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The politics of the urban commons in Northern Atlantic Spain in the later Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2013

JESÚS A. SOLÓRZANO TELECHEA
JESÚS A. SOLÓRZANO TELECHEA*
Affiliation:
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Cantabria, Av. de los Castros, 39005 Santander, Spain
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Abstract

This article examines some key issues relating to the emergence of political consciousness and political activity amongst the commons in the towns of Northern Atlantic Spain in the late medieval period. In the fifteenth century, a partnership between the urban business elite and the craft guilds successfully petitioned the monarchy on behalf of the commons, which resulted in municipal reforms. The resolution of issues achieved in the north was radically different from the situation in other cities in the kingdom of Castile, where the commons’ petitions and conflicts with urban oligarchies led to what became known as the ‘Revolt of the Comuneros’ in 1520, which marked the decline of the commons’ assemblies and the end of medieval urban rebellions in the interior of the kingdom.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 183 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

The commons’ political achievements and failures in the Middle Ages have been the focus of controversy for nearly as long as they have been studied in contemporary historiography.Footnote 1 In Spain, this subject has been traditionally linked to research into the Revolt of the Comuneros (a term stemming from the concept of the commune) of 1520–21 when the comuneros (commons) rose up against royal officials (corregidores) and the urban oligarchies, which were dominated by members of the nobility. The earliest studies of this event appeared at the end of the eighteenth century, at which time it gained an almost mythical status amongst liberal political groups. The Revolt of the Comuneros was interpreted both as a ‘bourgeois revolution’ and as a pioneering symbol of popular freedom and class struggles in Spain,Footnote 2 although Franco's regime put an end to this interpretation in the scholarly tradition from 1936 onwards.Footnote 3 In the last three last decades, however, new interpretations and regionally focused studies have followed Julio Valdéon in arguing that the Revolt of the Comuneros was not the first modern revolution in Spain, but the end of a prolonged societal conflict that started ‘two centuries earlier’.Footnote 4

The following article builds on this research in order to offer a regional study of North Atlantic Spain, an area which was notably not involved in the Revolt of the Comuneros, by analysing the way in which the emergence of political consciousness and the political activity of the commons was successful in changing the political system of towns in the area. It will be shown that by exploiting the language of the common good and by appealing to royal authority, the class of prosperous merchants and entrepreneurs created a distinctive urban political culture. This in turn can help to explain the town's non-participation in the popular movement of 1520–21.

Exclusion of the commons from town councils and the first protests

The cities and towns from the river Duero to Andalusia resembled Italian city-states, with extensive jurisdictional territories in their hinterlands.Footnote 5 As in other European territories, Castilian kings favoured ceding control of urban government in the interior of Castile to the oligarchy. From the second half of the twelfth century onwards, Castilian kings bestowed several charters and privileges on cities and towns, and, consequently, the monarchy benefited from their support. The crown of Castile wished to intervene in urban government in order to strengthen monarchical authority, which it did by creating new crown agents within the cities, such as the jurimen, or royal judges. From the second half of the fourteenth century onwards, Alphonse XI imposed major municipal reforms, called regimiento, in the principal cities and towns in order to strengthen monarchical authority. The crown asserted the right to appoint representatives to municipal posts, and in practice these were mainly selected from the existing urban oligarchy.Footnote 6 By the second half of the fourteenth century, town councils had become dominated by a privileged hereditary oligarchy, composed of lesser noblemen from the countryside, in alliance with some of the families of ‘Good Men’,Footnote 7 who monopolized the town councils and expelled those who held fewer privileges.Footnote 8 Thus, a closed political system was created in which families from the social elite competed for access to the urban government every year,Footnote 9 and the regimiento modified the balance of power in the town councils creating an elite within the elite.Footnote 10 This new system was complemented by the emergence of factions within the town councils which divided councilmen into two opposing groups.Footnote 11

Towns in Northern Atlantic Spain, however, showed a different pattern of development. By way of context, it should be noted that the process of urbanization had begun later in Northern Atlantic Spain than in the rest of Castile or even western Europe and the towns were smaller. In the fifteenth century, the most densely populated towns were Vitoria and Bilbao with around 5,000 inhabitants; the rest had roughly 3,500 inhabitants (Laredo, Santander, Oviedo, San Sebastian, Avilés). In contrast, the cities on the Castilian plateau were much larger: Burgos and Salamanca had a population of roughly 15,000, while over 25,000 people lived in Valladolid and Toledo at that time.Footnote 12 By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the urban economy of the region was beginning to grow rapidly due to an increase in commerce and trade, which in turn led to the emergence of a class of wealthy merchants and entrepreneurs. More commoners managed to purchase houses and land which enabled them to join a select group of Hombres Buenos (Good Men), the upper tier of medieval society that controlled urban institutions and the cities’ relationships with the crown, thus forming part of the social elite from the end of the thirteenth century.Footnote 13 The regimiento was never implemented to the same extent that it was in the rest of the kingdom, partly thanks to the political agency of these ‘Good Men’. We can see this most clearly in the controversies surrounding the yearly municipal elections which, unlike most Castilian towns, continued to be held on an annual basis.

