[14] At one level this book is concerned with matters that are abstract and general. The formation, perpetuation, and modification of social patterns, the function and implications of mobility, and the processes of cultural and social transmission or transformation from Old World to New are subjects that are at least one step removed from the reality of the day-to-day lives of individuals in specific localities. When we approach the topic of the movement of people from Spain across the Atlantic in the sixteenth century, uniformities of behavior and development become readily apparent. Yet every Spanish emigrant was from a particular area and part of a regionally defined movement. Thus a book such as this must go beyond generalizations and become in large part the tale of real people, specific places, and the connections that bound them.

The lives of sixteenth-century extremeño emigrants and returnees and their families, friends, and fellow townspeople largely unfold in a part of Spain that attracted little notice then or since Isolated, rural, and rather poor even today, Extremadura is unfamiliar to outsiders and even to many Spaniards. A brief description of the region and discussion of its history may help set the scene for the story of Extremadura's people and their role in Spanish expansion to the New World. This chapter will sketch out the underlying environmental, institutional, and socioeconomic framework that shaped social structures and relations in the region. We will see that in the period with which we are concerned local society in [15] Extremadura was both traditional and dynamic, conservative yet changing.

Of the many and varied regions of modern Spain, Extremadura is the largest comprising two provinces-Cáceres and Badajoz- that only recently, with some effort, have begun the process of constructing a shared sense of identity. In fact the Extremadura of the past encompassed several regions, defined at least partially geographically. The historical experience of these regions from ancient until quite recent times varied considerably. Badajoz, the southernmost of the two modern provinces, historically was oriented toward Andalusia to the south and more directly affected by its proximity to Portugal to the west than was Cáceres; following the reconquest most of this southern half of Extremadura came under the sway of the powerful military Order of Santiago.

Cáceres to the north, however, was more closely tied to Castile and less homogeneous. This northern province-once known as Alta Extremadura-divides into at least two subregions. In the north lies a green, agriculturally prosperous region that includes the Vera and other valleys of the Sierra de Gredos. Plasencia has long been the main urban center for this area, and Yuste, the monastery to which Charles V retired in the 1550s, is located in the Vera. Appended to this fertile area are the barren and impoverished Hurdes, lying south of Ciudad Rodrigo, reputedly an isolated enclave of morisco settlement. The second, and larger, subregion of Alta Extremadura lies between the Tajo River to the north and the Guadiana (which passes through the city of Badajoz) to the south. It is a dry plateau, hilly and mountainous in parts, generally more suited to stockraising than intensive agriculture. Historical developments in some ways divided even this wide tableland. After the reconquest the western part (including Alcántara, Albuquerque, and Valencia) became the stronghold of another important military order, Alcántara, whereas the eastern part of the province, the Sierra de Guadalupe, was remote, relatively isolated from the rest, and during the late Middle Ages increasingly dominated by the wealthy and royally favored monastery of Guadalupe.

The subregion formed by the cities of Cáceres and Trujillo and their contiguous districts is a coherent geographical entity that for some observers epitomizes the conjunction of environmental and human factors that differentiate Extremadura from the regions to [16] the north and south and imbue it with a distinctive character of its own. ⁽¹⁾ This central subregion, less directly influenced by Castile and León than Plasencia and less tied to Andalusia than Badajoz, was above all a pastoral region, with vines and olives cultivated in the hilly and mountainous areas and pigs fattened in the woodlands of the hills. Cáceres and Trujillo, with their dramatic hilltop silhouettes, offer among the finest examples in all of Extremadura of the fortified towns and castles of the Moorish and postreconquest periods and the results of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century boom in private, public, and ecclesiastic construction.

Despite the physical and cultural homogeneity of the Cáceres-Trujillo subregion, however, historical experience-as almost everywhere in the Iberian peninsula-again generated differences. León claimed Cáceres and Castile Trujillo after the reconquest of the early thirteenth century, although both towns received extensive jurisdictions and similar privileges aimed at encouraging resettlement of the area. ⁽²⁾ Cáceres became part of the diocese of Coria, whereas Trujillo was included in what would be the much wealthier bishopric of Plasencia. And though the original districts of both cities were very large, subsequent readjustments and changes left Trujillo far more populous and wealthy.

