The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Camarilla

a group of influential courtiers. The term“camarilla” came into use at the time of King Ferdinand VII ofSpain, who ruled in 1808 and again from 1814 to 1833. Duringhis reign his retainers, who actually ruled the country, began tomeet in a small anteroom to the more spacious royal apartments(camarilla). The court clique under Ferdinand VII and severalother Spanish kings represented the interests of the reactionarynobility and clergy and used its position for personal gain. Theword “camarilla” has become a generic term.

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References in periodicals archive

Fallaw argues that two informal political institutions were critical to defining the interactions among diverse national, state and local actors in the Cardenas years--"caciques" (local bosses or strongmen who controlled communities, political organizations, or unions) and "camarillas" (networks of elites linked by family, friendship or interest).

Cardenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatan.

Among these are their tacking back and forth smoothly between political events at the national, state, and local levels; their untangling of the camarilla politics associated with Porfirian planters and revolutionary reformers such as Olegario Molina, Avelino Montes, Jose Maria Pino Suarez, and other major figures of the period; and their skillful reconstruction of forms of popular mobilization and demobilization in the countryside by the state's various contending elite political factions between 1909 and 1915.

Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval: Elite Politics and Rural Insurgency in Yucatan, 1876-1915

Was the man an idealist supremely convinced of his own rectitude, or a clever mountebank, an actor lusting for power who ruthlessly exploited both his camarilla and his nation for personal gratification?

Explaining Hitler