[3] "Barcelona measures in circumference 8,300 paces.
I myself have walked them off." It is hard to imagine a tiresome university
professor stirring himself to trudge along the nearly five miles of the
city's outer walls. However, one cannot impugn the rest of Jeroni de Jorba's
enthusiastic description of Barcelona as "singularly illustrious, ancient,
rich, and powerful." Virtually all early modern visitors to the capital
of the Principality of Catalonia echoed Jorba's flattering depiction of
its beauty and wealth. Even the youthful Guicciardini--not one to waste
words in praise of any city apart from his own native Florence--grudgingly
admitted that Barcelona was "a lovely city, large and well-populated. While
there do not seem to be any particularly notable or excellent private buildings,
houses throughout the entire city are generally quite beautiful. For, as
its inhabitants say, it is a city for everyone. This, in my judgment, is
its most striking feature, one in which it overshadows even Florence."
(1)
Early modern plans and views of Barcelona reveal a city huddled in a sweeping arc around the Mediterranean (see Illustration 1). Until the mid-sixteenth century, the maritime esplanade extended directly from the beach to a row of unprotected [4] frontal buildings. These included, from north to south, the municipal granary, customs-house, a huge Franciscan monastery, and the Dressanes or royal shipyards. Fears of attack by Moorish pirates, however, prompted the town's authorities to construct a sea wall. Completion of this lengthy project, begun in 1529, finally enclosed the city's entire perimeter behind an impressive ring of fortified walls, towers, and bastions. (2)
The sea played a prominent role in the everyday lives of Barcelona's
inhabitants. Yet the city's true center--geographical, political, and religious--lay,
not in its port, but rather inland within the original Roman settlement
of Barcino, known today as the "Gothic Quarter" (see Map 1). This area,
with its narrow streets and busy shops, housed the leading public institutions
of the municipality. (3) These included:
the vice-regal Palace, shared by the Viceroy, Inquisition, and the Audiencia,
or high court of appeals; the City Hall; the palace of the Generalitat,
or permanent commission of the Catalan parliamentary Estates; and the complex
tangle of buildings--cathedral, episcopal palace, and alms-house--containing
the local ecclesiastical hierarchy. The area's remarkable density merely
highlighted one of the more crucial factors affecting the urban organization
of Barcelona: its lack of a well-defined spatial center. To be sure, local
magistrates made several attempts during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries to widen and embellish the Placa de St. Jaume, the small square
housing the City Hall and the palace of the Generalitat.
(4) Nevertheless, the lack of spacious open areas in its center
deprived Barcelona of a recognizable urban focus along the lines of Florence's
Piazza della Signoria or the Piazza San Marco in Venice.
[6] Local ceremonial and festive life thus gravitated toward less-encumbered areas on the city's periphery. Prominent among these were the Born, or colorful market square at the northeastern end of the stately avenue known as the Carrer de Monteada; the beach, where in a mythical encounter the Knight of the White Moon vanquished Don Quijote; the nearby Plaça de St. Francesch, traditional site of the guild parades following the swearing of the royal oath to the Catalan constitution; and the Rambla, a lively thoroughfare which originally lay outside the second set of walls built in the thirteenth century. (5)
The Rambla served as an axis dividing the city's center from the newer settlement to the south known as the Raval. The outermost ring of walls erected during the fourteenth century enclosed the latter area. The Raval (literally, a "suburb") was a large if thinly-populated quarter, famous for its horts or garden plots. Its abundant open space encouraged the new clerical foundations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to locate their churches and convents within its walls. The Raval also contained the poorest inhabitants of the city, and thus included a large proportion of the town's apprentices and clothworkers. (6)
The relatively low population density of the southern barri contrasted sharply with the high concentration of inhabitants in the rest of the city. The northernmost quarter was known colloquially as the Ribera. (7) This commercial and artisan district housed many of the city's specialized craft guilds and merchants' palaces. Its principal buildings included the large Dominican and Augustinian convents, and the opulent basilica of Santa Maria del Mar. The latter lay alongside the Born and the Carrer de [7] Monteada, where many of its wealthier parishioners resided. Equally prominent was the notorious Marina, a row of ramshackle tenements which gave shelter to a transient population of sailors, fishermen, dockworkers, and other casual laborers. During the early seventeenth century, the volatile gent de Ribera showed a troublesome penchant for sudden and violent riots--a crowd license which did little to enhance their reputation among members of the urban elite. (8)
