Transcription
[Music] has coordination we take off wherever you want miguel angel that we do 2009 well then we make a space now I don't like taking photos [Music] at night we are in every sense very well Mr. Councilor for Education, Culture, Historical Heritage, and I tell you about childhood, dear Oteo, distinguished academic, civil, and military authorities, coordinator of the eighth centenary Alfonso X, dear Martín, His Excellency Mr. Don Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, academician of number of the Royal Academy of History, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, all, good afternoon. I am Colonel Jiménez Garófano, technical secretary of the Army Museum, and on behalf of the director of the museum, General Arena García, who has had a small setback and cannot accompany us this afternoon, I welcome you to the Army Museum, or rather, to your Army Museum, because as you know, those who already know us, this is your museum. As you know, last year a first cycle of conferences was held in this same auditorium on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Alfonso X in our city, under the title 'The Toledo in which the Wise King was born', which was organized by the most excellent City Council of Toledo and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences of Toledo. The Army Museum is honored to collaborate again with our City Council by hosting this second cycle of conferences with the title Alfonso X, the legacy of a precursor king, an exceptional figure with whom this museum feels very connected, and this is fundamentally due to his indisputable historical relevance, since the first of the museum's purposes established by royal decree is precisely to show the history of the Spanish army, but not in itself, but as an integral and inseparable part of the history of Spain. Today we begin the cycle with the conference 'The Work and Political Legacy of Alfonso X', by the academician of the Royal Academy of History, Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, who will be presented by Dr. Niño María José López Otín, titular professor of Medieval History at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Mr. Ladero is the first speaker of a distinguished group of seven prestigious historians, professors, and academics who will enrich us every Thursday afternoon until next March 31st. I remain entirely at your disposal, thanking you for your attendance and your kind and courteous attention. Thank you very much. [Applause]
Good afternoon, and the truth is that those of us who work on the centenary are very satisfied, first of all, with the reception that the activities we propose are having. It is excellent, as is the case with this cycle of conferences, and which we already had in the first cycle precisely about Alfonso X and Toledo. The best example, thank you for your attendance, for participating in these events. And for me, as a municipal representative of the city government, by express order of our mayor, Milagros Tolón, I wanted to convey a very affectionate greeting, a very affectionate greeting to Colonel Garófano, on behalf of the General and of this institution so dear to the city, this Army Museum, which belongs to everyone, to María José, a member of the scientific committee, also linked to the organizing committee, and of course, to open this occasion to Miguel Ángel Ladero, who is the best example of commitment to the Royal Academy of History and his own connection to this commemoration in this city. I do not want to miss the opportunity, especially in this cycle and in these scientific activities, to highlight the work, often silent work, behind the scenes, of our coordinator Martín Molina, who altruistically is doing work that is, to say the least, invaluable. And in this sense, he is the link of a spectacular scientific committee with significant projection, which is giving us truly unexpected results, because the birth of Alfonso X 800 years ago in our city is once again positioning Toledo precisely as a national reference for this centenary. There is no city in the country that is as dedicated to this centenary as Toledo. This commemoration, by the way, starts above all from the unanimous agreement of all, of all the representatives of the citizens, back at the beginning of this corporation in July 2019, and we have overcome all the circumstances we are experiencing, especially in recent years, to move forward and give our best. And since then, and specifically since autumn, we have been presenting a broad and diverse program, very diverse, because we want the centenary to be experienced in all areas. For us, the scientific, academic, and research areas are undoubtedly very important, but the social commitment is also very important, that it can be experienced, that the figure can be known. And in that sense, look, since September, our city has hosted light and sound shows linked precisely to the commemoration, a national chess championship, the rehabilitation of the monument to Alfonso X in the Park of the Three Cultures, we also rehabilitated the commemorative plaque of the seventh centenary in the viewpoint, even the entire musical connection of our Greco Music Festival was very significant for our city to host the meeting of mayors of the 50 Alfonsine cities and the establishment, nothing less, of a network of Alfonsine cities. But if this is important for us, so is the pedagogical approach we have given to this commemoration, so that children can participate from the classroom, and it seems very important to us, and also that they can enjoy it in their daily activities, such as this Christmas with Toledo having a star precisely dedicated to Alfonso X. Recently, we have planned two congresses that will be referential internationally, where Toledo, with its university, will once again be the epicenter: in April, a translation congress, and in October, an international congress precisely on the political and cultural universe of the reign of Alfonso X. Of course, to this basic programming, linked above all to the local administration, to the city government, we must add contributions from many institutions, organizations, and entities, from the National Library, from which we inaugurated an exhibition in November that serves as a prologue to ours, which we will have in March, even any school program or any museum linked precisely to the figure of Alfonso X. Today, precisely, we begin the second cycle of conferences, a significant cycle because it will be parallel to the great exhibition that we will have at the Santa Cruz Museum from March 14th to June 19th. This cycle will have two parts: this first one with seven conferences until March 31st, as you know, we have an appointment on Thursdays at 7 PM, and another cycle afterwards that we will have precisely in April and May. In this first cycle, I wanted to announce and take the opportunity to announce that on March 17th, precisely, we will present in this venue the official publication of the eighth centenary, which includes the exhibition catalog. The meaning of this work, above all, is that from all areas, from all approaches, in a crucial, difficult moment, the City Council, the administrations of our city are rowing so that Toledo is the national reference for this commemoration. We thank you for all the support you are giving, with your presence, with your interest, and of course, we count on you throughout this cycle, in the exhibition, and always, always in everything that means working for culture, which is working for Toledo. Thank you very much. [Applause]
Well, good afternoon to all. Thank you very much for the words and for the welcome from both the Army Museum and the City Council. I have the honor, the moment of presenting Mr. