This book presents several theoretical proposals about social and familial – but also political and cultural – change in Spain in the transition from the Ancien Régime to the modern age. The sociocultural reality of the Ancien Régime, based on inequality and privilege, is redefined through kinship and, both horizontal and vertical, social relations. In this way, the transition from the patriarchal to the conjugal family explains continuity and change in the context of new social relations that value individual merit, the accumulation of capital, and the decisive importance of feeling and emotion.