Neither the physical dimensions nor the architectural styles and typologies of Barcelona changed significantly from 1490 to 1714. True, certain reforms sought to embellish the city along the lines of the classical urbanistic aesthetic prevailing in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. These projects included the construction in the 1590's of the new facade of the Palace of the Generalitat, and the demolition in 1598 for aesthetic reasons of the old fish market. (9) Nevertheless, such alterations were mostly sporadic, incremental endeavors--a far cry from the sustained initiatives launched by the great urban reformers of seventeenth-century Paris or Rome. The handful of aristocratic mansions built in this period proved quite modest alongside contemporary Italian palazzi. In fact, with few exceptions they modelled themselves directly upon the standard local artisan residence of the later Middle Ages. Slightly more numerous were the new churches and convents of the Counterreformation orders, such as the Jesuits, Discalced Carmelites, and Minims. (10) Yet, on the whole, early modern Barcelona witnessed surprisingly little transformation of the organization of its urban space or the architectural features of its buildings. Fundamental change of this sort would have to await the dramatically altered political and [8] economic circumstances of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The absence of change in the city's physical and architectural fabric was closely linked to stability in the demographic sphere. The overall population of Barcelona increased only slightly during the two centuries under review. According to the census of 1516, Barcelona contained 6,388 hearths housing some 30,000-35,000 permanent residents. The catastro or tax-registry of 1716-1717 listed a total of 7,717 veins, or heads of households, which represented a secular increase of approximately one-fifth. (11) This modest expansion did not take the form of a tranquil, uninterrupted rise. Epidemic disease and warfare caused sharp fluctuations in the city's population throughout the early modern period. An especially grave incidence of the former was the plague of 1589-1590, which claimed some 11,000 casualties. The years 1651-1652 proved even more disastrous, as siege, famine, and plague combined to wipe out over one-third of the city's population. (12) Still, comparatively rapid recuperation of earlier population levels usually made up for such demographic catastrophes. A mere generation following the plague of 1589-1590, Barcelona's population totalled some 40,000-50,000 inhabitants--the highest level since the early fourteenth century. This demographic resilience rested largely upon the city's success in assuring regular provisions of wheat and other staples. Security of food supplies--based upon the importation of grains from Sicily, Sardinia, and southern France--helped account for the relative [9] absence of the severe subsistence crises which plagued many other cities in early modern Europe. (13)
The rapid replenishment of Barcelona's demographic resources also depended upon the constant flow of immigrants into the city. A sample of over 500 marriage contracts from the seventeenth century affords a glimpse into patterns of inter-generational geographic mobility. (14) Of the 529 families surveyed, some 241 or 46 percent of grooms and their fathers lived in the same place, as opposed to the 288 or 54 percent who lived apart. Of the latter portion, a plurality of 93 (32 percent of this group) were sons of peasants who had left the family farm to take up non-agricultural work in the city. A full one-fifth of this category (60) comprised immigrants from southern France whose families still resided north of the Pyrenees. In short, these figures reveal a substantial amount of "horizontal" change in residence between the two generations of fathers and sons. Over one-half of the grooms had migrated from their parents' home to take up a new trade within the city or in the neighboring countryside. This regular pattern of turnover highlights Barcelona's role as a catchment area for rural immigrants. Their contribution to replacing the city's human resources proved crucial in maintaining the overall stability of the urban population. (15)
The constant influx of migrants from the countryside provided merely
one point of contact between Barcelona and its hinterland. The municipal
government's need to ensure urban food supplies led it to seize control
over many neighboring villages. Direct administration by the city of adjacent
towns like [10] Monteada, Caldes de Montbuy, and Martorell earned
the latter the colloquial sobriquet of carrers or "streets" of Barcelona--a
clear testimony to their feudal subordination to the capital (see Map 1).