Before the imposition of the regimiento, municipal posts were annually elected by the ‘Good Men’. For instance, in Laredo the mayors and other public servants were elected every year to represent the Vozes (‘Voices’) of the Commons by ‘sixty or seventy’ men. Voting was carried out in pairs at a location close to the cemetery of the church of St Mary, where these men had to take oaths and pronounce the names of the town councillors for the next year. The outgoing mayors, other town council officials and two stewards of the guild of St Martin witnessed the election process and counted the votes in the church.Footnote 14 In Santander, the system was very similar, as the two mayors and eight municipal posts were elected by ‘three good men from each street’, between 40 or 50 ‘Good Men’ in total, who gathered in the Palace of the Holy Spirit, within the Church of the Holy Bodies.Footnote 15 In Bilbao, the public crier summonsed the ‘Good Men’, who came together to choose the town councillors until 1435. In this town, the members of the noble families were not allowed to participate in the elections nor be elected.Footnote 16

The ‘Good Men’ and the rest of the ‘non-privileged’ townspeople became extremely dissatisfied, as soon as they were aware that inclusion in municipal government was restricted to those belonging to a noble family, otherwise known as a lineage.Footnote 17 Those not included, that is the taxpayers (pecheros), were usually referred to as the comuneros or commons. The commons were drawn from various trades, and included merchants, sailors, navigators, craftsmen, coopers, carpenters, cobblers, tailors, drapers, sheepshearers, blacksmiths, caulkers, butchers, fishermen, farmers and innkeepers. Their systematic exclusion from the town councils resulted in this wide sector of the populace – the commons – organizing themselves in order to defend their rights and political privileges. Commons and oligarchies would continue to clash until the end of the fifteenth century in the towns of Northern Atlantic Spain.

The exclusion of the commons led to them to make formal recourse to petitioning in order to complain about this concentration of power in the hands of those of noble lineage.Footnote 18 Petitioning was a ubiquitous practice throughout Europe across different types of polities. As in other European territories, commons’ petitions were presented to lords, princes and other urban rulers. The leaders of the movement argued that they were ‘rich men of great properties, good fame and very well qualified’, who ‘represented the common good and the defence of the urban community’.Footnote 19 Nonetheless, they were excluded from the town councils because they did not belong to noble lineages, and consequently they were forced to fight for political representation for most of the fifteenth century.Footnote 20

The exclusion of the commons and the first electoral reforms carried out by the crown in response to such protests are well documented in towns such as Laredo, Santander, Vitoria, Deba and Bilbao during the early fifteenth century, specifically between 1420 and 1440. For example, Santander's ‘people and commons’ complained several times to King John II about the ‘riots and scandals’ provoked by the exclusion of the commons after the introduction of the regimiento at the beginning of the fifteenth century. ‘The common people and merchants’ had been harmed by the distribution of taxes and duties assigned by the mayors. John II agreed to change the electoral system in order to improve the representation of the commons on at least three occasions: in 1414, 1418 and 1431.Footnote 21 The first two reforms led to the group of ‘Good Men’ monopolizing the town councils.Footnote 22 However, in 1431, the leaders of the noble factions protested and John II revoked the previous electoral ordinances and accepted the petitions of the two main noble lineages of the town: Escalante and Calleja. As a result, they were awarded half of the town council posts. Nevertheless, the problems between the commons and the lineages were not alleviated by these measures and King John II sent Pedro Manrique to mediate between the two groups, as he had had experience of resolving a similar conflict in Vitoria some years before, in 1423.Footnote 23 Ultimately, all these attempts by the commons to end their exclusion from public institutions and peacefully co-exist were fruitless, obliging them to change their political strategy.

