Carlism, Spanish Carlismo ,  a Spanish political movement of
traditionalist character, originating in the 1820s in the
apostólico or extreme clerical party and mobilized in 1827 in
the form of paramilitary Royalist Volunteers. This opposition to
liberalism crystallized in the 1830s around the person of Carlos
María Isidro de Borbón (Don Carlos), younger brother of King
Ferdinand VII, and afterward conde de Molina. In claiming the
right to succeed his brother, Don Carlos denied the validity of
Charles IV’s pragmatic sanction of 1789, then being used by
Ferdinand to ensure the succession of his infant daughter
Isabella, who was born in 1830 (see Pragmatic Sanction of King
Ferdinand VII). Instead, the Carlists invoked the Salic Law of
Succession, introduced into Spain by Philip V in 1713, which
excluded females from the royal succession.  The disputed
succession and its ideological overtones provoked the Carlist
War of 1833–39. Although the Carlists were defeated, thereafter
they upheld their cause in the face o