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, something that is very gratifying for me to do because I am very proud to have been his disciple, to have had him as my thesis advisor, to have participated in important moments of my academic life, and also, of course, because over the years a mutual affection has been forged, which obviously makes me especially excited. Therefore, being here and presenting him, presenting a speaker necessarily involves offering some data, and I will do so. Miguel Ángel Ladero, originally from Valladolid, has been a professor of Medieval History for 43 years at the universities of La Laguna, Seville, and Complutense of Madrid, where he spent the largest number of years until his legal retirement in 2013, because he remains very active, as you can see. In 1992, as has been mentioned here, he became a full academician of the Royal Academy of History, where he holds the position of academic librarian. Two years later, in '94, he received the National History Prize for his work on taxation and royal power in Castile between the mid-13th and 14th centuries. And well, you can imagine that in such a long career, there are very many recognitions, awards, honorary doctorates, presidencies of committees, and a long etcetera that we could not list here. All of that, while important, is just data that one can easily find today. But what I would like to express is what Ladero means, because that is how we all know him in the profession, what Ladero means, I say, for our discipline, medievalism, and in general for all Spanish historiography, because he is undoubtedly one of the best historians our country has produced. His research work and his teaching work attest to this. Regarding research, what he has bequeathed to the knowledge of the Middle Ages is unparalleled. From the publication of his first work in 1964 until today, he has explored almost all possible topics related especially to the late Castilian Middle Ages: topics of taxation and economic policy, the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, the War of Granada, the genesis of the modern state, the Andalusian world to which he has dedicated many works, the urban world, the seignorial world, well, a long etcetera, resulting in over 400 publications. Since we cannot highlight all his works, I want to point out two that have nothing to do with all that I have just told you, but which also show the diversification of his research interests: two delightful works, one on festivals in medieval Europe, and the most recent, titled 'Spaces and Journeys: The External World of Europeans in the Middle Ages', where he explains those real and imaginary spaces through which the man of those medieval years traveled. I assure you, it is an absolutely priceless journey. But alongside research, there is also teaching. So many decades of dedication to it have left their mark on those of us who attended his classes, always well-prepared, always so organized and documented. As a result, there is a manual of universal medieval history that I continue to recommend to students because it is very useful. To this, we must add that he has supervised about 50 doctoral theses, which also speaks to his role as a trainer of a large number of students who are now spread across universities, institutes, archives, that is, a large number of people who can say, and I certainly count myself among them, that he is a true master, with the academic and emotional content that this beautiful word carries. So, we have a reference of Spanish medievalism, someone highly respected in the profession, and who, moreover, due to his discipline, rigor, and seriousness in his work, we could well say, in Toledan language, and you will understand me very well, that he is a very upright person. Yes, Don Miguel Ángel Ladero is very upright, he is a person of great order, of great seriousness and rigor, as I say, in his work, and well, we thank him for coming to Toledo today to share with us some of his knowledge about Alfonso X the Wise. Nothing more, thank you very much. [Applause]
I suppose since I've been left alone, I have to start talking. Illustrious gentlemen, dear Professor María José López, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I wish to express my satisfaction and honor to be here today in this beautiful conference hall of the Army Museum and to inaugurate the cycle, the second cycle of conferences on the Wise King, on Alfonso X. My conference has a general introductory character, as you will see, and that is why, because it is general, I will start with a minimal brushstroke on what medieval European West was like in the 13th century. The civilization of the medieval West reached the apogee of its development in the 13th century, according to the most accepted opinion, which is based on the evidence of population and economic growth since the 11th century, achieved thanks to agrarian colonizations that culminate, as we will see later, in the 13th century. This apogee is also due to the intensification of trade in all its forms and dimensions, to the appearance and development of the first development of maritime trade, for example, to the increasing use of currency in the 13th century, to the renaissance of cities and their artisanal and mercantile functions. In the religious sphere, the 13th century was the era of the apogee of the pontificate and the birth and rapid deployment of new religious orders, Franciscans and Dominicans above all, which responded to new needs of the religiosity of the time. It was also a century of cultural fullness and maturity, linked to the method of Scholastic theology and the reception of the work of Aristotle and other cultural inheritances, all of which was disseminated and elaborated through the universities that were born precisely in that century. In short, a century of the first great Gothic art, of the written use of some vernacular languages in literature, law, or administration, of which all this art in languages, the work of Alfonso X is a very outstanding example. At the same time, political organization capacity was enriched thanks to the elaboration of the so-called common law, which is late Roman law with some aspects of canon or ecclesiastical law, and also of feudal law from some areas of Europe, especially Lombardy. On this common law are based the theoretical principles that allowed the renaissance of the res publica, that is, the public thing, and the state and public administration of that time. This res publica, which reaches maturity, is generally organized around monarchies, monarchies like the Castilian-Leonese, which grow in importance compared to traditional universal authorities, the pontificate and the empire, and also grow in importance at the expense of local powers, lordships, municipalities, because they are monarchies that learned to exercise power over complex societies, these are the so-called more complex stratified societies, as I say, and richer in nuances than those of previous centuries. Well, Alfonso X of Castile, let's remember that he was born in 1221 and died in 1284. Alfonso X lived in that time of development, and he also experienced the first sustained difficulties that began to be felt throughout the European West in the 1970s of the 13th century, in each country for common reasons in some cases and peculiar in others. For example, in Castile, these difficulties are due to the transition of many aspects from an era of territorial expansion to one of stabilization, which is what Alfonso X saw. Stabilization implied the need to reorganize resources, redistribute them differently, organize the powers exercised over society, in short, to reorganize the political order almost from scratch. And the Wise King also had to do it with the added difficulties of a new era of wars with Granada and with Fez in the north, which began in 1275 around the Strait of Gibraltar, and which were doubled by the internal difficulties caused by the death of the heir, Ferdinand, and the struggle for succession between the second son of the Wise King, Sancho, and the sons of the deceased Ferdinand, the so-called Infantes de la Cerda, not for any reason, let's say, unseemly, but because the eldest of them was born with a white hair and a white bristle on his cheek and was known as Infante Don Alfonso de la Cerda. From then on, well, let's get back to what is not gossip. The Wise King was, as I said, a first-class personality, who was also so in a century of great political figures: his own father Ferdinand III, Emperor Frederick II, his great-uncle Louis IX of France, James I of Aragon, and moreover, Alfonso X integrated into his action as a monarch an exceptional capacity for protection and promotion of intellectual, literary, and artistic culture. In this, he was the great European king of the 13th century, I would say, of the entire Middle Ages. It is very difficult to find examples of such kings with such enormous capacity for cultural initiative. Perhaps on a smaller scale, Charles V of France at the end of the 14th century, 100 years later. As the American researcher Joseph O'Callaghan, a great specialist in this character and era, writes, he was an admirable intellectual, poet, legislator, historian, and scientist, a truly learned man. And he adds a quote from a contemporary in which God placed wisdom, understanding, and knowledge above all the princes of his time. A king who knew how to gather around him teams of poets, jurists, doctors, painters, scientists, and historians who collaborated to produce a corpus of erudition and literature unparalleled anywhere in 13th-century Europe. Many historians, following a poorly spoken cliché, perhaps expressed by Father Juan de Mariana in his History of Spain at the end of the 16th century, have repeatedly affirmed that those intellectual interests led him to neglect or belittle government actions and projects. And I do not agree with that. That is what I intend to show in this conference. On the contrary, I believe that he maintained a clear policy in its theoretical foundations and fortunate in many of its practical results. And that is why I will dedicate these