The historical differences between the two cities long predated the events of the reconquest. Although the Romans eventually occupied the entire region, Cáceres doubtless was a far more important site of Roman settlement than Trujillo. The Romans fortified the site not long before the beginning of the modem era (probably around 20 B.C.). The principal Roman road crossing the region from Mérida north to Salamanca was the Via Lata, a major military route that the Muslims later called the "Silver Road." This road passed through Cáceres, while Trujillo was on a secondary route that led from Mérida to Toledo. ⁽³⁾ The foundations of Cáceres's walls and at least one of the gates of the old city were Roman in origin, and the city preserved for centuries its lovely Roman statue of Ceres. The Roman origins of Trujillo are not as well established. Possibly its Moorish castle was built on a Roman base. Nonetheless remains found near the city and throughout its jurisdiction attest that Roman settlement existed in the area, if not perhaps precisely at Trujillo's modern site. ⁽⁴⁾

Perhaps the most consistent feature of Extremadura's historical [17] experience has been its marginality in the context of peninsular history and development. Certainly people inhabited the region from ancient times; the cave of Maltravieso near the city of Cáceres has Paleolithic paintings, and archeological remains from the Celtiberian period dot the countryside. But the region lacked the mineral resources and rich agricultural potential that so strongly attracted outsiders to other parts of the peninsula, such as the Guadalquivir Valley. The Romans more or less ignored the region until they finally undertook the effective occupation of the whole peninsula. The area of what is today central-southeastern Portugal and Extremadura witnessed a good deal of conflict before Rome subdued it with characteristic thoroughness; Cáceres doubtless originated as a military colony. Similarly the Visigoths took little interest in the region and only incorporated the Cáceres-Trujillo heartland into their kingdom in the sixth century.

In the eighth century the Muslim invaders at first bypassed the region altogether on their way north from Mérida to Toledo and did not reach the area around Cáceres for at least forty years. Even after they did so, like their predecessors they found the region offered no great attractions; and so they made no concerted efforts to colonize there. A diverse population of Berbers, Muladíes (Christian converts to Islam), and Mozarabs (Christians living under Muslim rule) gradually filled the area. The decisive moment for formal Moorish occupation occurred with the arrival of the Almoravids in the early twelfth century, followed by the Almohads. They fortified the towns of Cáceres, Trujillo, Santa Cruz, and Montánchez in face of the southward movement of the Christian reconquest. ⁽⁵⁾ Coria was reconquered by the Christians in 1079 and then lost; its definitive reoccupation by Alfonso VII in 1143 signaled the beginning of a sustained Christian effort to claim the entire region. Key fortified towns such as Cáceres and Trujillo passed back and forth between Christians and Moors until finally Cáceres was reconquered in 1229 and Trujillo in 1233. ⁽⁶⁾

Thus in the early thirteenth century, with the final Christian reconquest, Extremadura-which had never been an independent Christian kingdom nor a center for Islamic civilization and culture- was simply annexed to the crown of Castile-León. Extremadura became a Castilian province, to be settled by people from Castile, León, and Galicia. ⁽⁷⁾ Reoccupation was slow, in part again because of [18] the region's relative lack of strong attractions and in part because of the very magnitude of the reconquest enterprise. The whole Duero region already had been occupied by settlers from the north, and once Andalusia had been secured its attractions proved greater than those of Extremadura, so once again a movement of population partially bypassed the region. These obstacles notwithstanding, probably most of the towns of Alta Extremadura were resettled in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. No doubt the majority of the sites had been inhabited previously, or more or less continuously; preferred locations were on hilltops or sides, beside rivers or springs, or along already-established routes such as the Silver Road. The locations of many towns and villages at the confluence of rivers (for example, Plasencia), on hilltops (for example, Cáceres), and adjacent to castles (Trujillo), and even the names of many settlements-near Cáceres alone were villages named Torrequemada, Torreorgaz, and Torremocha-reflected their defensive character. ⁽⁸⁾

