Background
He was born Aug. 1, 1718, at Siétamo,Sietamo, Aragon, and christened Pedro Pablo Abarco de Bolea.
He was born Aug. 1, 1718, at Siétamo,Sietamo, Aragon, and christened Pedro Pablo Abarco de Bolea.
Aranda's early career was spent in a variety of military and diplomatic posts. As a diplomat he served as ambassador to Portugal and Poland. As a soldier he fought in Italy and commanded an invasion of Portugal in 1763.
In 1766 Charles III, faced with a popular revolt, appointed him president of the Council of Castile. By a combination of tact and stubbornness, he rapidly reestablished peace and royal prestige. He also executed a royal order of 1767 expelling the Jesuits, who were suspected of undermining the king's authority. Until his resignation in 1773, Aranda supported the progressive policies of Charles III's councilors, including a program to lease vacant lands to deserving peasants.
Thereafter until 1787 Aranda was ambassador to France. He urged Spanish intervention beside France against Great Britain in the War of American Independence, a course adopted in April 1779. The results of the war led him to recommend that Spain's colonies on the American continents be reorganized as three monarchies, bound permanently to Spain by dynastic ties.
On Feb. 28, 1792, Charles IV appointed the now-aged Aranda first secretary, with a program for relaxing the tensions that had developed between Spain and revolutionary France. The overthrow of the French monarchy discredited Aranda's policy, and he was dismissed on Nov. 15, 1792, but he remained a royal councilor. On Mar. 14, 1794, he bitterly denounced in the Council of State the war against the French Republic that his successor, Manuel de Godoy, had undertaken. Charles IV thereupon banished him from Madrid.