Craft guilds within the collective action of the commons

Scholarship has generally misrepresented the political role of craft guilds in Spain, even though they were vital to urban political life.Footnote 24 The crown of Castile and craft guilds (cofradías) played an exceptional role in the political history of the Atlantic cities in Northern Spain, as the monarchy allied with the commons and gave them rights and privileges that they did not have in other European or even Spanish cities.Footnote 25 In the Low Countries, England, France, Germany and even in the interior of Castile, the central state power tried to diminish the political participation of the craft guilds.Footnote 26 Nevertheless, in Northern Atlantic Spain, the Castilian kings supported them.

The growing power of the Castilian monarchs supported the craft guilds as a strategy to diminish the political influence of noble lineages in urban affairs in Northern Atlantic cities. Between 1420 and 1470, commons’ rights were defended by the craft guilds, which represented most of the population, since these groups had many common concerns, including guild membership, the use of resources and their own services.Footnote 27 This collective action against the abuses of the urban oligarchy inspired a strong feeling of collective identity, which was in turn compounded by the shared aims and interests of the craft guilds and the commons. Thus, craft guilds were able to organize their collective self-defence, secure protection for their members and negotiate with royal authorities.

In Santander, the commons’ petitions first appeared in 1428, when the town council wished to impose a new tax on fishermen's wives and daughters who sold fish in the public market, and they sought representation on the town council through the guild of St Martin.Footnote 28 They argued that this institution integrated – and defended – the ‘common people of the town’. The existence of a consolidated institution, in which most of the population without privileges was included and whose members often organized meetings and ceremonies, became the best way of promoting the actions of the commons. Thus, the commons had an effective organization with which to lobby. From 1430 onwards, the full identification between St Martin's guild and ‘People and Community’ (Pueblo e Comunidad) can be observed, inasmuch as the guild was a sworn association in defence of the commons. In 1451, ‘On behalf of the members of St Martin's guild, who are the commons of the town’,Footnote 29 the craft guild of St Martin reported to the king that the members of the town council had committed several acts of fraud in relation to public taxes and properties, and they requested the king's protection. The monarch, John II, recognized the guild's complaints and granted them the privilege of designating two deputies to represent the guild at town council meetings and to oversee its interests. In spite of this, some weeks later, the guild of St Martin reported that the town council was not willing to observe the king's order.Footnote 30 In future years, the urban oligarchy prevented the participation of the guild's deputies, but they did allow the commons to attend town council meetings when there were important economic affairs concerning the whole community on the agenda. In this way, the dominant group tried to discredit the guild as a representative institution whose interests were those of the commons. However, craft guilds represented the majority of townspeople, especially the upper middle class, and offered a real alternative to the dominance of the noble lineages in urban government and their struggles. It can therefore be concluded that the Castilian monarchs supported petitions by the craft guilds not just to prevent the nobles from monopolizing town councils in order to pacify the townspeople, but additionally because they sought to form alliances with the merchant class.

The authors of the craft guild's petition letters were aware of the existence of two opposing groups: the prinçipales, as the urban nobility referred to themselves, and the commons. The former dominated political institutions, committing all kinds of abuses, whereas the latter did not even have a voice at the town council meetings. The town council argued that ‘the representatives of the craft guild could not participate at municipal meetings because they were ignorant people and they could not read, since they were common people, who could not understand the affairs of the town council’.Footnote 31

Therefore, the members of the craft guild of St Martin decided to nominate a person who belonged to the prinçipales to the post of guild deputy at town council meetings and in 1472, Pedro Sánchez de Oznayo, a member of an important noble family, accepted the post of guild representative.Footnote 32 He carried out a fierce defence of the interests of the guild for 20 years and after his death, the town council tried to prevent this post from lapsing again into the hands of a member of the oligarchy.Footnote 33