(16) Ownership by Barcelona's citizens of nearby landholdings
also guaranteed urban domination over the surrounding countryside. Investment
in these small estates fostered the [11] emergence of a fairly
brisk local land market during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
especially in the Llobregat valley south of the city.
(17) Lists of properties in inventories post mortem reveal that
the purchase of small plots and houses in the immediate environs of Barcelona
was not limited to members of the city's clerical establishment, nobility,
or merchant community. The more prosperous guild masters also invested
substantially in rural real estate. The presence of artisans within the
ranks of local landowners suggests that direct urban control over rural
property was relatively small and individual in character. The reduced
scale of this participation distinguished investment in the Catalan contado
from similar developments in the rest of Europe.
The comparatively modest initiatives of Barcelona's citizens bore little resemblance to the massive outflow of urban (especially aristocratic) capital directed toward the agricultural improvement of, say, the Venetian hinterland during the same period. (18) Barcelona's involvement in the rural sphere was not limited to its control over neighboring villages and tracts of land. The life of the countryside reached up to and even penetrated the very walls of the city. The produce supplying the thriving fruit and vegetable market of the Born was cultivated in fields immediately outside the city gates. In 1626 the tanner Miquel Parets noted in this diary that the crowd waiting for the king to enter the city was so large that "people were forced off the roads, thus destroying the harvest in many of the fields near the city's gate. (19) Truck crops were also grown in the many small plots within the city itself. Barcelona even boasted the existence of two separate guilds of hortolans, or urban gardeners. Members of the larger corporation, that "attached to St. Anthony's Gate," tended the bulk of the city's plots located near the Benedictine monastery of St. Paul of the Fields in the Raval. The other con [12] fraternity, the hortolans of the Portal Nou (New Gate), grouped together those agricultural laborers who worked in the fields to the north and east of the city beyond the Ribera. (20)
A symbiotic if unequal relationship thus bound the city to the countryside. As a result, contact with outlying rural areas was normally quite close. Tensions did of course arise as a result of the city's domineering attitude toward its hinterland. For example, resentment of Barcelona's authoritarian control underlay the apocalyptic warnings against the sin and corruption of its citizens in manifestoes issued during the peasant revolt of 1640's. (21) There is also evidence to suggest that urban dwellers felt increasingly isolated from "country matters." The condescending description by an eighteenth-century urban lawyer of rural dwellers as "men of another world, living in another century" reflected a widening distance between town and country--one that conferred a renewed sense of cultural superiority upon the inhabitants of the city. (22)
The sense of the urban area as a "world apart" derived in large measure from the existence of separate patterns of work and production. Specifically urban economic sectors like long-distance trade and craft manufactures first arose during the high Middle Ages as a result of increased division of labor and economic specialization. By the fourteenth century Barcelona had distinguished itself as one of the leading Iberian producers of cloth, silk, and ceramics. (23) It exported these wares within an extensive trading area which included the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily, and southern Italy. The later Middle Ages saw the apogee of Catalan domination within the western Mediterranean [13]. (24) Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, however, sharp demographic reversals combined with the faltering competitiveness of local products and heavy military expenditures to diminish the economic strength of the Principality. The capital citv was particularly hard-hit by the depression. In the early fifteenth century, representatives of urban cloth guilds began to call for protection against cheaper foreign imports. The increasingly bitter debate between advocates of protectionism versus free trade polarized local society into rival blocs of artisans and lesser merchants against importers and the urban oligarchy. This opposition finally erupted in armed conflict in the Catalan civil wars of the 1460's. The widespread destruction caused by the prolonged struggle merely furthered the decline of the local economy. Despite a return to tranquility beginning in the late 1470's, economic and demographic recovery proved excruciatingly slow . (25)