minutes to explaining some matters that were of special importance. Why? Because their effects remained, in one way or another, as a political legacy for the kings and times after the Wise King. In order to lighten the presentation a bit, the organizers have distributed a sheet for you with an outline of the stages of the reign and some chronological milestones, so as not to have to explain them here verbally, because as the classics said, scripta manent, verba volant (what is written remains, words fly away), even when they are recorded, which I suppose is what you are doing in this case. But anyway, with great pleasure, I will accept it later. First, I will talk a little about Castile in Europe. Alfonso X's claims to the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire, that universal European empire, the so-called fact of the empire, which filled the foreign policy of many years of his reign, was the first tenacious attempt to integrate Castilian policy into the Western European whole. This is how we should perhaps see it. It is not a strange event in relation to others of the reign, nor the fruit of the king's personal whim, but a manifestation of presence in the common sphere of Latin Christendom that the Wise King wanted to carry out in parallel to the rest of his political and cultural project. And for this, he took advantage of the dynastic and diplomatic assets he had at his disposal: dynastic assets, the fact of being the son of Beatrice of Swabia and grandnephew of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, and the visible head of the Staufen lineage, the German lineage that had held the imperial title for a century and a half, the head, I say, after the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250 and his son Conrad four years later. But of course, it happens that the imperial title, or rather, the King of the Romans, which was what was granted and preceded the coronation of the King of the Romans by the Emperor or by the Pope, sorry, was not an inherited title but an elective one. In 1257, Alfonso X was elected after presenting his candidacy, because cities could present candidates, imperial cities of Pisa and Marseille, but another group of electors preferred Richard of Cornwall, of the lineage of Emperor Otto IV, who had been holder of the imperial crown in the years 1208-1215. There was a similarity of situations between both that placed the Pope as the arbiter of the solution, because it was the Pope, as I have just told you, who crowned the elected King of the Romans and thus conferred the imperial title properly speaking. Now, Pope Alexander IV, under whose pontificate these events and those that followed occurred, always viewed Alfonso with suspicion as a candidate of the Italian Ghibellines, the pro-imperial party in general, contrary to the papal interests defended by another complex party in tradition, the Guelphs. And thus, the Popes rejected the candidacy. This rejection was consummated in 1274, after a long and difficult history of diplomatic efforts, and it was consummated with Alfonso X's failure in his attempt to be designated Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. But despite that, the fact of the empire had some positive effects. The first, as I have already indicated, was that it stimulated the continuous presence of Castile, which was one of the great monarchies of the West, in the sphere of European political relations. It was like an entry into the market, as a politician of the time, and until then it had not happened, because it is true that previous Castilian and Leonese kings, through marital alliances, had connected with other European dynasties, starting with Sancho II, who married an English princess, daughter of William the Conqueror of England, around 1072. But Alfonso X took advantage of this presence in Europe to greatly intensify these family alliances and relationships, because they were the most effective instrument for fluid communication between monarchs and their kingdoms. I have already mentioned his reasons for marrying into the German Hohenstaufens. Furthermore, the Wise King was the son-in-law of James I of Aragon, he married his daughter Yolanda. He was the father-in-law of Alfonso III of Portugal, who married a natural daughter of the Wise King, Beatrice. He was the nephew and father-in-law of Louis IX of France, because Alfonso's eldest son, Ferdinand, married Blanche, daughter of Louis IX of France. He was the brother-in-law of Edward I of England, because the Wise King's youngest sister, Eleanor, who was 20 years younger, married Edward I. He even tried to marry Jacob IV of Norway, but when Haakon's daughter arrived in Castile, the king had already married Yolanda and made her marry his brother, Infante Don Felipe. Christina died shortly after and is buried in Covarrubias, in the province of Burgos. This is just to mention the main dynastic links that would open new political possibilities. And with this, we leave the European scene, this kind of Habsburgs of the 13th century, and we move on to something else: the southern border, the border with the Islamic world, on which Alfonso X played a role in the transition from the Reconquista, a traditional term, to what is also traditionally called the Battle of the Strait. Let's see how. We all know that conquests and territorial growth at the expense of Al-Andalus reached their apogee between 1225 and 1250, the years in which Alfonso was born and grew up. When he was still an infante and heir, he began to act in this field. To him is attributed the pact in 1243 that subjected the Taifa Kingdom of Murcia to Castilian protectorate, as a first step towards its annexation. The following year, he negotiated with James I of Aragon, his future father-in-law, the fixing of the border in the area between Valencia and Murcia. This is the Treaty of Almisra of 1244, which placed the border on the line between Castile, Murcia, and Calpe, north of Alicante. Two-thirds of the current province of Alicante belonged to the Kingdom of Murcia. In 1246, Infante Alfonso was with his father, King Ferdinand, at the siege of Jaén, a very difficult, almost impossible siege. And so, upon the arrival of Muhammad I of Granada, who made a pact with Ferdinand III, he recognized that Jaén would pass to Castilian hands in exchange for Ferdinand III granting him the title of emir. Well, he was an emir, a vassal of the Castilian king, and he secured a truce of 20 years in exchange for parias, a tribute in money. Thus, the Kingdom of Granada was born. No one would say it would last over 250 years. It was Muhammad I who was Ferdinand III's vassal, who later sent troops to the siege and capture of Seville, which occurred in 1248. And when Seville, after its conquest, was emptied of its inhabitants, Ferdinand III planned to repopulate it. But the task of repopulating and reorganizing Seville and its kingdom was already the work of Alfonso X, whose reign began in 1252. Perhaps, if possible, now Spain around 1252 could be shown. In that year, upon the death of the Saintly King Ferdinand III, the towns in the area of the Guadalete River – Jerez, Cádiz, El Puerto de Santa María – and the Taifa Kingdom of Niebla in the southwest, where Huelva is today, would be subject to the vassalage pact. There were Castilian garrisons in the main fortresses, but it was Alfonso X who planned its conquest, and he did so in a curious way. For some years, he respected that protectorate situation and tried to carry out conquests in North Africa, taking advantage of the decomposition of the Almohad Empire, which dominated all of the Maghreb, all of Berberia, at that time. For this, he needed expert personnel and naval resources. And this is the reason why he established a maritime district in Seville, populated by sailors and fishermen, and why he built the great shipyards of the city, which were the most important in the Iberian Middle Ages, along with those of Barcelona. Furthermore, in 1254, he created the office of Admiral to direct, as supreme commander of the fleets, and established naval bases practically where they are today: in Cartagena, in El Puerto de Santa María, which is on the other side of the bay from what would many years later be Ferrol, and in A Coruña, which is next to what many years later would be Ferrol. As you can see, this is a first, very concrete legacy, but an interesting one. In 1260, he launched a naval expedition whose objective was Ceuta. Why? Because Ceuta has always been the gateway for North African invasions into the Iberian Peninsula, always, since prehistory. But in the last instance, it was diverted against Salé, on the Atlantic coast of North Africa, near where Rabat is today, therefore, near Casablanca, because Rabat, as its name indicates, was originally a suburb of Casablanca. The idea of maintaining that type of warfare by sea, what he called the crusade beyond the sea, led him to create a military order, that of