As in Santander, in San Vicente de la Barquera, the commons made use of the St Vincent craft guild in order to attack the aristocratic oligarchy. The first conflict occurred immediately after the imposition of a new tax, when the craft guild petitioned the town council with a specific economic programme that later became a request for political recognition and rights for the commons.Footnote 34 In fact, the revolts that ensued were more politically motivated than any other comparable rebellions. In 1428, faced with the indifference of the town council, the craft guild of St Vincent, on behalf of the commons, petitioned the king that ‘each inhabitant should pay municipal taxes according to his wealth in the town’.Footnote 35 As a result, the town council recognized the guild's request to be represented at municipal meetings, mainly because the oligarchy was afraid that the commons’ complaints would be acknowledged by King John II. Thus, the town council and St Vincent craft guild reached an agreement by which the town council had to recognize the political right of the guild to representation through a commons’ deputy on the council. Furthermore, the town council could not bring in new taxes, establish new municipal ordinances or even stamp documents without the consent of the commons’ deputy. However, once again, the town council did not respect the agreement and the commons of San Vicente de la Barquera presented their complaints to King John II, who confirmed the above-mentioned agreement in 1429. Also in 1453, Henry, the prince of Asturias, granted them a new privilege which permitted the craft guild steward to attend town council meetings whenever the town councillors wished to discuss maritime subjects.Footnote 36 Several years later, in 1496, the St Vincent craft guild presented its complaints to the Catholic monarchs yet again, because in spite of the conferred political privileges, they still had no political representation. The representatives of the craft guild affirmed that ‘Eight hundred inhabitants lived in the town and seven hundred of them were members of the craft guild’; nevertheless, the ‘posts of town councillors were divided between one hundred inhabitants, who belonged to a few lineages and did not take the rest of the inhabitants into consideration, even though these were as skilful, prepared and rich as the others, as a result of which the craft guild felt deeply offended’. The Catholic monarchs accepted these arguments and once again ordered that the guild's deputy must be present at meetings.Footnote 37

In San Sebastian, the guild of St Catherine, made up of merchants and pilots, and the fishermen's guild of St Peter were dissolved by Diego Arias de Anaya, because they were accused of causing ‘riots, struggles and scandals’ by the town council in the 1480s.Footnote 38 They additionally refused to observe the decisions and orders of the mayors and town councillors. The monarchs granted some ordinances and privileges to the craft guilds in 1489 and 1491 in an attempt to exert control over them, since the guilds could not call a general meeting without the consent of the town council, and as a consequence they did not demonstrate against the town council.Footnote 39

In Lequeitio, the craft guild went so far as to affirm that it had come into being to defend the interests of the town and the crown of Castile, as well as to fight the noble lineages of Oña and Gamboa. Members were additionally prohibited from becoming aligned with the lineages. From 1514, this craft guild acquired considerable political influence, since it was given the right to elect half of the town councillors.Footnote 40 The rest of the craft guilds from cities and towns in the northern kingdom of Castile made similar requests throughout the fifteenth century, notably in Bilbao, Laredo, Castro Urdiales, Deva and other smaller centres.

These petitioners from the craft guilds articulated an alternative to urban government which was very different from the oligarchy of lineages and their political parties. This new ideal was based on the theory of equity or common good: a doctrine that went to the heart of urban political life.Footnote 41 The common good was a concept that emerged in Castile during the late Middle Ages and can be traced in the royal law of ‘Las Partidas’ (1265), in political writings and in the acts of the Castilian parliament; however, it did not become an ideological reference for socio-political actors until the fifteenth century, when it served to link their governmental activities to the notion of ‘common good’.Footnote 42 New political concepts were spread from the halls of medieval universities to the streets of the cities. The relationship between the two was indeed very close, as graduates came to form part of urban life through the courts, administration and also medicine. Similarly, members of the urban oligarchy could gain political knowledge and could have encountered the concept through the education offered in schools.Footnote 43

The idea of egalitarianism was widely discussed in contemporary literature in the kingdom of Castile during the fifteenth century by political writers of the so-called ‘First School of Salamanca’, such as Fernando de Roa, Pedro de Osma, Alfonso de Madrigal, Diego de Deza and Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo. It was debated by scholars but was also familiar to commoners, even if it was not taken to extremes. The argument of isonomy or egalitarianism, linked to the principle of the ‘common good’, can be found in all petition letters as a form of political legitimization held up in contrast to the claims of honour, nobility and antiquity put forth by the hereditary oligarchy.Footnote 44 Therefore, the commons were the guardians of the ‘common good of the republic’ and this argument justified their political activity.Footnote 45 Nevertheless, the demands of the commons were not made in opposition to a socially stratified system, but in an attempt to achieve ‘what was just and equitable for the state of the community’.Footnote 46 While the commons’ ideology was similar to that found elsewhere in Europe, it was the support of the Castilian monarchy which was truly exceptional. In contrast, the ideology behind the oligarchy was based on tradition and privilege associated with the hereditary power of ‘lineages’.

