Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea, Marquis of Ensenada

Don Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea (April 20 1702, Alesanco near Logroño - December 2 1781), widely known as the Marquis of the Ensenada, was a Spanish statesman.

When he had risen to high office it was said that his pedigree was distinguished, but nothing is known of his parents, Francisco de Somodevilla and his wife Francisca de Bengoechea, nor is anything known of his own life before he entered the civil administration of the Spanish navy as a clerk in 1720. He served in administrative capacities at the relief of Ceuta in that year and in the reoccupation of Oran in 1731. His ability was recognized by Don José Patiño, the chief minister of King Philip V.

Somodevilla was much employed during the various expeditions undertaken by the Spanish government to put the king's sons by his second marriage with Elizabeth Farnese, Charles and Philip, on the thrones of Naples and Parma. In 1736 Charles, afterwards King Charles III of Spain, conferred on him the Neapolitan title of Marqués de la Ensenada. The name can be resolved into the three Spanish words "en se nada"," meaning "in himself nothing." The courtly flattery of the time, and the envy of the nobles who disliked the rise of men of Ensenada's class, seized upon this poor play on words; an Ensenada is, however, a roadstead or small bay.

In 1742 he became secretary of state and war to Philip, duke of Parma. In the following year (April 11 1743), on the death of Patinos's successor Campillo, he was chosen by Philip V as minister of finance, war, the navy and the Indies (i.e. the Colonies). Ensenada met the nomination with a becoming "nolo episcopari", professing that he was incapable of filling the four posts at once. His reluctance was overborne by the king, and he became in fact prime minister at the age of forty-one. During the remainder of the king's reign, which lasted till July 11 1746, and under his successor Ferdinand VI until 1754, Ensenada was the effective prime minister, leading the country to victory alongside France and Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession.

His administration is notable in Spanish history for the vigour of his policy of internal reform. The reports on the finances and general condition of the country, which he drew up for the new king on his accession, and again after peace was made with England at Aix-la-Chapelle on October 18 1748, are very able and clear-sighted. Under his direction the despotism of the Bourbon kings became paternal. Public works were undertaken, shipping was encouraged, trade was fostered, numbers of young Spaniards were sent abroad for education. Many of them abused their opportunity, but on the whole the prosperity of the country revived, and the way was cleared for the more sweeping innovations of the following reign. Since 1749 Ensenada encouraged the most important census and statistical investigation in the Europe of his time, known as Catastro of Ensenada, as a first step of a broader reform on taxes that no reached success.

Ensenada was a strong partisan of a French alliance and of a policy hostile to England. Sir Benjamin Keene, the English minister, supported the Spanish court party opposed to him, and succeeded in preventing him from adding the foreign office to others which he held. Ensenada would probably have fallen sooner but for the support he received from the Portuguese queen, Barbara. In 1754 he offended her by opposing an exchange of Spanish and Portuguese colonial possessions in America which she favored. Following a scandal at court resulting from a conspiracy between anglophile José de Carvajal and the British ambadassor to Spain, he was arrested by the king's order on July 20, 1754, and was sacked as prime minister upon Carvajal's death (see "Enlightenment Spain"). He was sent into mild confinement at Granada, which he was afterwards allowed to exchange for Puerto de Santa Maria.

On the accession of Charles III in 1759, he was released from arrest and allowed to return to Madrid. The new king named him as member of a commission appointed to reform the system of taxation. Ensenada could not renounce the hope of again becoming minister, and entered into intrigues which offended the king. On April 18 1766 he was again exiled from court, and ordered to go to Medina del Campo. He had no further share in public life, and died in 1781. Ensenada acquired wealth in office, but he was never accused of corruption. Though, like most of his countrymen, he suffered from the mania for grandeur, and was too fond of imposing schemes out of all proportion with the resources of the state, he was undoubtedly an able and patriotic man, whose administration was beneficial to Spain.

For his administration see William Coxe, "Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon" (London, 1815), but the only complete account of Ensenada is by Don Antonio Rodríguez Villa, "Don Cenón de Somodevilla, Marqués de la Ensenada" (Madrid, 1878).