During the two or three centuries following the reconquest the region developed steadily if not spectacularly. Merino sheep introduced from North Africa made local stockraising increasingly viable and lucrative, and the incorporation of Extremadura and Andalusia into Castile opened the green winter pastures of the south to the transhumant stockraisers of the north. A degree of prosperity, the routes of the transhumant herders (cañadas), and Extremadura's location between Castile-León and Andalusia brought people through and to the region. Cáceres and Trujillo expanded rapidly beyond their old walls. They became centers for commerce and industry as well as agriculture and supported a growing religious establishment. Their populations reflected the ethnic and socioeconomic mix characteristic of much of the Iberian peninsula. By the late fifteenth century both Cáceres and Trujillo had communities (aljamas) of Moors and Jews. In 1479 Cáceres had about 30 Jewish families. Trujillo's Jewish residents had clientage ties with some of the leading nobles, and important visitors to the city often lodged in Jewish homes. ⁽⁹⁾ Not all developments were peaceful, however. Factionalism was endemic, and the necessity of defending oneself from one's neighbors sometimes supplanted the military exigencies of the reconquest. The Golfines, a family of strongmen who came originally to fight in the reconquest, settled [19] down to terrorize and prey on everyone in the region until they finally were brought under control. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Alta Extremadura essentially became a secondary, politically and economically subordinated province of Castile in the centuries after the reconquest. Nonetheless the region took on a certain character and underwent a development of its own that did not derive solely from Castile. Two of the great Spanish religiomilitary orders-Santiago and Alcántara-originated in Alta Extremadura. The Order of Santiago formed in 1170 as the "Congregación de los Fratres de Cáceres" during one of the periods that the Christians held the city, which the Leonese King Ferdinand II gave to the order as their headquarters. The order, known as the Knights of Santiago by the end of the twelfth century, played an important role in the final reconquest, although ultimately the king refused to reinstate them in Cáceres, making it a royal town instead. The Order of Alcántara was founded in 1218 in the west. ⁽¹¹⁾ While the military orders clearly were modeled on other crusading orders such as the Templars, the strength of their dominion over much of Extremadura after the reconquest and the weakness of royal power during the later Middle Ages meant they would become largely autonomous and in some ways distinctively extremeño. While Cáceres and Trujillo themselves came under royal jurisdiction and remained directly tied to the crown (with only brief exceptions), some of the major figures who held positions in the powerful and unruly orders-especially Alcántara-came from leading noble families of the cities ⁽¹²⁾ After Ferdinand and Isabella brought the orders under direct royal control, they began to be transformed from extremeño into more nearly Castilian institutions, a source of royal patronage and revenues.

Another institution that arose in Alta Extremadura, the monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, also came to have great significance in the larger world of Castile. The story of the appearance of the Virgin Mary in the mountains to a humble shepherd from Cáceres who was searching for a strayed cow and of the subsequent discovery of the dark wooden image of the Virgin buried at the site of the apparition reputedly dates from the first part of the fourteenth century. ⁽¹³⁾ The shrine constructed there in 1380 became a Jeronymite monastery that the Trastámara kings generously [20] patronized-to some extent at the expense of Trujillo, which forfeited some of its lands to Guadalupe. The proximity of Trujillo's jurisdiction to the monastery, and the royal concession of the right to appoint the notaries of Trujillo and its district purchased by the monastery in the late fourteenth century, gave rise to numerous and sometimes quite bitter disputes. But the monastery's position could not be challenged. With the shift of power and interest toward the center and south, Guadalupe arguably became the most famous and important Spanish shrine in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Guadalupe had direct connections with the monasteries of Yuste and San Lorenzo el Real (El Escorial). Extremeños were known for their devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, which they carried to the New World. ⁽¹⁴⁾

Given their emphasis on centralizing and stabilizing royal authority, it is hardly surprising that Ferdinand and Isabella went to some effort to win support among Extremadura's nobles and secure the region for the crown. They formed strong ties with and liberally rewarded key figures who came over to their side, simultaneously assuring their future loyalty and undercutting the power of the orders and other factions. Captain Diego de Ovando de Cácere Sancho de Paredes (chamberlain of the Catholic Queen), and Lu de Chaves, el viejo (the first two from Cáceres, the last from Trujillo) allied themselves to Ferdinand and Isabella. All three were patriarchs of powerful and wealthy families that for generations maintained their ties to the crown. ⁽¹⁵⁾