Santa María de España, in 1270. This order was destined for naval warfare, but it was ephemeral. The Wise King understood that first, it was necessary to consolidate on land, and consequently, in 1262, he recovered Cádiz and El Puerto de Santa María with Christians. It was then that Alcalá del Río, which was a farmstead, became El Puerto de Santa María, a town. And at the same time, in that same year, 1262, he proceeded to the conquest of Niebla and its territory, reaching the border with Portugal on the Guadiana. The following year, 1263, he asked Boabdil I of Granada to cede Tarifa and Algeciras to him to use them as ports and embarkation points for North Africa. The Granadian delayed the matter. He was a vassal of the Castilian king, but he did not agree. What he did was to play along to support the revolt that the Mudéjar Muslims, that is, Muslims subject to the power of the Christian king, who remained in the fields of Andalusia and Murcia, would carry out between 1264 and 1266. After months of anxiety, the revolt was defeated, and it was followed by the total or almost total expulsion of those Mudéjars, many of whom would go to Granada, others to North Africa. The territories that the valley would acquire in the following years were emptied of what remained of the Muslim population, and this defeat was followed by the full integration of those territories into Castile. Murcia ceased to be a protectorate to become another Castilian kingdom. And at the same time, another very important event occurred: the border with Granada became clearer. As we will see, it is the last stable and very long-lasting border between Islam and Christianity on the Iberian soil. Ten years after those events, in 1275, the Marinids, creators of the Sultanate of Fez, whom the chronicles simply called Moroccans, were in a position to intervene in Andalusia. The Marinid Sultan Abu Yusuf launched several raiding campaigns between 1275 and 1285 with Granadian support. Alfonso X, who was already in a very difficult political situation, failed in 1279 in his attempt to take Algeciras to block the Strait, because Algeciras was the fundamental port to prevent it. And so, amidst defeats and victories, a chain of confrontations began in which Castile, Fez, Granada, and to a lesser extent Aragon and Portugal were involved. This is the so-called Battle of the Strait, which ended after multiple episodes in 1350. Let's move on to another, different issue, more thematic or institutional history, if you like, constitutional. How did the Wise King conceive royal power? Because this is one of his great contributions, one of the main legacies he left in the long term. Even in 1442, 200 years later, when the Cortes of Castile wanted to define what royal power was and what could not be encroached upon, they went directly to the Partidas of Alfonso the Wise. The first Partida. The Wise King, therefore, was the first great builder of the Castilian monarchical state, due to his clear theoretical conception of the res publica. I know that for many, the use of the word "state" is anachronistic, but I cannot find a better one to define what the res publica was and still is, the state. The opposite of the private thing, which is the civil world, so to speak. He was the great ideologue of royal political power, of its legal order. He introduced innovations in the means and resources of government. A large number of existing means were organized, and even amidst growing difficulties, because other powers, the powers of the groups that formed what we would call political society, that is, the high clergy, the great nobles, the municipalities or councils, often did not agree with those innovations. They had a much more traditional, if you like, also more limited or partial vision, while the Wise King's was global. In such a way that these resistances, which were unleashed from 1272 onwards, slowed down part of that process of political change, but did not stop it, nor did they manage to reverse it, because it was truly initiated with the times. That is why the kings who succeeded Alfonso X, starting with his rebellious son Sancho IV, continued the Wise King's policy in these aspects. The Alfonsine ideas about what the king was and what his powers and obligations were are set out in several legal works that he had written, especially, as I have already told you, in the Seven Partidas. Not the first, I am mistaken, the second. The first is dedicated, as is logical at that time, to religious and ecclesiastical power. The second of the Seven Partidas, which is titled "Of Emperors, Kings, and Other Great Lords of the Land who must maintain them in justice and truth," the two keys to good politics: distributive justice, above all, and truth, not lying. Well, these ideas must be understood within the currents of thought characteristic of the central centuries of the Middle Ages, of the formation of what is called a common law, which I have already mentioned, which promotes the renaissance of the consciousness of the res publica or political community. The main purpose of the res publica is to maintain peace and justice, that is, the common good within the established social order, which at that time was not current. In that social order, it is conceived as a body with diverse functions according to its members, with each member of the body, to fulfill its function, having a basic and common attitude among all members, which is concord, what was called at that time friendship, mutual affection among the inhabitants of the country, under the direction of a head, which is the prince, which is the king. The king, who is subject to positive law that he himself and his predecessors have promulgated, except in exceptional cases. In those very exceptional cases, he can act absolutely, that is, unbound from the laws, hence the word absolutism or absolute. Very exceptional cases, and of course, although he is usually subject to positive law, what he is always subject to, and there is no possibility of absolutism in that era, is divine law and its manifestation in the world, which is natural law. The royal office, because the king was an office, a ministry, had religious foundations. Therefore, the king was so by the grace of God, to exercise as his vicar, as the Partidas write, placed over the peoples to maintain them in justice and truth, as far as temporal matters are concerned, the spiritual matters are for the bishops. Well, thus continues, as the emperor in his empire, because the king is emperor in his empire, Rex est imperator in regno suo. This is what I was referring to earlier when I spoke of the growth of monarchies at the expense of traditional powers of the empire. Kings politically rise to the level, let's say, of operability, that only the emperor had before the 13th century. But furthermore, the royal ministry is based on late Roman law, which has been studied since the mid-12th century. It is the law codified by Emperor Justinian in the first decades of the 6th century, especially this law, but it is imbued with the idea of the republic and attributes great political capacities to the prince. Full maiestas, the title of majesty, only corresponded to the emperor, and from the end of the 13th century onwards, in Spain, using some kings. Curiously, it is used by the kings who have less power in the Iberian Peninsula: the kings of Aragon and the kings of Portugal use it. The kings of Castile were never Royal Highness until the arrival of Charles V, who was also Emperor, and then he was titled Majesty. Well, the second capacity that Roman law granted to the king was to legislate. Only he, in what is called protestas iuris conde, and nothing else, can the king legislate. Other powers can establish regulations, ordinances, can advise the king, which is what the Cortes do, can even demand that he legislate before the Cortes, which happened in Aragon, but they are not a legislative body, contrary to what has often been said. The only one who has the power to legislate is the king. This is a state power today, which is why it is the power of the Cortes and not of any other institution to make laws. The division of the term level, well, as I say, in some cases, according to late Roman law, he could also not be subject to positive law, Klinkers legibus solutus est. Furthermore, the king is, according to Roman law, terrae princeps, which is the generic title prince. He had exclusive exercise of the regalia, which are still the essential attributes of the state today: the power to give or take away laws, to declare war or peace, to exercise high justice, to issue measures of grace, pardons, to designate those who would exercise high judicial and administrative offices in the name of the king, because justice is exercised in the name of the king. The king, by virtue of the regalia, had direct dominion, that is, direct ownership, let's say, over all uncultivated lands, common pastures, mines and salt pans, roads, it