Political achievements of the commons

The arrival of the Catholic monarchs, Isabella I and Ferdinand V, on the throne in 1474 after a civil war marked the beginning of a new stage in the political history of Spain. Throughout their reign, Castilian town councils followed one of two main political currents, which in turn conditioned the municipal system: the control of urban power in the hands of the oligarchies or the growing local interventionism of the monarchy.Footnote 47

In Northern Atlantic Spain, the commons showed renewed vitality from 1475 onwards, addressing their complaints directly to the king and queen, but in most cases without involving the craft guilds. In this way, protests were directed, in many cases, by certain leaders from within the commons (rather than by the craft guilds) who were committed to forging change and seeing through their disputes.Footnote 48 These leaders sought to represent themselves and to speak ‘just like any other member of the commons’. Commons leaders were merchants, artisans, those owning land, ships and other holdings, and ‘rich men of great properties’.Footnote 49 Pedro Ruiz Roman, from San Vicente de la Barquera, was a cloth merchant and the owner of vineyards, Juan de Escalante and Saciola were merchants in Bruges,Footnote 50 for example. In general, these representatives of the commons were rich townspeople, although the conflict was multidimensional.

The commons often denounced urban officials who governed according to their personal interests rather than for the common good. The discourse of the commons defended the participation of ‘all estates’ in urban government and the general interests of the community. Their aim was to improve the services provided by the ‘republic’ through the development of a strong feeling of civic identity.Footnote 51 Seeing as the commons had successfully used the craft guilds for political ends, the leaders of the commons claimed to speak on behalf of the poor as well, when asserting political rights. On 15 October 1495, on behalf of the merchants Pedro Ruiz Roman and Juan de Oreña, and the ‘poor, widows and orphans’ of San Vicente de la Barquera, Juan de Cosío sent a letter of complaint to the Catholic monarchs regarding a new tax that harmed ‘needy persons’ which the mayors and town councillors had unjustly imposed.Footnote 52 They also reported that the town councillors did as they pleased as there was no external control over their election.Footnote 53 As a result of this, rich merchants became the defenders and allies of the poorest members of society, complaining that the political system was controlled by the nobles. The solution proposed by the merchants and business people was eminently political and consisted of changing the electoral system.

The monarchs gave their approval to the commons’ petitions and the process of political change started in Vitoria. Meanwhile, the internationalization of the Spanish War of Succession took King Ferdinand into the north, where he prevented the advance of France and took charge of the unstable kingdom of Navarre in 1476 from Vitoria.Footnote 54 In July of that year, King Ferdinand sojourned in Vitoria and Bilbao without the company of the queen, Isabella. During those months, King Ferdinand swore an oath to respect the rights and privileges of Biscay and had to intervene in the pacification of Vitoria. In this town, the commons had participated in municipal elections until the end of the fourteenth century, when the municipal councillors began to be elected on an annual basis by the urban oligarchy. This political system, controlled by the urban nobility, survived until 1476. After hearing the commons’ complaints, the king promoted the reform of the town council. The inhabitants took an oath in the churches of St Peter and St Michael and presented a total of nine petitions, in which they accused the oligarchy's urban government and political parties of injustices and mismanagement, as the noble families had ‘in effect caused the government to be bad’ and requested that the organization of the town council should be reformed.Footnote 55 The most important argument put forth within the political discourse expressing the grievances of the community was ‘for the common good’. Thus, the commons became a political entity devoted to ensuring good municipal governance as opposed to government by the oligarchy. The royal reforms of the electoral system attempted to pacify the town by constructing a new political system in favour of the commons.Footnote 56 That oath instigated a change in municipal elections, pushing aside the oligarchy to place the town council in the commons’ hands.

The new system was based on a lottery system, also known as sortition or allotment (insaculación); town leaders were chosen by the drawing of lots. This development marked a sea change in the structure of urban government as representation was decisively shifted away from the noble houses towards the richest townspeople of proven ability and reputation. In order to be eligible as town councillors under this new political system, candidates had to be able to read and write in the Castilian language, be laymen, pay taxes in the town, be married, be ‘inhabitants of large estate, clever, of good conscience, good repute and without faction’ and ‘be good and efficient and honourable to themselves and to the town’.Footnote 57 The system was also far less open to abuse and manipulation as it was based on the drawing of names from bags by children. This practice was already established in the cities under the jurisdiction of the crown of Aragon, where it had been introduced by King Alfonso V (1416–58), and used by King Ferdinand as a means of bringing an end to urban conflict there.Footnote 58 In many cases, sortition was also quite widely employed as an informal electoral system, as it had been in use by the craft guilds before its introduction in the town councils. For example, the seamen and navigators craft guild of San Sebastian would write the names of its members on pieces of paper and put them into a pot, and then a child took out the names of the guild councillors for the next year.Footnote 59

