Which Spanish king restored the Inquisition in 1814?

Ferdinand VII restored the Spanish Inquisition in 1814.

The restoration followed the collapse of Napoleon’s rule and Ferdinand’s return to Spain. In May 1814, he annulled the Constitution of Cádiz and the liberal decrees issued by the Cortes. A subsequent decree restored the Council of the Inquisition and the tribunals of the Holy Office to the jurisdiction they had exercised before the Napoleonic era.

The institution had already been suppressed in stages: Napoleon abolished it in territory controlled by the French in 1808, and the Cortes of Cádiz formally abolished it in 1813. Ferdinand’s action therefore formed part of a wider restoration of absolutist government, not a continuous uninterrupted survival of the tribunal.

The revived Inquisition was short-lived. The Riego uprising forced Ferdinand to accept the Constitution in 1820, and the institution was abolished again. When absolutism returned in 1823, he did not formally re-establish it; some dioceses instead operated local Juntas de Fe.