Naturally Ferdinand and Isabella did not depend only on personal ties and alliances to consolidate their hold over Extremadura. During the early years of their reign they visited Cáceres and Trujillo (and, of course, Guadalupe) individually or together a number of times. ⁽¹⁶⁾ During these visits they organized the local militia under the Santa Hermandad, issued ordinances regulating the composition and election of the city councils, and ordered the demolition, with some very few exceptions in the cases of their favorite like Captain Diego de Ovando de Cáceres, of the noble's fortified towers. All these measures in some sense had as their objective diminution of the region's endemic violence and the nobility's independence. Their ordinances directed that seats on the council divided among the cities' principal factions, and the demolition of towers and incorporation of the militias into the royally [21] controlled Santa Hermandad also undercut the potential for destructive factional conflict. By the sixteenth century Alta Extremadura had been brought under royal control, and the turbulence of the previous couple of centuries subsided.

In the sixteenth century, then, the period in which people from Extremadura joined the Indies enterprise and provided such a remarkably large proportion of the leadership in the early years of exploration and conquest, Extremadura was very much a province of Castile. The region exported most of its wool, and the wool trade was in the hands of northern merchants. Local clothmakers produced an inferior product that served the local market; the upper classes imported high-quality cloth from Segovia, Valencia, or elsewhere. Northern stockraisers rented Extremadura's winter pastures. And the region, even its cities, offered few opportunities for individuals of ambition. As long as royal power in Castile was weak, perhaps restless and active men found a sufficiently open arena in which to pursue their ambitions in Extremadura. In the sixteenth century, with the demise of the orders and local strongmen, men who aspired to ecclesiastical, bureaucratic, or military careers had to leave cities like Cáceres and Trujillo for the court, or to study in Salamanca or Valladolid, or to fight in Italy or Flanders. They also went to the New World in some numbers. That they were no less attached and loyal to their home towns than were other Spaniards is clear from the number of people who left and returned again or at least maintained strong ties with home; but opportunities at home were limited.

Perhaps there is no single good explanation for why extremeños formed such a significant element (not in absolute numbers, but proportionally to the population and in terms of leadership) in the early years of the conquest and settlement of America. Nonetheless Extremadura's backwardness and marginality in the larger world of Castile and the empire surely played a part; a person who wanted to do something most likely had to leave. As a result in the sixteenth century, when Extremadura became an undeniably secondary and subordinated province of Castile, it also produced some of the most distinguished and famous figures of Castilian and imperial history: Frey Nicolás de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola from 1502-1509; Hernando Cortes from Medellín, conqueror of Mexico; Francisco Pizarro of Trujillo, conqueror of Peru, Fray Jerónimo de [22] Loaysa of Trujillo, first bishop and archbishop of Lima; Licenciado Juan de Ovando of Cáceres, who ended his active career in church, university, and government as president of the Council of the Indies; Licenciado don Gaspar Cervantes de Gaete of Trujillo, archbishop of Messina, Salerno, and Tarragona and representative to the Council of Trent; the architect Francisco Becerra who Trujillo in the 1570's to work in Mexico and Peru; and many others. The possibility that people from a rather backward and unimportant region could enter into the highest academic, ecclesiastic governmental circles and participate fully in some of the great events and episodes of the period also underlines an important aspect of early modern Spanish society-its permeability and flexibility. If Castile penetrated and subordinated Extremadura, Extremadura for its part proved capable of entering quite successfully into Castilian affairs and undertakings.

The discussion to this point has suggested a number of common historical, geographical, and socioeconomic features that characterized the Cáceres-Trujillo region. The two cities were reconquered within years of each other, came under the direct jurisdiction crown, developed along similar institutional lines, and controlled large districts encompassing a number of towns and villages. Their districts bordered on each other, and Cáceres and Trujillo separated by only about fifty kilometers, which meant that each was closer to the other than to any other important town or city such as Badajoz or Plasencia.

