Masonry arrived to Spain definitively with the French invasion of 1808. Napoleón did not belong to Masonry, but he supported the Order in his empire and almost all his family was integrated in various, including his brother Joseph, proclaimed king of Spain.

The suppression of the Inquisition in 1809 allowed the apparition of a series of Lodge integrated by members of the French Army and dependent on the Great Orient of France. The Spanish participation was limited to the so called "the afrancesados", which admitted the sovereignty of King Joseph and founded nine other Lodges in Madrid, Almagro and Manzanares grouped in the Grand Lodge National of Spain.

This Bonapartist Masonry constituted a form of political control and all the lodges disappeared after the departure of the French in 1813, but its relation with the French invaders brought the opposition of the patriotic sectors towards the Masonry, although coinciding in many aspects with its postulates, at the same time that its reformist character supposed to be the antithesis of the traditionalists.

In 1812 the Parliament of Cadix prohibits masonry again, like Fernando VII later on. Except for the short period of the liberal triennium (1820-1823), masonry was prohibited and was pursued until the triumph of the 1868 revolution.