Archivo General de Simancas - History Lab

Cadastre of the Ensenada

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:42 +0000

Between 1750 and 1754 all the towns in “las Castillas” were subjected to an interrogation consisting of the following 40 questions: Name of the town (question 1); jurisdiction (2); extension and limits (3); types of land (4, 5); trees (6, 7, 8 and 13); measures of surface and capacity used (9, 10); species, quantity and value of fruits (11, 12, 14 and 16); tithes and first fruits (15); mines, salt mines, mills and other “artefacts” (17); livestock (18, 19 and 20); census of population, with neighbours, labourers, solemnly poor (21, 35 and 36), census of clerics (38) and convents (39); houses and other buildings (22); goods belonging to the commons (23), sisas and arbitrios (24), expenses of the commons, such as salaries, festivals, paving, fountains (25), taxes (26 and 27); industrial and commercial activities, with the utility of the goods or services produced: taverns, inns, shops, bakeries, butchers, bridges, boats on rivers, markets and fairs (29), hospitals (30), money changers and merchants (31), shopkeepers, doctors, surgeons, apothecaries, notaries, muleteers etc. (32); masons, stonemasons, masons, stonemasons, blacksmiths, cobblers etc. (33, 34); ships (37); alienated goods (28) and the King’s own revenues (40); the answers to these questions are obtained following a previously regulated process. This panoramic view of the Kingdom is a small part of a larger survey, the so-called Cadastre of the Marquis de la Ensenada, set in motion by Royal Decree of Ferdinand VI on 10 October 1749, as a preliminary step to fiscal reform, replacing the complicated and unjust provincial revenues with a single tax, the so-called Contribution. The Single Tax was never implemented, but it has left an important volume of documentation in our archives, the General Answers are kept in various State Archives. The General Archive of Simancas holds the complete certified copy of the replies of the 13,000 localities of the Crown of Castile. Preservation reasons led to the initiation of the microfilming process. In the 1980s, the 545 books of General Answers kept in Simancas were microfilmed. The frequent consultation of these collections and the need to facilitate access made digitisation advisable, which was carried out by the Document Reproduction Service (SRDAE) from microfilm during 2004 and 2005. The result is 350,000 images of documents with very neat calligraphic handwriting, easy to read and with hardly any abbreviations; very few pages have legibility problems, such as faded inks or ink transfer from the back. These images are now available on this page.

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The fortifications of Fuenterrabia around 1535

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:18 +0000

Once the conquest of Granada was over, the Catholic Monarchs took measures to protect the north of Spain in the face of a possible confrontation with the French troops, and this work was discontinued until the reign of Philip V in the 18th century. From Philip II onwards, major changes were introduced in the corps of engineers who would work for the crown, with technical training being promoted at the Academy of Mathematics in Madrid and not depending almost exclusively on importing these figures from abroad.
In July 1725, the engineer Jorge Próspero de Verboom arrived in Pamplona to work on the fortification of enclaves such as San Sebastián, Fuenterrabía and Pamplona. One of his most striking actions were his corrections to the engineer Luis de Langot in Fuenterrabía, introducing a whole system of outer forts and redoubts in strategic places, transforming Langot’s proposals to such an extent that it could practically be considered an independent project that would transform the square forever.
In this case, the importance of the enclave can already be seen graphically during the reign of Charles V, a time when some fortresses in the north of the peninsula such as San Sebastián and other coastal cities such as Mallorca or Cádiz continued to be reinforced. The post-medieval wall of Fuenterrabía would be attached to an interior defensive tower, it sat on a hill 250 metres in diameter and with the Bidasoa River covering its western part, it was in a strategically fundamental place.

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Payment of the guards in Castile (1523-1524)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:03 +0000

From the end of the medieval period, the power accumulated by the monarch allowed him to create a series of armies that were far removed from institutional channels but always loyal to his orders. These troops were loyal to the monarch, but they also required an extra cost to sustain themselves, which in practice materialised in an increase in the tax burden on the population, in an attempt to balance the always complex balance between monetary income and expenditure.
For the Castilian Hispanic Monarchy, this particular army was the guards of Castile, paid for thanks to the role of international banking and the extraordinary rents obtained by the crown. From the end of the 15th century, the army was essentially paid through obligados, people who advanced a large sum of money in exchange for a continuous salary, until the amount was paid off. This financial tool was of great use to the crown, but at the same time it meant that credit had to be kept in constant movement. Thanks to the resource, we can see the monthly fluctuation in the king’s liquidity, and therefore, of credit in Castile. The figures are more or less stable, but suffer large ups and downs in the central summer months and from September to November.

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