Mesta (Castile)

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Alfonso X in the Libro de los juegos

The Honrado Concejo de la Mesta to German Honorable Council of the Mesta , briefly Mesta was an influential association of sheep farmers in Castile . As an organization, the Mesta existed between 1273 and 1836. It organized the annual transhumance , the migration of the sheep herds from Andalusia and Extremadura to Castile. The Castilian kings granted the Mesta a number of privileges over time, which made it increasingly powerful.

history

After the Reconquista , large areas in southern Castile, Andalusia and Extremadura were only sparsely populated. The large estates (= latifundia ) were often owned by the church and high nobility. At that time, these landowners saw migratory sheep breeding as an excellent way of using the pasture land and making economic profit. The name Mesta is derived from mixta . The foundation of the Mesta is based on a pre-existing habit of the farmers to meet several times a year in different places in order to separate the animals belonging to different owners that had been mixed up during the migrations. Honrado Concejo de la Mesta can therefore be translated as the advice of mixed herds . Animals without known owners were referred to as "Mestencos".

At the instigation of King Alfonso X. , known as the Wise, the real concejo de la mesta , a sheep farmers' own business organization , was set up in Castile in 1273 . It developed from regional forerunners into a national institution, comparable to the guilds , gaffs and guilds in Germany, Flanders and the Netherlands . The " honrado concejo de la Mesta " existed until 1836 when a national association of breeders took its place.

task

In Spain there is a tradition of transhumance that goes far back into prehistory , in which huge merino sheep herds carry out seasonal migrations between the pastures in the north ( agosteros = summer pastures) and la Mancha and Estremadura in the south ( invernaderos = winter pastures). There were also shepherds in the three smaller kingdoms of Aragón , Navarre and Portugal who drove their animals over relatively long distances, but their journeys mostly ended in their kingdoms. Of course, large flocks of sheep were not only brought up and down the seasons, but it was common for centuries in the Alps , in French Provence , but also in Sardinia and Scotland . But nowhere did he achieve such a high level of organization and influence, economically and politically.

The “ mesta de los serranos ” levied the “ servicio y montazgo ” from the Castilian Cortes for every sheep that crossed the central mountain range for all “ pecheros ” (= taxpayers) who were subject to royal tax liability (“ pecho ”) decided direct tax . The Mesta, as it is mostly called in the literature, protected its members from 1480 against road money and z. B. communal bans on doing business on the street, ensured the monitoring and maintenance of the " cañadas reales " (= royal cattle drift ), the passageways and watering places. It negotiated long-term leases as a representative of the approx. 3,000 cattle breeders (" hermanos mesteños ") with the pasture owners. The Mesta even achieved that the existence of the " cañadas reales " was guaranteed by the king forever .

organization

General meetings of the delegates of the four " cuadrillas ", the districts of the sheep farmers, were held two to three times a year in order to determine the policy of the association and to appoint " el honrado concejo ", the honorable council, which the " alcaldes de cuadrilla " and the " procuradores de dehesas, "who elected commercial agents. At the head of the mesta was the " alcalde entregador " appointed by the royal council from 1454 , who had to settle the shepherds' disputes and to reimburse illegally confiscated goods and excessive taxes. In addition to the mesta de los serranos , there were also a large number of local mestas that maintained fixed herds or those that only wandered in a limited area (" travesíos " of cattle that go to foreign pastures).

For a long time Castile's economic pride was based on the wool of these flocks of sheep. Between 1400 and 1500 the number of sheep tripled to almost three million animals.

Trade routes

The sheep were sheared on the summer pastures between León and Cuenca or during the hike. Their wool was first cleaned in "lavaderos" (= wash houses) and stored in "lonjas" or "laneras", for which Cáceres and Segovia - one of the most important crossing points of the cañadas - became the center. Traders from Burgos , Segovia and Genoa bought part of the production in advance, which was exported to Flanders and Italy . This resulted in the strong position of the Burgos wool market. Burgos' merchants had important contacts in Antwerp , Bayonne , Bordeaux , Bruges , Dieppe , Florence , Harfleur , La Rochelle , London , Nantes and Rouen . In addition, prestigious markets arose in Medina del Campo , Valladolid , Villalón de Campos and Medina de Ríoseco , especially the annual fair in Medina del Campo for wool, cloth and grain held in May and October. In the south, thanks to Genoese merchants, the markets of Seville and Cádiz became very important.

consequences

Like a developing country today, Castile mainly exported its raw materials: in order to import finished products such as Flemish cloth, fabrics from Toulouse , Carcassonne , Narbonne and Montpellier , linen from Lucca and Venice , canvas , copper , pewter and manufactured articles such as glass from Venice and metals Raw materials such as wool, salt from Ibiza , Cartagena and Cádiz , iron from Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya or mercury and cinnabar from the Almadén mine , alum from the Mazarrón mines are exported.