The sixteenth century witnessed modest growth in most sectors of the Catalan economy. Certain urban crafts even enjoyed bursts of relative prosperity. Shipbuilding in particular flourished in the wake of important royal contracts, like those for the outfitting of the Tunis and Lepanto expeditions of 1535 and 1571. The cloth industry benefitted through participation (if largely indirect) in markets opening up in the New World. (26) Overseas trade also began to recover from the depression of the later Middle Ages, especially during the second half of the century, when the crown rerouted its money and troop transfers to Genoa through the port of Barcelona. Yet, on the whole, the urban economy suffered from grave structural weaknesses. The slow decline in the competitiveness of its products allowed Genoese [14] and southern French merchants to take over the Mediterranean island markets hitherto dominated by the Catalans. The Genoese in particular steadily increased their control over raw materials and international exchange (including the lucrative trade in indulgences).(27) Especially menacing was their growing monopolization of the unfinished wool of Aragon, the principal source of supply for the Catalan cloth industry. It was thus hardly surprising that by the end of the sixteenth century Genoese merchants had emerged as predictable targets of popular wrath, which culminated in an attempt to expel them from the city in 1591. (28)
The turning-point in this modest demographic and economic recovery coincided with the general Mediterranean trading crisis of the 1620's. (29) The economic downswing fed a growing chorus of calls for protection of local industries through taxes on imports and a ban on exports of raw materials. (30) Meanwhile, a sharp rise in urban unemployment led to a perceptible increase in vagabondage and lower-class unrest. The trade crisis also fostered structural changes within the local economy. For example, during this decade urban cloth entrepreneurs shifted production from the city to the countryside, where the absence of guilds rendered labor costs substantially cheaper. (31) The 1630's saw an abrupt worsening of local economic conditions, as war with France halted maritime trade. (32) The revolt of the Principality against Castilian rule in 1640 did little to improve the situation.
[15] Its more detrimental consequences included a sharp rise in taxation to offset increased spending on the war effort, along with Barcelona's newfound isolation from traditional markets and sources of supply in southern and western Catalonia. Severe demographic losses at mid-century through plague, famine, and the siege of 1651-1652 reduced the economic fortunes of the city to their lowest point since the later Middle Ages.
The closing years of the seventeenth century witnessed a gradual revival of the local economy. Figures for overseas commerce reveal a substantial increase in port activity beginning in the 1670's. (33) The following decade also saw the launching of the ambitious economic projects of the lawyer Narcís Feliu de la Penya, whose call for a reorientation of Catalan trade away from traditional Mediterranean markets toward the New World reflected growing involvement in colonial trade. (34) Yet commercial expansion could not conceal ongoing weaknesses in the urban economic order. The recovery of the Catalan economy rested less upon the manufacturing capabilities of Barcelona than on the initiatives of the more flexible spheres of the countryside and the smaller coastal towns. The Principality's economic expansion during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was, as Pierre Vilar has pointed out, essentially a product of the rural environment, not of its capital. (35)
The ossified, rigid character of production in seventeenth-century Barcelona owed much to the persistent strength of its guild regime. Just as the chronology of economic change in Catalonia from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries differed substantially from that experienced by Castile, so too did extensive corporate organization distinguish Barcelona from the rest of Iberia. In contrast to the sporadic presence of craft confraternities in most Castilian cities, there was scarcely any economic activity in Barcelona not regulated directly by a guild. The [16] strength of local corporatism was merely one of many characteristics that linked Barcelona's history more closely to the Mediterranean than to the urban centers in the rest of the peninsula.
Most of the city's craft associations were founded in the later Middle Ages. The resort to collective artisanal organization represented above all a defensive reaction to the increasing economic difficulties of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.(36) The expansion of the guilds in turn strengthened resistance to economic changes like the lowering of wages and the introduction of technological innovations. Above all, the trade associations repeatedly attempted to defend local manufacturers against competition by foreign products. In short, the corporate regime-- an involutive response to uncertain economic conditions worsened by rising competition from abroad--was both a leading cause and an effect of the "mature" economy of early modern Barcelona.
The persistent strength of the guild regime contributed to the essentially
static occupational structure of the city during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Jordi Nadal and Emili Giralt's study of the censuses of 1516
and 1716-1717 reveals little change in the relative weight of different
professional sectors. Their breakdown of urban trades into general categories
(see Table I-1) discloses an overwhelming stability in the distribution
of work within early modern Barcelona. (37)Continuity
of profession within individual families accompanied the tendency toward
occupational stasis. Further analysis of the marriage contracts cited above
reveals the extent of change in trades between the fathers and sons surveyed.
