In the liquidation of the Ancien Régime system, three major agrarian reforms were carried out by the liberal governments. The three disentailments had a great socio-economic impact, as the primary sector was the hegemonic sector in the Modern Age: the disentailments of Godoy (1798), of Mendizábal and Espartero (1836-1844) and the General Disentailment (1855-1895). But what were the disentailments? They were measures that put assets belonging to the Church, the municipalities and the aristocracy that could not be bought or sold up for auction. The aim was to liberalise the agrarian sector by changing the ownership of land and to increase the Treasury’s accounts with the auctions. The reality was that the auctioned land was bought back by the same people who owned it, without changing the ownership structures. Moreover, the disentailed collective and communal lands became private property. Wage-earning peasants, for their part, saw their traditional rights eroded as the concept of land ownership changed.
In Castile-La Mancha, the disentailment of 1836 particularly affected the province of Toledo, with 10,586 estates affected, which were valued at 66.9 million reales and sold at auction for 159.8 million reales. These figures for Toledo accounted for 5% of the national total. The province that contributed the least was Albacete with 772 estates valued at 6.7 million and sold for 11.9, a lower percentage improvement than the rest of the provinces (Ciudad Real 3,370 estates valued at 21 million and sold for 54.4; Cuenca 1,463 estates valued at 13.5 and auctioned for almost double that: 24.2; and Guadalajara with 10,354, valued at 20.6 and sold for 36.6). In sum, the disentailed Castilian-La Mancha lands were valued at 129 million and sold for almost 287 million, 9% of the national total.

Collection: Statistics

Project: 2. Social and economic impact of technological revolutions in Europe., 3. Rural world and urban world in the formation of the European identity.

Chronology: XIX

Scope: Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, University

Resource type: Statistics

Format: Table

Source: Del Valle Calzado, Ángel Ramón. (2010). “Crecimiento agrario y desigualdad social, 1800-1930”, en Del Valle Calzado, Ángel Ramón (Coord.). Historia agraria de Castilla-La Mancha. Siglos XIX-XXI. Ciudad Real: Almud Ediciones, p. 120.

Language: Spanish

Date: 2010

Owner: Pablo Ballesta Fernández (Modernalia)

Copyright: © Ángel Ramón del Valle Calzado © ALMUD ediciones de Castilla-La Mancha

Abstract: Disentailed assets in Castilla-La Mancha in context with the national average

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