).

The aim of the course is to analyse and contextualise the military response of the Spanish Habsburgs of Madrid in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War through the voices of two of the main actors who worked elbow to elbow to ensure the defence of the territory. The course will be coordinated by Alicia Esteban Estríngana (author of an outstanding study in Memoriales) and presented by Bernardo J. García García, and other participants include Fernando Negredo del Cerro and Eduardo Mesa Gallego. Between them they will address the progressive ineffectiveness of the dynastic agreements of the two branches of the Habsburgs; the growing use of anti-Spanish visual propaganda as a means of wearing down the enemy; and the performance in combat of troops made up of soldiers who were not subjects of the Spanish monarch.

See programme