The Middle Ages in Spain: Societal Shifts 14th-15th Centuries
Demographic, Economic, and Political Crisis
Throughout the fourteenth century, Spain experienced increased mortality. The five million inhabitants recorded in the peninsula at the end of the 13th century were drastically reduced due to severe famine. This famine was caused by crop failure, possibly a result of climate change, and numerous epidemics that ravaged Spain, brought by Genoese ships carrying infected rats and fleas. The area most affected by the Black Death was Catalonia, mostly Barcelona. In 1348, its population was reduced by 50%.
As a result, there was demographic stagnation. Around 1500, there were still about five million people.
Regarding the economy, there was a decline in both labor and the number of consumers. In agriculture, large tracts of land were abandoned, favoring livestock. The herds were owned by the nobility, which condensed much power. The Mesta obtained rights to promote livestock, such as royal creeks.
Sheep were raised primarily for wool production, which was then transported to England or Flanders. This led to the creation of a bourgeoisie devoted to the wool trade. Burgos was one of the Castilian economic powerhouses, through which wool passed to northern ports such as Santander or Bilbao.
Most of the textile industry was concentrated in Catalonia. Textiles were then exported across the Mediterranean by sea, which also formed a group of rich bourgeois. This industry, and the economy in general, was depressed by the crisis but gradually recovered.
In politics, there was a continuous crisis, with constant struggles between nobles, against royalty, and numerous anti-seigneurial peasant revolts against feudal lords.
This crisis affected the area of Aragon much more than Castile.
Political Organization and Institutions: Castile
At the end of the 13th century, Alfonso X, King of Castile, began a policy of increasing royal power. He rescued ancient Roman law, translated by the Toledo School of Translators. Roman laws were not feudal but reinforced the notion of the state, and the king was presented as the sole incarnation of the kingdom. This involved a series of noble rebellions, coinciding with times when royal power was weakest, i.e., during regencies and minorities. The last of these revolts was the civil war between Pedro I, the current King of Castile, and Henry II, proposed by the nobles, in 1366. Henry II won and became King of Castile.
This caused a change in policy, as Henry II rewarded the nobility who had supported him. Throughout the reign of the Trastámara dynasty, the nobility condensed all the power.
Parallel Cortes were created in Castile (an assembly of representatives of the kingdom). These were not very important since the nobility and the clergy had power over the king without any cuts, which was detrimental to the representatives of the nobility who were also members of this assembly. In general, cities supported the king against the nobility, but the nobility had control over the royalty.
Political Organization and Institutions: Aragon
Aragon did not consist of a single kingdom but a confederation of three separate kingdoms (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia). This meant that the Aragonese king always had less power than the Castilian king. Each realm had its own Cortes. The most prominent were those of Aragon, in which the nobility and the cities had the same power and worked together to obtain privileges from the king.
In 1283, the Cortes of Aragon and Catalonia obtained the General Privilege from Pedro I. This stated that if the king did not agree to what the Cortes demanded, they would not approve taxes. This model is known as political wheeling and dealing.
This meant the king had no power, while the bourgeoisie in the cities formed a ruling oligarchy. Many social conflicts occurred because the nobility abused the peasants with the king’s permission.