is still so today, waters and coasts for public use are the power of the state, although some autonomous communities claim that they should be transferred, but in that case, what would be transferred would be power, a regalia, a regalia that from the 13th century to today corresponds exclusively to the state. Well, I continue, because this is, as you can see, not remote past and out of force. It is still in force, which is why the political legacy of the Wise King is so important. Only the king could establish fairs and markets. He could mint money and have his own taxation throughout the kingdom, allowing him to collect taxes or exempt from them. All of that are powers that, as I say, foreshadow the state concept of sovereignty. And therefore, by using them and proclaiming them as principles of political action, Alfonso X created a new era. But what is important is to put in place administrative means and resources to carry out this policy. And in this aspect too, the Alfonsine innovations and reforms were fundamental, and their legacy is very long-lasting. Later, we will move on to the contents of the speculation of the Partidas on the royal court and its offices. Here, the organizational chart could be shown, not the Cortes, but the organizational chart of the administration. I say that this institutional framework of military, financial, jurisdictional, and governmental administration of what was the house, the court, and the chancellery in the time of the Wise King will be transferred. New offices emerged, and many of the existing ones were renewed in the house or palace. It is the place where, as the Partidas say, the king meets publicly, that is, in public, to resolve lawsuits, to eat, or to talk in a friendly manner, that is, to talk courteously with representatives of political power. That is the house. The court is an annex of the house, where the officials are who, according to the Partidas, have to advise and serve daily. And the chancellery, also nearby, is where all the king's letters must go to be sealed and given legal and administrative validity. There was not yet a Royal Council, which is what we call the Council of State as such an institution. John I created it in 1385, but there were counselors, there was a duty of counsel exercised by specific individuals around the monarch. The main civil offices of the royal house and court were the butler, who, according to the Partidas, is the king's chief man of the house, to manage the account of his maintenance, hence this private aspect, who keeps track of everything that is received and spent, all other officials, from the chief cupbearer, who managed daily aspects of the house in the king's chamber and his private rooms, the kitchen, etc., to the lowest official in the king's house, reported directly to the butler or through the chief cupbearer. The chief cupbearer, by the way, is a position that came from ancient times, but at the end of the 13th century, it was completely replaced by another, which is the one we are accustomed to knowing, which is the chief chamberlain. The third office of the court.
This, already with an aspect more, we would say today, public than private, but at that time in the court house of the clock, by which the private was totally mixed. The third office, that of chief justice or chief bailiff, is the executor of justice of the royal house, and to him, Alfonso X added in 1274 the court mayors to judge the lawsuits that there might be in the court or in its trail. The court mayors are the oldest antecedent of what today is the National Court. There is no line of institutional rupture between this Alfonsine institution and the court that succeeded it from the 14th century and from there until our days.
The military functions in the court were directed by the chief ensign. It is an office of great honor, always that name for the still high noble, because it is his responsibility to protect and defend the kingdom on the one hand, and on the other, to be the chief judge of the hidalgos and knights, that is, of the military branch of society. This office will also disappear later, in the time of the Trastámara kings, John I in 1300 colony, Henry II in the 1670s, replaced by that of constable, which is the same. Constable is a kind of French version that enters Castile to replace the chief ensigns. And as I have already told you, since 1254, the king created the office of chief admiral for naval warfare and at the same time to exercise jurisdiction in maritime affairs. His high military positions were also high judicial positions.
It has been said sometimes that the Cantabrian sailor Bonifaz, who came to the siege of Seville with ships from Santander to assist Ferdinand III, was an admiral. It does not seem so; the official created it a few years later, Alfonso X.
I continue with the chancellery. The chancellery had at its head, from earlier times, the Archbishop of Toledo in Castile and the Archbishop of Santiago in León. Now it had a rather honorary character. The monarch diversified and promoted new offices that allowed for better definition and expansion of the functions of this body, which is the basic organ of communication and administration of all the kingdoms. Why? Well, because it is through it that all the king's letters are issued, from the highest level, the royal privilege, to the lowest level, the mandate. And the official state gazette is not issued because at that time there was no printing press, but really, if there had been, the chancellery would have done it for effective functioning.
Alfonso X created the position of royal chancellor, assisted by a chamber notary and by territorial notaries, each exercising their office from the court for a kingdom, a territory of Castile-León, and from 1295, Toledo and also Andalusia.
The other innovation of the chancellery is that Alfonso X introduced Castilian as the usual language of chancellery documents, with which he managed that everyone understood it, that all the natives of the kingdom were given a privilege or mandate from the king in Castilian and understood what it said, because until then they had to hear it in Latin and then have it translated to them.
There was something much more difficult, really, to ensure that royal justice and administration always had an effective and continuous presence in the various territorial areas. This was always the Achilles' heel of the Ancien Régime states and was only gradually overcome in the 19th and even 20th centuries.
In the territory, the king's power is not exercised with such continuity and effectiveness. Alfonso X tried to improve the situation by creating a uniform scheme of territorial administrations. In the north, the chief merinos, who already existed in Galicia, in the Kingdom of León, up to the Duero line more or less, and in the Castile of the merindades, that is, between the Cantabrian coast in what is Cantabria and the Duero line. But he also replaced it with a position with greater capacity, not only judicial and administrative, but also military. These are the chief adelantados of León and Castile, to whom were added the chief adelantado of the frontier, which is that of Andalusia a few years later, and that of Murcia. A certain oscillation between appointments of adelantados and merinos, but ultimately the office of adelantamiento predominated, sometimes with subordinate or dependent merinos. For example, the chief adelantado of León had the chief merino of Asturias as less dependent on him.
So with Alfonso X, a stable territorial administration began to take shape, exercised directly by delegates of the king, in addition to that exercised in the name of the king but with great autonomy by other jurisdictions: the great nobles in their lordships, and the municipalities or councils in the city and the rural area or land that depended on it.
In contrast, Alfonso X had many bases of activity in his internal policy to create new taxes and more appropriate forms of financial management. It is an axiom that as the state grows, taxes grow. This began to be so already in the time of Alfonso X and has not ceased until our days. They can moderate, stop, inflate, or decrease at some point, but the general tendency of state political power was to have ever greater economic resources, especially through taxes.
Well then, Alfonso X did us the favor, so to speak, of shaping an exclusive taxation of royal power that could be applied and collected throughout the crown, and which is distinct from the old local or seigniorial rights that until then had adopted the king in the royal domains, that is, in the royal lordship, a large part of the kingdom, but not all. Those old revenues pass into history, they remain as a residue of the past: the "martín llega" for example, the "yantar," the "marcha de la infusión." Not now; now what matters, as we will see later, is the service of the Cortes, the right of the transhumant livestock of the kingdom, and others.