Sortition was considered to be a more stable electoral system as well as a juridical resource for restoring civic order in the Northern Atlantic towns. Thus, the crown of Castile decided to introduce this political instrument in order to limit the absolute power of the oligarchies and to increase royal power in those territories by confirming the political supremacy of the upper middle class. ‘Vitoria's Ordinances of 1476’ spread to most towns in Northern Atlantic Spain: Avilés, Gijón, Llanes, San Vicente de la Barquera, Santander, Laredo, Castro Urdiales, Portugalete, Bilbao, Plencia, Bermeo, Lequeitio, Motrico, Deva, Zumaya, Guetaria, Zarauz, Orio, San Sebastián, Rentería and Fuenterrabía, Grado, Oviedo, Durango, Mondragón, Azcoitia, Elgoibar, Salvatierra, Tolosa, Hernani, Segura, Vergara, Azpeitia and Oyarzun.

However, this electoral system failed to spread to the cities of the Castilian plateau due to distinctive political features that were unique to the towns of Northern Atlantic Spain (Figure 1). The main difference lay in the regularity of municipal elections, which were held every year in the north. In the rest of the kingdom of Castile, by contrast, annual elections were not held and their mayors were directly appointed by the monarch.

Figure 1:

The spread of the sortition system in the towns in Atlantic Spain at the end of the Middle Ages. By Jesús Solórzano.

After Vitoria, Bilbao was the second town to introduce reforms to its political system. At the beginning of the 1480s, the commons complained to the Catholic monarchs that Bilbao was being destroyed from within by the struggles between warring factions and noble houses, including the Oñez, Gamboa, Leguizamon, Zurbarán, Arbolancha and other families, since they fought over the distribution of the town officials amongst themselves every year. The commons of Bilbao requested the application of the Ordinances of Vitoria as a means of ending the continual internal conflict.Footnote 60 In 1483, before this request, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had sent a royal advisor, García López de Chinchilla, to solve the matter. Chinchilla wrote a book of ordinances to regulate the town council elections based on Vitoria's Ordinances, which were confirmed by the Catholic monarchs in 1484.Footnote 61 ‘Chinchilla's Ordinances’ included measures to prevent the participation of noble families in the town council elections and the government of Bilbao. Thus, the noble houses were banned from participation, and sortition was established to elect government officials. In 1487, the Catholic monarchs additionally imposed an electoral system based on the Chinchilla Ordinances in all the towns of Biscay County.

Isabella and Ferdinand granted Vitoria's ordinances to San Sebastián in order to prevent further infighting amongst noble houses, thereby establishing sortition as the town's electoral system in 1489.Footnote 62 Nevertheless, in 1490, a resident reported that the town council was dominated by 10 or 12 inhabitants and also by the merchants and butchers, who made profitable deals by taking advantage of town taxes. Thus, in 1491, the monarchs ordered that the chief magistrate should be present during town council elections. In this way, the pressure of the community transformed a popular movement into a power paralleling that of the town council, which had been dominated by noble lineages, thanks to the help of the crown. In 1511, the commons acquired more political influence, since Queen Johanna I modified the requirements for participating in the electoral system: in order to be able to vote and stand for election, inhabitants only needed to have been born in and to reside in the town, be married and have a net worth of at least medio millar (half a thousand), 50 florins.Footnote 63

In the region of Cantabria, elections by lottery system or sortition arrived in San Vicente de la Barquera in 1494, Laredo in 1497, Santander in 1498 and finally in Castro Urdiales in 1517.Footnote 64 The case of Laredo is well documented.Footnote 65 The community's petitions started in the 1480s. In 1484, Laredo's ‘people and community’ sent several complaints to the Catholic kings in order to denounce the ‘riots and noises’, ‘deaths and thefts’ caused by the noble houses and factions and the ‘lack of justice in the town’. This situation provoked the town's collapse and therefore they asked the Catholic monarchs for justice.