Did this similarity and proximity mean that the area formed their jurisdictions acted as a region? Viewed externally, in ways it did; but judged by almost any structural or functional standard, a strong localism prevailed. Such regionalism as existed was largely circumstantial, superficial, or confined to the perceptions of relatively few people. The origins of the name "Extremadura" been debated; but the fact is that in the sixteenth century generally the only people who used the term were individuals who living or had lived outside the area. Hernando Pizarro (who had been with his half-brother Francisco Pizarro in Peru and returned to Spain), for example, in 1551 during his confinement in the fortress of Medina del Campo gave his power of attorney to someone in Trujillo to rent out the lands and pastures he owned in Trujillo and its district "and in all of Extremadura." ⁽¹⁷⁾ Sometimes the older [23] form of the regional designation appeared in the sixteenth century. The merchant Juan González de Vitoria, who signed over a power of attorney to his son in Peru in 1561, referred to himself as a vecino (citizen) of Trujillo "which is in the frontier [extremo] of those kingdoms of Castile." ⁽¹⁸⁾ Most people ignored the whole problem of regional designation and specified the location of Cáceres or Trujillo as Castile or Spain.

Such terminological usage, if in itself of interest, does not necessarily shed much light on people's perceptions of their relations to an area and to each other; it is in any case clear that "Extremadura" had not entered into common popular usage. The use of the term "tierra" is more revealing. Usually "tierra" referred to a city and its jurisdiction; essentially the term was synonymous with "término"or district. ⁽¹⁹⁾ Hence normally no one living in Trujillo's jurisdiction would claim to be from the same tierra as that of Cáceres or vice versa. When people left the area, however, and especially when they found themselves in circumstances as different as those of the New World, the concept of tierra became more flexible and less precise. In the Indies tierra still retained its original and basic meaning; but in face of the necessity to extend and buttress personal networks and connections, usage became more inclusive. In Peru in 1546 Gonzalo Pizarro wrote to his field marshal Francisco de Carvajal that Antonio de Ulloa of Cáceres was "de mi tierra." ⁽²⁰⁾ Nevertheless, despite the importance of regional ties and identification in the Indies, in the final analysis a fairly strict localism prevailed; cacereños and trujillanos, or even people from towns in Trujillo's district like Zorita, did not maintain the same solidarity with one another as they did with the people of their own tierra, city, or village.

The institutions of the cities, if virtually identical, were almost entirely independent. Such ties as existed outside the district linked local ecclesiastic or governmental institutions to the diocese or order or to the court. The movement of people was mainly local as well. People living within Trujillo's district often moved from one village or town to another, or to the city, or they might marry within the district if they did not marry someone from their own town; but they were far less likely to move (or marry) into Cáceress district. Because Cáceres's district contained only six towns and villages, a native or resident had fewer possibilities for relocating [24] within the city's jurisdiction; yet it is interesting to note that from Cáceres or its villages who did move or marry outside the district more likely looked to the towns to the west-Garrovillas, Albuquerque, Brozas-than to Trujillo's district to the east. In fact whatever extralocal association and orientation existed seems to have followed roughly the diocesan divisions; cacereños had contact with the towns of the diocese of Coria, while Trujillo more frequently formed ties with people from places like Jaraicejo and Deleitosa in the bishopric of Plasencia. Such ties can be seen in the example of Alonso Bravo, a native of the town of Búrdalo (in Trujillo's district) who had become a vecino of Trujillo. In his will of 1584 Bravo said he belonged to cofradías (lay religious associations) in Trujillo, Puerto de Santa Cruz (a village formerly part Trujillo's district, sold by the crown in the 1550s), and Jaraicejo. ⁽²¹⁾ The towns themselves had some significant connections. In 1536 Trujillo and Jaraicejo made an agreement providing for mutual to pasture on their common lands. ⁽²²⁾

Naturally certain ties connected Trujillo and Cáceres. There was some intermarriage, especially at the level of the nobility were in the best position to seek out the most advantageous martial alliances. Juan Cortés, a wealthy returnee to Trujillo, who had participated in the division of the treasure of Cajamarca in 1532, married doña María de Ribera, member of a leading noble of Cáceres who had two brothers who also went to the Indies. Their daughter doña Catalina Cortés in turn married a cacereño Diego de Ulloa. ⁽²³⁾ Commoners also intermarried. A couple living in San Miguel de Piura in Peru in 1568 called themselves "natives of the cities of Cáceres and Trujillo." ⁽²⁴⁾ But commoners were likely to marry within the range of their normal contacts; the architect Francisco Becerra, for example, married a woman from Garciaz, a town in Trujillo's jurisdiction where he worked on the church. Given the economic patterns that tied each city to its own hinterland of towns and countryside, movement and association to a great extent took place within the district.