Now, the king exercised his political powers trying to avoid conflicts, as is logical, seeking pacts and acquiescence with the body of the kingdom represented as a whole by the Cortes parliament, and sectorally by the components of political society: the aristocracy at its various levels, high nobility on the one hand, local or municipal aristocracies on the other, and the high clergy.
These groups had their own spheres of power: the lordships of the great nobles, the lordships of the episcopal sees, the councils and their lands. Furthermore, they had privileges from the king to collect rents or exercise administration in other parts of the kingdom, so that they could not be ignored or eliminated, nor did the Wise King or his successors witness it until the 19th century.
They share power at limited levels and always around the apex, which is the kingdom, the king himself. But it has an enormous political power upwards because they mediate the king's power, and downwards because they block the political participation of the rest of the population, which is 90 or 95 percent of the kingdom's population.
In this hierarchical society, only a thin layer of nobles and ecclesiastics have political power. And by the way, a digression: regarding Professor Hernández's book, a few weeks ago what may perhaps be the fundamental book for these questions related to Alfonso X appeared; it is titled "The King's Men." It is a very detailed investigation into the political and administrative personnel of Alfonso X and his son Sancho IV between 1276 and 1286. And it is a book that is also largely written from documents from the Toledo Cathedral, from books that are preserved there purely by chance, because Sancho IV's chancellor, Archbishop Gonzalo Pérez, Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel, as he was called before, for whatever reason, kept them, and they ended up deposited in the cathedral's archive where they appeared around 1989. This book, which has had a long elaboration of 30 years with 1,400 pages, is perhaps the leading research publication that has come out coinciding with the monarch's centenary.
Well, and once this minute of advertising in favor of my colleague is over, since the conference should lack nothing, but the book is fundamental, and they will speak to you about it many more times in these coming weeks. So I continue: the political and legal ideas of the Wise King, therefore inspired by his government, often did not manage to be sufficiently reflected in concrete realities or in events of the reign. But of course, they constitute a legacy, a legacy that for centuries underpins the development of the royal power of the Castilian monarchical state, and that is why it has enormous importance, perhaps even more than what I have told you so far.
The monarch's legal work, now related to the fields of public law and also private, civil, criminal, and procedural law, is the Royal Charter that he granted to many councils of the kingdom from 1255. Although the reaction of the 70s rejected us, but in short, it was a first attempt to homogenize the law of the kingdom based on local charters.
Then it is also manifested in the ordinances of the Cortes. The Wise King convened Cortes many times throughout his reign, in contrast to what other contemporaries of his did. In England, Parliament met a couple of times or three with Henry III; in Portugal, once the Cortes with Alfonso III; in Aragon, a bit more with James; but Alfonso X was continually convoking Cortes, and before them he promulgated laws with general scope of application, sometimes they are the ordinances and other times for specific cities.
And finally, in the doctrinal field, which is the best known, we find the great works of the monarch in chronological order: first, the "Escenario"; second, the "Espéculo"; and third, the "Siete Partidas," then called "Book of the Charter of Laws." It is a magnum opus that has no less than 2,479 norms distributed in 182 titles, and these in turn in the seven parts of the book. The Partidas were never strictly speaking legislation of immediate application; they are rather a body of jurisprudence of, let's say, immediate application. That is why Alfonso XI, in 1348, when promulgating what was the predation of laws to be applied by the courts throughout Castile, stated first that the laws emanating from the king or his predecessors, specific laws, should be applied; second, where these laws did not cover, the Partidas; and third, where neither the king's laws nor the Partidas covered, the fence was very difficult, local charters; local charters were reduced to the scope of regulations, of what we would call municipal ordinances.
And another thing that must be mentioned, or very quickly, is the historiographical work of the Wise King, because it also forms part of his political project. He was the first king who conceived the history of Spain as something common. He had the history of Spain written, of all those who had lived on the peninsula from ancient times to the present, he says, both Christians and Moors, or even, if it were the case, Jews. It is the first history of Spain and the first written in Castilian with a criterion, let's say, of homogeneity of common historical identity of all the inhabitants of the peninsula, and this must be taken very much into account, which is why it is called "The History of Spain." What happens is that Don Ramón Menéndez Pidal, when he edited it in 1896, the "doggy," let's say, of the linguist, of the scholar, predominated over that of the historian proper; he called it "First General Chronicle" because after other versions in the history of Spain, and all this makes many people continue to call it that and not realize what it really is: the first history of our homeland, simply of what continues to be our homeland, and which Alfonso X conceived as such a homeland, that is, the land of all those who live in it, in any kingdom, in any circumstance whatsoever. And so he writes it: "This our history of the Spains, we call it general, of all the kings and of all their deeds." It exalts the power of the king as the guiding thread of a narrative destined to sustain the collective consciousness of a historical reality: the fact of Spain.
The other great historiographical work is the "Great General History." It is a universal history that they undertook in the last years of his reign, to which almost no one has paid much attention. It has recently been fully edited, seven thousand five hundred pages, and it remained unfinished; it did not reach the birth of Christ. It is the greatest historiographical effort made in all of Europe in the 13th century, much more than, for example, the "Universal Speculum" by Vincent of Beauvais in France, or some other earlier universal histories like the "Ecclesiastical History" by Petrus Comestor around 1200. It is an immense work; it also had a political meaning. Its purpose was to show Alfonso X's best right to the imperial succession, but it was cut short much earlier.
And now to finish, because I don't know how long I've been speaking, well, there's something worth mentioning: how this king reorganized the territory of the kingdom. He was the first king who governed over a stable territory that had grown from 235,000 square kilometers around 1230 to 355,000 square kilometers around 1270, that is, we have 120,000 more square kilometers. So first it was essential to ensure its delimitation, by fixing borders with neighboring kingdoms. This was done with Aragon in the Treaty of Almizra of 1244, with Portugal in the Treaty of Badajoz of 1267, with Granada, which is the Pact of Jaén of 1246, although the border was modified a little in the following decades, and with Navarre, since Alfonso X completely respected the border in 1274 when the dynasty changed in Navarre and it passed to be directly governed by French kings for a few decades.
What this selects are the borders that have remained from the late 13th century, once as a border, that of Portugal, which is why the Portuguese say theirs is the oldest border in Europe. Other times as a regional limit: Valencia, Murcia, Castile, although Valencia occupied the entire Alicante area in 1298 in a war between James II and finally Ferdinand IV. And in 1855, the second provincial delimitation by the liberal governments attributed to Valencia, Requena, which had always been a council of Castile since its organization in 1238, and Villena, which was also Castilian and became, 108-70 years ago, part of the province of Alicante. At that time there were regions but no autonomous communities, so exchanging territories between them for administrative reasons or for matters of greater or lesser influence of some politicians over others was not particularly strange.