The king and queen agreed, ordering that no one was to enter the town carrying weapons, and sent Francisco de Montalván, a royal judge, to put an end to the infighting. Laredo's commons ‘attacked’ the oligarchy's government and turned to a political stratagem in order to achieve better government for the town. The peace brought about by the crown in 1484 was only respected for a few years and in August 1495, Juan de Escalante, an active merchant in Bruges, ‘for himself and on behalf of other inhabitants of Laredo’, reported that the heads of the noble families had elected their relatives and servants (though they were not skilled persons) as town councillors with the aim of collecting the public taxes. Moreover, they had excluded the group of inhabitants made up of ‘rich men of great properties, good repute and very well qualified’, who ‘would know how to govern the town in service of the common good and the republic’.Footnote 66 In this way, the commons solicited major reforms to the procedures surrounding town council elections. In September 1495, the monarchs accepted Juan de Escalante's petitions and ordered that the town should be governed by ‘clever men, of good repute and without faction’. Nevertheless, the heads of the noble families ignored the royal order and Juan de Escalante complained that the royal letter was not being respected. On this occasion, the letter of protest was written on behalf of himself, the republic and community and as a person of the commons.Footnote 67 Two years later, on 20 September 1497, the Catholic monarchs completely reformed the town council election system, by means of insaculación.Footnote 68

The new electoral ordinances were intended to serve as a model of peaceful co-existence for all inhabitants as well as minimizing social conflict, and they helped to consolidate the general interests of the community in opposition to the urban nobility. After these reforms, the political system controlled by the oligarchies did not completely disappear, since they continued to have significant political influence on the actions and proceedings of the town councils. From the commons’ point of view, the alternative to a political organization dominated by the nobility was the defence of the values of the community. Royal intervention was justified in order to support peace and order. The new political system increased the number of inhabitants who could be electors and stand for election, which in turn allowed for the incorporation of the richer members of the commons into the political class. Therefore, the monarchy, aligned with the upper middle class, became the institution responsible for upholding the common good.

Why did the Catholic monarchs grant approval to commons’ petitions in the towns of Northern Atlantic Spain? The collaboration between the monarchs and the towns and cities of the kingdom was also a strategic issue in the political survival of the monarchy after the War of Succession. The death of King Henry IV, on 11 December 1474, led to the Castilian War of Succession, waged between the Catholic monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, and Joanna of Castile, daughter of Henry VI, and her husband Alfonso V, of Portugal, supported by France. Following the end of the war in 1479, Isabella and Ferdinand needed the support of the cities and, depending on whether they encountered a more patrician or a more communal organization of the urban elite, they used whichever sector of the urban community they could – the nobility, the patricians or elite commoners – in order to strengthen the authority of the monarchy.Footnote 69 While the monarchs changed the political system in the northern towns in favour of the commons, in other towns on the Castilian plateau, they only imposed the post of commoners’ deputy (procurador) in order to halt disputes and represent the interests of the commons in the town council meetings;Footnote 70 in other cities, the king and queen supported the oligarchy. For instance, in 1475, a year prior to establishing the new electoral system in Vitoria, the Catholic monarchs granted a privilege to the oligarchy of Burgos which expressly excluded the commons from the city council in order to respect the ‘good and old custom’ in exchange for their collaboration and subordination.Footnote 71 In the case of Burgos at the start of 1475, the monarchs had to grant full freedom to the urban patriciate instead of the commons, because they could not afford to seek the support of any other social organization, since the loyalty of their followers in Burgos was not secure. Neither the city's mayor nor the bishop were trusted persons. Thus, the monarchs decided to support the only sector that was able to organize resources effectively for the crown: the patriciate. Likewise, they did not wish to incorporate the commons in Burgos, as it might have undermined the patricians’ freedom of action in the municipal government. Nevertheless, in most towns in Northern Atlantic Spain, the Catholic monarchs reformed the electoral system in response to the commons’ petitions, because they were the strongest social sector, thus wedding the Castilian monarchy and the commons in a pragmatic alliance that served their mutual interests.

Therefore, it must be concluded that the power bestowed upon distinct sectors of society clearly reflected the political needs of the crown. While in the north, the monarchs supported the commons, in the case of Burgos, their interests converged with those of the nobility. However, in both territories the monarchy was presented as the main source of law, offering fair government and enforcement of justice, all ordered in defence of the common good.

Final considerations

The political petitions of the commons in the Northern Atlantic towns of Spain ended in victory for the upper middle class, that is to say the urban business elite, thanks to requests made by craft guilds and the commons themselves, leading to significant municipal reforms supported by the Catholic monarchs, starting in Vitoria in 1476. In Northern Atlantic Castile, the crown supported the petitions of the commons as a political manoeuvre to exclude the nobility from town councils. The crown additionally sought an alliance with the business people and merchants, a potent sector of society which strove for political representation as shown above. These royal reforms were an attempt to pacify the towns by constructing a new political system in favour of the commons in the northern part of the kingdom. This solution was very different to the rest of the cities in the kingdom of Castile, where the commons’ petitions and the conflicts with urban oligarchies resulted in the great uprising, the ‘Revolt of the Comuneros’ in 1520.Footnote 72