Since Castile - unlike Flanders - did not have enough capacity in the "key industry" of cloth manufacture to meet domestic demand, despite the abundant raw material wool, the Cortes in Madrigal applied for a ban on wool exports and cloth imports in 1439. The Cortes stipulated in laws in 1438 and 1462 that a third of the wool had to be reserved for Castilian workshops. In its heyday, Spanish wool production was based on more than 4 million sheep and exported raw wool for ¼ million ducats a year. The production of finer and better fabrics for export was concentrated in the cloth factories of Baeza , Ciudad Real , Córdoba , Cuenca , Murcia , Seville, Úbeda and Toledo , while in Ávila , Palencia , Salamanca , Segovia , Valladolid and Zamora, coarser wool of simpler wool Quality for the domestic market and export to Portugal and Granada was produced.

In the 15th century, Cuenca in particular made great strides by introducing " gremios " (= guilds) among the craftsmen. Attempts at "quality management" to standardize quality were royal decrees of 1500 and 1511. In Toledo alone, 50,000 people were employed by the cloth manufacture. However, Castile was in competition with other well-known centers of cloth production in Italy and Flanders . As a result of the devastating effects of the Hundred Years War , English and French competition on the Iberian Peninsula was initially low.

The cultivation and processing of cotton , flax and hemp as well as dyes and mordants, woad , madder , scarlet color , litmus lichen and sumac underline the central importance of textile production. The high profitability of the Aljarafe olive groves , for example, is less due to the use of olive oil for food than to its use in the Andalusian soap factory and its export as a cleaning agent for the textile factories in Flanders and England.

The low political weight of the weavers and their guilds is due to the predominance of the " haceros " or " señores de los paños ", wholesalers who, as the owners of all means of production, specified the quality to be produced and took over the marketing. At the same time they established the patriciate (= homes principales ) in the cities , which made the local decisions, was oriented towards the aristocratic way of life and preferred rent to the commercial risk.

The powerful association of sheep breeders took over the supply of the farmers of the " regadío " or " secano ", the dry field cultivation , ruined by the pasture economy . In turn, she participated in the extreme forest destruction that caused the devastation of parts of Spain, e. B. the Extremadura and the province of Almería . With the introduction of cotton , sheep farming became less and less attractive.

Other ranchers' associations

Although the Castilian mesta was the largest and most powerful organization of cattle breeders in Spain, there were other "mestas" alongside it. Of these, the Casa de Ganaderos de Zaragoza in Aragon was probably the most influential.

The associations can be roughly divided into three categories. On the one hand there were the traditional local meetings of cattle farmers, some of which existed in Cantabria and the Pyrenees before the Visigoths . During the 13th and 14th centuries, some cities in León, Castile and Extremadura in Fueros were given the right to hold meetings called otero ( Coria , Usagre , Plasencia , Cáceres ) or esculca (e.g. Cuenca ). They regulated the migration between the pastures in the region and decided in minor legal disputes, but were under the control of the city council. From the second half of the 13th century, more powerful, well-organized associations with royal privileges were established in some cities . In Castile they were known as mesta ( Albarracín ), in Aragon as ligallo ( Calatayud , Teruel , Daroca , Sarrión ). They had written statutes, an alcalde and, as independent bodies, were at least not directly subordinate to the city councils.

These local "mestas" can be used as models for the Honrado Concejo de la Mesta , but they were created at the same time or later. The oldest known mesta in Alcaraz ( province of Albacete ) was granted its privileges by Alfonso X in 1266 .

Today's meaning

Today only very few shepherds practice transhumance over the preserved cañadas. Cattle troughs are decaying or being redesigned, highways and railways cut through centuries-old pasture roads. While the pastures that the flocks of sheep passed on their annual hikes were no more than a day's journey away from each other along these paths, some stretches today have to be overcome by truck, because otherwise the stages would be too big for the herd and there would also be problems with automobile traffic .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ mesta. Retrieved March 19, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Charles Julian Bishko: Sesenta años después: La Mesta de la luz Julius Klein a de la investigación subsiguiente (Historia, instituciones, documentos; Vol. 8). Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla 1981, pp. 9-57

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