Of a total of 551 contracts studied, 233, or 42 percent, of the grooms
held the same occupations as their fathers. Sixty-five, or 12 percent,
practiced a different trade within the same general sector, such as cloth,
metalwork, leather, or agriculture. Two hundred and fifty-three, or a plurality
of 46 percent, devoted themselves to entirely different occupations. In
short, no fewer than one-half of the grooms surveyed continued to work
in the same sector as their fathers, which demonstrated a remarkable degree
of continuity.
Table I-1
Occupational Structure of Barcelona, 1516-1717: Heads of Households
| Sector | 1516 | (%) | 1717 | (%) |
| Agriculture/husbandry | 432 | (6.7) | 474 | (6.1) |
| Fishing/maritime | 284 | (4-4) | 297 | (3-8) |
| Construction | 329 | (5-0 | 542 | (7-0) |
| Hides and leather | 465 | (7-2) | 510 | (6.6) |
| Cloth | 979 | (15-2) | 949 | (12.3) |
| Metal | 229 | (3-6) | 361 | (4-7) |
| Glass/ceramics | 48 | (0.8) | 77 | (1.0) |
| Victualing trades | 230 | (3-6) | 427 | (5-6) |
| Commerce and transport | 530 | -8.2 | 602 | (7-8) |
| Liberal professions | 254 | (3-9) | 344 | (4-5) |
| Public employees | 117 | (1.8) | 173 | (2.2) |
| Widows | 1118 | (17-4) | 1122 | (14-6) |
| Others | 1420 | (22.1) | 1839 | (23-8) |
| TOTAL | 6435 | -100 | 7717 | -100 |
Rigidity, stability, lack of flexibility--these were the principal characteristics of an economic order openly hostile to innovation and ruled by a fundamentally conservative spirit. In such a context, the strongest pressures for change derived from external sources, not from within. While the guilds tried to oppose legislation to the harsh realities of economic transformation, Barcelona's productive base slowly eroded under the relentless pressure of foreign competition. First the Genoese and later the French deepened their penetration into local markets while tightening [18] their stranglehold over the domestic supply of raw materials. Giralt's study of maritime commerce during the mid-seventeenth century identifies the 1630-1640's as a significant turning point in the city's balance of trade. The latter decade in particular witnessed a reversal of the earlier prevalence of exports over imports registered in local shipping contracts. Josep Fontana's analysis of port traffic during the later years of the seventeenth century reveals a similar predominance of imports, especially from France. By the end of the seventeenth century, the most important maritime commerce passed through the hands of English, Dutch, Genoese, and French merchants, and their local factors. (38) These traders operated for the most part outside the official structures of the local economy, like the Guild Merchant and its famous "Consulate of the Sea." The preeminence of these outsiders testifies to the growing dependence on foreign economies experienced by the Principality during the early modern period. This dependence would prove one of the seventeenth century's most crucial legacies to future generations, notwithstanding Catalonia's relatively privileged status within the peninsular economy as a whole.
Barcelona's role as the leading economic power within the Principality was closely linked to its function as a political capital. Despite the comparatively reduced size of its government bureaucracy--constitutional restrictions limited the number of crown officials, in sharp contrast with the dramatic expansion of the royal bureaucracy in Castile--Barcelona was a city endowed with a strong administrative character. Not surprisingly, the concentration within its walls of the most important Catalan [19] political and legal institutions exercised a determining influence upon its fortunes during the two centuries prior to 1714.
While a large cast of characters habitually crowded the stage of local politics, three in particular stood out as protagonists. The most venerable was the municipal government of Barcelona. Its two more prominent bodies were the general assembly known as the Consell de Cent, or Council of the Hundred, and the five (six after 1641) Councillors who presided over it. King James I established the procedures for governance by the magistrates and plenary Council in the mid-thirteenth century. A generation later, Peter II decreed the definitive form and composition of municipal administration in the famous privilege of 1283 known as Recognoverunt Proceres. (39)The impressive array of powers and jurisdictions conferred upon Barcelona increased with the passage of time. Following the reforms undertaken by Ferdinand the Catholic between 1490 and 1510, its municipal government disposed of prerogatives unrivalled by any other city in the peninsula. As such, Barcelona proved a singularly formidable contender in the political struggles of the late medieval and early modern eras.
