Search

No parliamentary assemblies (Cortes) were held between 1665 and 1700 in the Crown of Castile. In view of this institutional pause, not yet sufficiently well explained historiographically, the questions assailing us are: who held the representation of the kingdom during this time, and how was the exaction of taxes-the millones (tax on basic products), donations, and so on-carried out in political practice, as their levying had to be agreed on in the Cortes. The answer to the first question is that it was the cabildos (local assemblies or oligarchical municipal assemblies) of the cities with a vote in the Cortes, which legitimately represented the kingdom. It should be remembered that before 1665, during the time when the Parliament was summoned, the cabildos retained the decisive vote, whereas the members of the Cortes meeting in them could only exercise an advisory vote. The reply to the second question obliges us to study the institutional relationship of both a Diputacón de las Cortes (a Deputation of the Cortes) and the Commission of Millones with the cabildos concerning the collection of the levies of the millones and donations. As well as defining political representation in the early modern era, the thesis of this article is to demonstrate that the cabildos of the Castilian cities with votes in the Cortes, regardless of whether the Cortes were held or not, were the real representatives of the kingdom and the administrators of the treasury in the second half of the seventeenth century. Thus, in Castile too, the government of society was implemented by both the king and the kingdom in accordance with the juridical-institutional criterion, widespread in Western Europe, of the dominium politicum et regale (as described by John Fortescue, Helmut Koenigsberger et al.). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The political body of the Spanish monarchy in the second half of the seventeenth century was organically and functionally composed of assemblies of aristocrats, both centrally or supranationally (‘king’) and locally or territorially (‘kingdom’). The apex of this monarchic-aristocratic pyramid was formed by a polysynodal system of councils, among which the Councils of State and of War are worthy of mention, in the twofold sense of conferring a greater institutional dignity and for their projection abroad. The base of this same political-institutional pyramid was made up of-in addition to the respective governors or military governors (representing the monarch)—the Town Councils or municipal assemblies. In order to fully understand the structure and dynamics of both assemblies (central state councils and local councils), in which the decisions were always reached by a majority vote, the following pertinent questions need to be investigated in depth: the social complexion of its members (high- or low-rank nobility, depending on the circumstances); the political representation they possessed (‘king’ or ‘kingdom’, respectively); the nature of the power they exercised (political-sovereign power or economic-administrative power); their functions or responsibilities, among which law and justice were the total province of the ‘king’ (state councils) and the administration and economic resources were under the complete tutelary action of the ‘kingdom’ (local councils); and, finally, the procedures or workings of these central and local assemblies. Our basic theory rests on our affirmation that at the end of the seventeenth century, the Spanish monarchy had succeeded in fully achieving a system of government, based on the making of collective decisions, which were prepared complementarily and by discussion in the central area of the state councils and in the local context of the town councils. The undoubted solwness of this complex bureaucratic machinery ought not, however, to overshadow the merit of it having been a model ‘parliamentary’ example of poltical actions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article Jose de Bernardo Ares begins by describing the theory and methodology of the systematic study of urban local government on the broadest scale. The aim of such studies should be to elucidate the role and position of urban local government authorities in the power structures of the society as a whole. In this case the target society is the kingdom of Castile in the early modern period. It is suggested that there arc two dimensions to the power struggles in such municipal authorities, the ‘fight for power’ among the local governors, and the ‘fight against authority’ which derives from conflicts of community. The article suggests what aspects of local society and its relations to the centre need to be studied, including the parliamentary dimension. The article then reviews the different kinds of source materials available for study of the subject in Spain and the potential usefulness of each kind and concludes with a review of the relevant historiographical work that is extant in France and Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]