Well, meanwhile, while the king was doing this abroad, domestically he repopulated and organized all the cities and countryside of Andalusia, Murcia, Extremadura south of the Tagus, of the Guadiana and Júcar basins in New Castile. That occurred during his reign, by his own hand or by the hand of the military orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcántara, granting charters and privileges to dozens, "repartimiento" books widely inform us today about a legacy he built: new population of thousands and thousands of settlers in many hundreds of villages, in many dozens of cities that then came to life between 1240-50 and 1280-90. And at the same time, the king reorganized the settlement of the Cantabrian coast, which until then was mostly based on villages; there were some towns, and he, like Ferdinand III and his successors before him, transformed it into an area controlled by royal towns. In the Basque Country (Álava, Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya), 65 towns were born, thirty-something of them during the time of Alfonso X. In Asturias, the "bolas" are the "pueblas"; of the 27 or 28 that exist, Alfonso X founded 22. Also in Galicia, he founded some, for example, Santa Marta de Ortiguera or Ortigueira. These towns had charters and markets, which improved the legal and economic status of those who came to settle them from nearby fields, and also of the villagers. And a situation of difference was created between what are the towns in Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya and what is there called the "tierra llana" (flat land), a concept that did not exist anywhere else in the country, because in the rest of Castile, cities were surrounded by a land or "alfoz" that had the same charters and privileges as the cities themselves.
By reporting the Cantabrian, Alfonso X contributed decisively to the opening of Castile to the sea, both on the Cantabrian facade, strengthening the main ports, and on the Andalusian facade, the new ports of the kingdom of Seville. And thus began to grow the Castilian navy and naval trade, or Castilian maritime trade, which at the end of the Middle Ages was, along with that of the German Hanse and that of the republics of Venice and Genoa, among the most important in Europe, much more than the French or even the English.
And finally, in this territorial scope, the large municipalities of Castilian Extremadura and the south of Segovia, Ávila, Soria, Cuenca, Salamanca populated their extremes, that is, the mountain areas that until then had not been inhabited. So that territories like what today might be "Campo del Abuelo" and all of "La Jara de Toledo," to give a nearby example, could be settled from those years 1270-1280. It's like background music, isn't it, that enlivens the reign of Alfonso X and gives it a special color, which is often ignored, as if all this had arisen by magic; it took a lot of work to do.
Furthermore, the Wise King organized an interregional communication network. The best-known example are the "cañadas de la mesta" for the traffic of transhumant livestock between the winter pastures of the Guadiana basin and Andalusia or Murcia, and the summer pastures located to the north on the southern slopes of the Cantabrian and Iberian mountain ranges. Thus was born the Mesta of transhumant livestock. But bear in mind that beyond being paths for livestock, what they are marking for us is an organization of the Castilian north-south road network, which until then had been dominated by east-west routes, the Way of St. James for example.
And at the same time, Ferdinand III and Alfonso X privileged people who carried their mules and carts with mercantile products throughout the kingdom or large parts of it, freeing them from the payment of local tolls or traffic prohibitions. Famous is the first privilege granted to the remembrances of Soria by Ferdinand III, the foundational privilege, then, of all that has been since then the terrestrial mercantile traffic by land in Castile.
And other aspects in which he did not succeed, for example, he wanted there to be a single system of weights and measures throughout Castile to facilitate trade; he did not achieve it, he tried. He also wanted, and this he did achieve, to organize fairs and markets: annual fairs, weekly markets in various points of the kingdom to articulate mercantile traffic. When he began to reign, there were a dozen fairs; he created another 25, and his successors another 25 more until 1349, until the arrival of the great economic crisis of the 14th century.
As for foreign trade, he is the king who organized the customs of Castile and legislated on what materials could be exported and which were prohibited because they were not of interest for the kingdom's economy or for its political strategies. Prohibited goods, customs; it is he who installed them, and let us remember that the customs network marks the territory of a kingdom, it marks where the sovereignty of a monarch begins.
The last aspect is the coinage of money, a regality. Well, there was money in Castile before; coinage minted by Castilian kings had begun to circulate since the mid-12th century, silver in the area of the Way of St. James; gold coinage was also minted, imitating the Muslim one, in Toledo and neighboring areas from the late 12th century. But it was Alfonso X who gave a new impulse to the coinage of money. Why? Well, because alongside the gold coinages he continued to make as a reserve and reference currency, he launched massive coinages of billon currency, the 100 unit of copper with a small silver alloy, from 1264 throughout his reign. That caused tremendous inflation and also continuous alterations in the price and wage regime, and it was one of the causes of popular discontent. But they did not stop using the currency for that reason, because for a very simple reason: otherwise there would be no trade; if there was no instrument that served as a general instrument for exchanges, to set prices and schedules, it would be difficult to trade.
In this monetary revolution that Alfonso X carried out in Castile in very few years, it was possibly what cost him the throne almost at the end of his reign. But to such an extent was it necessary that his successors continued it, one only needs to know a little of the Castilian monetary history of the Late Middle Ages to realize how the coinages of billon and low-silver currency continued and multiplied, how they progressively lost intrinsic value against good gold currency until the time of the Catholic Monarchs. For example, the Almohad gold dobla, which already existed in the time of Alfonso XI, began by being worth 10, more than 10; his reign ended, it was worth 30, 20; in the time of Alfonso XI, it was 35; in the time of the Catholic Monarchs, 485, with the maravedí being 1 unit of account currency that follows the depreciation of billon, therefore it is worth less and less in relation to gold.
This means, in short, that for trade and for the payment of taxes, it was fundamental to have a fluid and sufficiently abundant monetary instrument. And Alfonso X established direct taxes: the services of the Cortes, the Jewish tributes, the service of the transhumant livestock, and he opened the way for a successor of his, Alfonso XI, to create the great indirect tax, the "alcabala," which today we call VAT, with an initial rate of 1% that he swore on the Bible not to increase. Well, let's leave these matters aside; they are a bit painful, aren't they?
The fact is that we have been living off that fiscal inheritance until today. The service of the Cortes is the income tax, in short; the "alcabalas" amidst great vicissitudes and eventual setbacks, but the new taxation, state taxation, triumphed, and who created it, one must not forget, was, and therefore I also do not think he should be forgotten, was Alfonso X.