The second participant in the institutional trio was the Generalitat of Catalonia, also known as the Diputació. This organ had emerged during the fourteenth century as the permanent representative commission between sessions of the Catalan Corts, or parliament. (40) Its membership consisted of three Diputats or Deputies drawn from each of the three parliamentary Estates: Clergy, Nobility, and Commons. Three Oïdors de Comptes, or Overseers of Accounts, also selected by lot from the ranks of the different Estates, aided the Deputies. The principal task of the Generalitat was to supervise the collection of parliamentary taxes, and to ensure that the conduct of royal officials did not contravene the constitutions, or laws passed jointly by the Estates and [20] the crown in parliament. Traditionally dominated by the rural aristocracy, the Generalitat saw itself as the guardian of a venerable arrangement whose substantial limitations on monarchical prerogative lent such a distinctive--and disruptive--flavor to Catalan politics.
The third member--the royal administration--proved a relative newcomer to this cast of characters. While a small staff of crown officials had long existed in Barcelona, it did not obtain definitive shape until the later decades of the fifteenth century. Royal government in Catalonia was divided into three parts. At its apex stood the leading official, the viceroy.(41)His post originally developed during the later Middle Ages as an administrative expedient for the rule of the far-flung Mediterranean dominions of the Crown of Aragon. The viceroy gradually became a familiar and influential figure in local politics, thanks to the prolonged periods of royal absenteeism that proved the norm, beginning with the succession of Charles V in 1516. He presided in turn over a small complement of officials, including the Governor General, the Treasurer, and the overseers of the accounts of the royal patrimony. Most important among these, however, were the dozen or so members of the Audiencia, a body reorganized by Ferdinand the Catholic in the 1490's. This powerful institution combined the functions of the traditional Royal Council--charged with advising the king or viceroy in political matters--with the judicial task of serving as a high court of appeals. The Audiencia provided an essential element of continuity in royal administration amid the frequent changes of the viceroys. Moreover, it numbered among its ranks the most prominent native members of the crown administration, as the viceroys assigned to the Principality were more often than not titled aristocrats from Castile.
The final component of central government in Catalonia resided not in the Principality, but rather (beginning in the late [21] sixteenth century) in Madrid. This was the Council of Aragon, established in 1494 by Ferdinand the Catholic to advise the frequently absent king on the affairs of the Crown of Aragon. (42) Each of the separate members of the Aragonese confederation-- Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, southern Italy/Sicily, and Aragon itself--was represented by both a native regent and a secretary in charge of correspondence with the kingdom. Despite the physical distance separating it from the Principality, the Council intervened quite actively in local politics. Not surprisingly, its members frequently clashed with the viceroy, who resented conciliar control over the most potent instrument for commanding obedience to the king's authority--patronage of favors and posts within the royal administration.
The political history of early modern Barcelona was shaped above all by the rising influence of the monarchy, despite frequent absenteeism and its increasingly Castilian flavor. (43) That the growing pretensions of the crown would clash with the firm particularist defense of local privilege by national and municipal institutions became readily apparent in the early years of the seventeenth century. However, it was not until the administration of the royal favorite, the Count-Duke of Olivares (1621-1643), that relations between the Principality and the central government degenerated to the point of open rupture. The crown's previous success in playing off the Barcelona municipal government against the rival Generalitat gradually evaporated during the 1630's, as the rising fiscal demands occasioned by Spanish participation in the Thirty Years' War alienated practically all levels of Catalan society. Violent peasant uprisings in 1639-1640 triggered a general revolt which led in 1641 to the separation of the Principality from the Spanish monarchy and its annexation by France. The reconquest of Barcelona following [22] the bitter siege of 1652 ushered in a new period of relative calm. This so-called "neo-foral" epoch was characterized above all by the political quiescence of the ruling classes of the Principality, chastened by the recent experience of direct French rule. (44) The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed near-constant warfare between Catalonia and its powerful northern neighbor. These hostilities encouraged the Catalans in 1705-1706 to support the Habsburg pretender to the Spanish throne, the Archduke Charles, over the French candidate, Philip of Anjou. The defeat of the Austrian coalition in the War of Spanish Succession--the final act of which was the storming of Barcelona on September 11, 1714--constituted a decisive event for the Catalan nation. Beginning in 1714, the Principality ceased to exist as a separate institutional body within the Hispanic monarchy. The social and political consequences of its forcible annexation by Castile--known as the Nova Planta, or "new beginning"--will be alluded to in the course of this study.
