The defeat in the war against the USA in 1898 and the subsequent loss of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines had an enormous, long-term impact on Spanish intellectuals (Generation of 98). However, the much greater territorial loss in the wars of Spanish American Independence (1808-1833) did not get even a fraction of the attention, or didn`t it?
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1From the Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_American_wars_of_independence it sounds more like the colonies did not initially seek liberation, but then things falling apart in Spain later pushed the colonies into seeking independence.– CrossRoadsMar 6, 2020 at 18:14
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2In "El Romanticismo Español", Ricardo Navas-Ruiz argues that the idealization of the past in the Spanish Romanticism was caused by the problems of their time, the 1st half of the 19th century. One of those problems (among many others) was the loss of the colonies. I think the book is only available in Spanish, though.– Carlos MartinMar 6, 2020 at 22:53
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1Good question. Two reasons why Latin American independence was not a tremendous shock in peninsular Spain: the metropolis had been plundering colonial mining revenue in a manner that was, at least in retrospect, unsustainable; and one of the most proximate causes of the independence movements was the chaos of the Napoleonic invasion and resulting imprisonment of Ferdinand VII, which gave Spain plenty to worry about on the home front.– Aaron BrickMar 7, 2020 at 0:33
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1 Answer
The loss in the first third of the 19th century of the American territories (Spain did not really have "colonies" in the way the British Empire had, the American territories were integral part of Spain) did not have any significant impact on Spain`s public discourse, because the American territories had never really had.
However, with the development of nationalist ideology and sentiment all over Europe in the course of the 19th century (as a result of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars), a rudimentary form of Spanish nationalism began to grow in the second third of the century. By the time nationalism had acquired a critical mass in Spain sufficient to influence public discourse, it was already firmly established in England, France and Germany.
By the end of the 19th century, nationalism was also in Spain the driving force of historical theory and had pervaded politics and literature, as it had done in the above mentioned countries decades before. Nationalistic nostalgia for a "fictional" Spanish Empire made the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippes in 1898 appear as a catastrophe for the nation.
Funnily enough, it was only after the American territories gained their independence that the relations between Spain and so-called Latin America started to gain momentum (emigration, trade).