After the death of King Ferdinand in 1516, the kingdom of Castile was ruled by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros and Adrian of Utrecht for three years. King Charles I came to Spain surrounded by Flemish advisors and with a political programme and economic demands for the commons in 1519.Footnote 73 The main complaints made by the Castilian cities against the monarchy were directed towards the Flemings, like Adrian of Utrecht, Charles’ tutor.Footnote 74 The Revolt of the Comuneros had its origins in an alliance of some 20 towns on the Castilian plateau, which joined to form a ‘Holy League’. At the very heart of the comuneros movement lay the notion that the Holy League defended the political rights of the cities and towns, which were more important and superior to those of the monarchy. The comuneros rose up in arms. Royal chief magistrates (corregidores)Footnote 75 were expelled and town council governments were entrusted to urban communes. The government of the commoners meant the subversion of the traditional government and a higher level of participation by the commons in the town councils.Footnote 76

Nevertheless, the rebellion in Castile soon began to run out of steam and degenerated into mob violence within the towns. In its beginnings, the revolt was a radical movement in defence of Castilian towns and against a foreign regime, but it quickly devolved into a civil war between factions. Some members of the Junta de los comuneros (the leaders of the movement) wanted to rise up against the nobles and the rich. In Murcia and Cartagena, for instance, the artisans and small business owners destroyed the power of the oligarchy.Footnote 77 In cities on the plateau, the revolt was led by the most progressive sector of society, and support for the revolt was largely tepid or non-existent in central Castile. The defeat of the commoners by a royalist army at Villalar in April 1521, and the execution of the leaders, Juan de Padilla, Juan Bravo and Francisco Maldonado, marked the decline of the commons’ assemblies and the end of medieval urban rebellions in the Castilian plateau.Footnote 78 Therefore, the defeat of the comuneros ended the long period of social conflicts that had lasted from the reform of Alphonse XI in the mid-fourteenth century to the Revolt of the comuneros.

The Revolt of the comuneros did not spread to the towns of Northern Atlantic Spain in 1520–21, where the new electoral system of insaculación (sortition) had been instituted through the co-peration between the commons and the monarchy.Footnote 79 When the conflict started in Castile, the towns of Northern Atlantic Spain sent letters of support denouncing the uprising of the comuneros to King Charles I and swore loyalty to the crown. The city of Burgos asked Vitoria and San Sebastian to join in alliance against the monarchy, but they refused. Vitoria's representatives stated that the town council did not wish to deal with them in their abuses and even San Sebastian was attacked for this reason.Footnote 80 The town council of Bilbao argued that they remained loyal to the king ‘due to the privileges that they had received and expected to receive in the future’.Footnote 81 They alluded to the economic and political privileges received during the reigns of the Catholic monarchs and implied that they expected them to be increased. In Santander, some inhabitants allied with the commoners of the Castilian plateau, but the town council, the merchants, sailors and fishermen – the commons – armed two warships to fight against the troops of Zambrano, the chief magistrate sent by the Holy League of Valladolid to take the town.Footnote 82 The resistance of other cities and towns in Atlantic Spain was similar in nature to that of Vitoria, San Sebastian, Santander and Bilbao. Thus, the revolt did not spread to this territory.

In conclusion, the Revolt of the Comuneros in 1520 and 1521 only took place in the towns where the electoral system had been based on the inheritance of town council positions within the oligarchy since the middle of the fourteenth century, as a result of the regimiento. However, annual municipal elections never disappeared in Atlantic towns, even if they were controlled by the oligarchies and political parties following the exclusion of the commons from the town councils. As a consequence, the commons had to fight for political representation for most of the fifteenth century by means of the craft guilds or by addressing their complaints directly to the kings. The alternative to the political monopoly by the noble houses and their parties was the defence of the values of the community.

Royal intervention found justification in sustaining peace and order. The crown of Castile supported the commons’ petitions and gave them rights and privileges that they did not have in other European or Castilian cities. Of course, even after the victory of the commons, the hereditary nobility in Northern Castile did not completely disappear, although the noble houses were forced to accept that urban identity was not based only on the noble ideals of antiquity, honour and privileges, but also on the arguments of common good and equity. Finally, the monarchy, aligned with the upper middle class, became the champion of the common good.

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Figure 0

Figure 1: The spread of the sortition system in the towns in Atlantic Spain at the end of the Middle Ages. By Jesús Solórzano.