A singular contradiction marked the history of Barcelona during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Seen from a strictly local perspective, Barcelona was Catalonia's cap i casal--literally its "head and hearth." As a local preacher noted, Barcelona was the "head of the entire Principality of Catalonia, and the mirror by which all other cities and towns measure themselves." (45) As such it led the Principality in size, wealth, prestige, and political influence. Yet the same city viewed from the outside revealed itself a provincial, second-rate power. For a center of its political im [23] portance, its demographic strength was quite deficient by European, and even Iberian, standards. (46) Moreover, economically it was on the defensive, exercising a mere shadow of its former primacy within the western Mediterranean. Guicciardini doubtless summed up the attitude of many foreign observers when he remarked in 1512 that "its commerce does not flourish as it did in the past, and it no longer disposes of its former wealth, especially now that the court has moved to Castile. (47)
The image of Barcelona as a lethargic city mired in the backwaters of
the Hispanic monarchy has found widespread acceptance among historians
of early modern Spain. One well-known scholar has even labelled Barcelona
in this period the "Sleeping Beauty of the Mediterranean." One might hesitate
to apply this label to the city in which events like the Corpus revolt
of 1640 took place. Still, what strikes the observer's eye is the essential
stability and strong sense of continuity underlying local society over
the course of these two centuries. There was, however, at least one sphere
which experienced fundamental change during the early modern era. The governing
elite of the city suffered profound alterations in its social composition,
professional activities, and public identity. At no point did these new
developments represent a dramatic rupture with the past. They nevertheless
contributed to the most significant transformation in the lengthy history
of the Catalan ruling class prior to the industrial era. The following
pages trace the contours of this change. They also explore the vital connection
between the successful recomposition of the urban elite, and the construction
of ruling-class hegemony within local society, politics, and culture.
1. Jorba, Descripción, ir.-v. and 8v.; Guicciardini, Diario, 51. Guicciardini visited Barcelona in 1512.
2. Galera et al., Atlas de Barcelona; Vilar, "Un Moment Critic en el Creixement de Barcelona: 1774- 1787," in his Assaigs, 43-53; Amich, Historia del Puerto de Barcelona.
3. Platter, Journal of a Younger Brother, 201; Ainaud et al., Catálogo Monumental; Duran, Barcelona i la seva Història, I; Mas, Notícies Històriques, I.
4. Carreras Candi, Geografia General, unnumbered map of the Placa de St. Jaume.
5. Vila, "Orígens i Evolució de la Rambla"; Casas Homs, "Les Llaors de Barcelona," 251.
6. In his 1716 tax declaration, the physician Josep Pomada claimed he earned practically no income as he lived in "the raval, whose inhabitants are almost all impoverished"; A.H.M.B./Cadastre, vol. 15, "Denuncias Particulares," no. 382.
7. Sanpere Miquel, Topografía Antigua; Ros Torner, Ribera.
8. Bassegoda, Santa Maria del Mar; Amelang, "Carrer de Montcada"; Parets, "Sucesos," vol. 20, 43.
9. Ràfols, Pere Blay; B.C./Ms. 505, under the year 1598.
10. Barraquer, Casas de Religiosos.
11. Nadal and Giralt, Population Catálane; Nadal, "Contribution des Historiens Catalans"; Iglésies, Estadïstiques de Poblacío de Catalunya; Elliott, Revolt, 27-28. Unfortunately, no complete census of Barcelona was taken from 1516 to 1716.
12. Dietari, VI, 136-165; Smith, "Barcelona Bills of Mortality"; Parets, "Sucesos," vol. 24, 396-462; Viñas Cusí, Glànola a Barcelona.