In conclusion, it is a political work that leaves very deep traces, both in its successes and in its limitations, but above all in the structuring of a clairvoyant model of political organization, from the legislative base, passing through institutional organization, to the creation of fiscal and monetary means, and culminating in the reorganization of the kingdom's territory. Great regions are those that continue until today, and borders of the kingdom, colonizing, organizing settlement when necessary, and all this under the primacy of royal power, but in a relationship that he wanted to be agreed upon or constructive with political society; it was not always so. And his foreign policy is also new; it opens Castile to Europe, so to speak, through the fact of the empire, and on the other hand, he was the king who, perhaps very much to his regret, had to confront North African and Granadan Islam in that Battle of the Strait that begins around 1275 and which is something different from what the traditional conquest or reconquest had been in previous centuries.
In short, it is a new time in the history of Castile that extends into situations of projects that continue to act, and historians easily see that they continue to act at least until the time of the Catholic Monarchs.
This is the introduction I wanted to make, and I regret having gone on longer than intended. I ask for your apologies for this. Thank you very much for your attention.
[Applause]
Good afternoon. As we don't always have the opportunity to have Professor Miguel Ángel Ladero with us, if anyone from the audience would like to ask a question, we will have the possibility to do so. Will anyone be interested in asking a question? Thank you. Many points. Better, Ángel, ask him something. Why were the last years difficult for the king? Very, very difficult it is to get to what Manolo founded, that the doubt, no, the doubts he had about whether Sancho should be the heir or whether the good infantes should be, specifically Alfonso de la Cerda. But he modified the succession legislation. Traditional Castilian legislation grants succession to the first living son, with Sancho being the second-born, which is what triumphed, while the Partidas grant it to the children of the deceased son, even if he had predeceased his father and had not become king. It is a triumph that has continued without triumphing in the hereditary rules of the monarchy in Castile and then Spain until today. Otherwise, the current king would not be king if the principle of inheritance by the children of the deceased or incapacitated firstborn during the father's lifetime had prevailed. The fact is that this was a source of bitterness and also discord, because, of course, Sancho put himself at the head of all the discontent with Alfonsine policy and promised everything a politician promises when they don't have the responsibility to fulfill it, that is, that he would return to good currency, that he would annul all the laws given by his father, that everyone would recover their private charters, etcetera, etcetera, something he did not fulfill as soon as he ascended the throne in 1284. And then it was also a very difficult time for him due to his own illness; he had a degenerative disease, it is even said that he had episodes of alienation, of madness. Other relatives betrayed him; it is not said that he ordered the death of one of his brothers, Infante Fadrique, whom in 1276, a lot of people abandoned him, except Seville and Murcia, which were always loyal cities to the king, and Portugal, where his daughter Beatriz, who was an illegitimate daughter of the natural, married to Alfonso III of Portugal, maintained loyalty until the last moment. And by the way, a curiosity: the municipal motto of Seville, which is "NO8DO," meaning "no me ha dejado" (it has not abandoned me), in allusion to Seville's loyalty to the Wise King. It is the emblem of the municipal architect of the Sevillian municipality from the early 15th century, who placed it on public buildings. Now anyone says this now in Seville, although it has been said, they continue to consider it because it was much prettier as a tradition that the Wise King gave it to the city as a reward for loyalty. He has not abandoned me, this speaking emblem. He has not abandoned. I suppose this is the topic that another colleague will present in his lecture. Perhaps it can be anticipated that the endeavor was fundamentally honorary, and I don't think he intended to get involved in Germany and try to govern. His great-uncle, Frederick II, Emperor, had really been an effective king in Sicily, in the Two Sicilies, and had left Germany somewhat to its own devices, granting enormous privileges to the princes, both in three castles as cellular, so that they could organize their respective seigniorial territories. It was very difficult in Germany to implant a superior monarchical power of the type that Alfonso X implanted in Castile or his great-uncle Frederick II in Sicily and Naples, which was slow in the rich parts of Italy. Think that in Sicily there were about 800,000 inhabitants at that time, in one of the granaries of Europe, and in Naples 1,500,000. It's no small feat what Frederick II governed. That's why I think it was above all an attempt to obtain the supreme title in Christendom from a political point of view, to exercise it especially in the spheres of power where he effectively governed in Castile, that is, "I am not only your king, I am the emperor of all Europe." He treated the Popes as an equal, so to speak, and above the other European kings. It has also been argued that what he wanted was to restore the so-called Hispanic Empire, but well, there's a lot to talk about here, because it's true that some Castilian-Leonese kings, especially in León, from Alfonso VI onwards, were not titled "Imperator," that is, the one who commands most, the superior power in the peninsular sphere, nothing more than Alfonso VI and then Alfonso VII, who was crowned "Imperator Totius Hispaniae" in León in 1135. But this title had no recognition outside the Hispanic sphere, nor did it have a universal pretension; it's a different thing. The chronicle of Fernández says that at one point King Ferdinand tried to get the Popes to allow him to reestablish the title of Emperor of Spain. Still, the chronicle of Peter IV of Aragon, during a war in the mid-14th century with Peter I of Castile, said that if the Castilian Henry managed to conquer Alicante and Valencia, he would be the true Emperor of Spain. This word has one meaning, the general imperial title has another. And now, moving on to the costs, well, the truth is I don't know. It cost quite a lot, obviously. We don't have treasury books because the electors had to be paid, not to say bribed—the exact word sounds bad. Many services had to be paid for, almost permanent embassies maintained, and finally, on his trip to La Leona Boker, near wine, to try to get the Pope to recognize his title in 1274, he had to incur an enormous expense in provisions, pack animals, ships to carry supplies, etcetera. Not so much as to unbalance the royal treasury that he had established, but certainly to greatly narrow the margins and increase fiscal pressure. The only term of comparison I would have would be what the imperial title of Charles I cost, what it cost Castile, I mean. It's something that is often not said: it cost an enormous amount of money because all the payment to the electors came from here. Something like 400-something, 500 million maravedíes, one and a half million ducats were spent to pay for Charles's appointment as King of the Romans in 1520: services of the Cortes, money from ordinary revenues, money from the Bull of Crusade, everything that could be "shepherded," so to speak, from the Castilian treasury between 1518 and 1521 to finance the election of Charles I. It is not known for whose benefit; of course, I believe it was not for Castile. It was one of the reasons for the Comunidades movement; obviously, those agents saw what was happening and said, "Well, they are plundering us for something that politically, a terrain do does not have much repercussion on the political interests of the Crown of Castile or of the Hispanic kingdoms recently united by Charles's grandparents." But as I say, it is a very, very distant term of comparison, and I don't think the parallelism can be taken further. Any more questions? Thank you very much, Miguel Ángel. We count on your presence at the inauguration of the exhibition of Alfonso X, the legacy of a precursor king, and to all of you, we invite you next Thursday to the conference by Carlos Ayala Martínez, who will speak to us about the conquering king, the military king, the crusader king, and his aspirations to be emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which is to be the King of the Romans. Thank you very much for your presence and until next Thursday.
[Applause]
Squeeze is one of the things I cannot do.