13. Font Llagostera, "Problema Triguero en Barcelona."
14. A.H.P.B./Pedro Llunell, Libro Primero de Capítulos Matrimoniales (1604-1610); Antonio Roure, Libros Tercero y Quarto de Capítulos Matrimoniales (1610-1622); Joseph Galcem, Manual de Capítulos Matrimoniales (1649-1660) and Pliego de Capítulos Matrimoniales Sueltos (1661-1685); Jaume Rondó, Llibre de Capítols Matrimoniais (1660-1674); Francesch Llauder, Libro de Capítulos Matrimoniales (1665-1712); Juan Romeu, Llibre dels Capitols Matrimonials (1679-1692).
15. For similar trends in the rest of Europe, see Clark, "Migration in England," and Sharlin, "Natural Decrease in Early Modern Cities."
17. Codina, Delta de Llobregat i Barcelona.
18. Woolf, "Venice and the Terraferma"; Pulían, "Occupations and Investments of the Venetian Nobility."
19. Parets, "Sucesos," vol. 20, 4.
20. Tintó, Gremis, 55; Bofarull i de Sartorio, Gremios y Cofradías de la Antigua Corona de Aragón, vol. 40, 324-335.
21. Memorial del Capita General del Exèrcit Christià (1640), B.C./F. Bon. 6139.
22. Vilar, "Els Barbà: Una Família Il.lustrada de Vilafranca del Penedès," in his Assaigs, 6 3.
23. Capmany, Memorias Históricas; Carrère, Barcelona 1380-1462; Sayous, Metodes Comerciáis.
24. Giunta, Aragonese i Catalani nel Mediterraneo; Dufourcq, L'Espagne Catalane et le Maghrib; Del Treppo, Mercaders Catalans; Watson, "Catalans in the Markets of Northern Europe."
25. Vilar, Catalogne, I; Vicens Vives, Ferran II; Peláez, Catalunya Després de la Guerra Civil.
26. Madurell Marimon, Antiguo Comercio; Otte, "Comienzos del Comercio Catalán."
27. Melis, Mercaderes Italianos en España.
28. Dietari, V, 18-22, 30, 212, 261, and 386; A.G.S./Estado, Genoa, leg. 1423 (36).
29. Romano, "Tra XVI e XVII Secolo."
30. Dalmau, Memorial Sobre lo Mayor Dret; Peralta, Memorial en Favor de la Ordinación; Parer de Jaume Damians; A.C.A./Generalitat, Procesos de Corts, vol. 1058, 245.
31. Women textile workers occupied the City Hall in March 1628 to protest the putting-out of cloth outside the city limits; A.H.M.B./Consell de Cent, II, Deliberations, vol. 138, 49-51.
32. Giralt, "Comercio Marítimo," 206-210.
33. Fontana, "Comercio Exterior"; Martínez Shaw, "Comercio Marítimo."
34. Feliu de la Penya, Político Discurso, and Fénix de Cataluña.
36. Tintó, Gremis; Bonnassie, Organización del Trabajo; Molas, Gremios Barceloneses.
37. Nadal and Giralt, "Barcelona en 1717-18."
38. Giralt, "Comercio Marítimo," 204, and "Colonia Mercantil Francesa"; Fontana, "Comercio Exterior."
39. Maluquer, Derecho Civil Especial, 236-260.
40. Elliott, Revolt, 46 and 130-137.
41. Lalinde, Institución Virreinal; Reglà, Virreis de Catalunya, II.
42. Riba, Consejo Supremo de Aragón.
43. Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, II-III; Reglà, Virreis; Nadal, Dos Segles d'Oscuritat. By far the most important accounts are Elliott's Revolt of the Catalans, and Vilar's Catalogue, I.
44. The term "neo-foral" (etym. for, meaning "privilege" or "franchise") refers to the later seventeenth century, when the control exercised by the central government over the Crown of Aragón slackened considerably. One important consequence was the abrupt disappearance of the violent confrontations with local constitutional traditions that had marked the first half of the century. For a recent study, see Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century.
45. Sala, Govern Polítick, 10r
46. For example, neighboring Valencia contained some 12,000 hearths in the early seventeenth century: Casey, Kingdom of Valencia, 154.