Economic activities could bring the cities into contact. Merchants often had dealings beyond the immediate locality. By virtueof purchase, marriage, or inheritance, cacereños might hold censos (mortgages), ⁽²⁵⁾ juros (annuities), rents, or lands in Trujillo district, or vice versa. The noble families of one city sometimes [25] sent their daughters to the convents of the other, although they usually placed them locally. And although the cities and towns of the region scarcely participated in the comuneros revolt of the early 1520s, occasionally they formed or joined temporary coalitions. In 1580, for example, a number of towns in Extremadura, including Cáceres, jointly protested a royal edict that recognized the rights of the Mesta (the stockraisers' association) to certain cultivated lands. ⁽²⁶⁾ Both Cáceres and Trujillo had markets and annual fairs that could attract people from outside; Trujillo's weekly mercado franco (free market), a royal concession dating from the time of Charles V, ⁽²⁷⁾ in particular seems to have served as a regional center for exchange. In January 1578, for example, a pellejero (wineskinmaker) from Talavera de la Reina apprenticed his son to another pellejero from Puebla de Guadalupe at the mercado franco. On the same day a vecino of Puerto bought a mare from a man from a village near Sepúlveda. ⁽²⁸⁾

On the whole most of Cáceres's and Trujillo's significant economic, political, and institutional ties connected them not to each other but to the important centers of trade and capital (Segovia, Burgos, Medina del Campo, Seville), higher learning (Salamanca or Alcalá), or government (the royal court in Valladolid or Madrid, the high court of appeals in Granada) outside the region. This outward, extraregional focus in some ways stemmed directly from the nature of the cities and the homogeneity of the region. In most ways Cáceres and Trujillo were quite similar, hence they had to look elsewhere and not to each other for higher education, financial, legal, or academic expertise, and necessary business connections. Beyond that, the strong sense of identity with the specific point of origin, the awareness of a city's independence and particular history, underlay and strengthened the reality and perception of separateness.

In the sixteenth century Cáceres and Trujillo were small cities whose populations probably increased steadily over the course of the century. With about 6500 inhabitants at midcentury, Cáceres was somewhat smaller than Trujillo, which possibly had a population of around 8000 at that time. ⁽²⁹⁾ The number of people living in [26] the towns of Cáceres's jurisdiction equaled or slightly exceeded number of residents in the city proper, ⁽³⁰⁾ and the population of Trujillo's larger district probably outnumbered that of the city. Thus these towns were not very large, and the major cities of Castile easily eclipsed all the extremeño cities in size. In 1561 Burgos and Segovia had populations of around 22,000, Valladolid 33,000, and Toledo 60,000; Seville's population rose to 100,000 or more by the century's close. ⁽³¹⁾ Nonetheless in a sparsely populated region whose inhabitants were concentrated in relatively few settlements, Cáceres and Trujillo in every sense were important urban centers, regardless of whether they were called "villa" (Cáceres) or "ciudad" (Trujillo). ⁽³²⁾ They dominated their districts and served as centers for industry and commerce, political and religious institutions. A corregidor, the crown's representative, presided over city council of each; the councils, controlled by the powerful nobility, entered into and regulated many aspects of local life, from setting bread and wheat prices to organizing religious processions to recruiting military levies. The cities had a number of parishes, whereas most villages and small towns had but one.

The towns and villages of the countryside varied considerably in location, size, social composition, and their relationship to the cities. The cities' districts included good-sized towns like Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Trujillo), which had 465 vecinos (heads of household) and 7 priests in 1560, and Casar de Cáceres, with 788 vecinos and 6 priests in 1555. There also were small places like Orellana de la Sierra (Trujillo) with only 32 vecinos in 1575. ⁽³³⁾ The tax assessments reflected the range in size of the towns. In Trujillo's district, for example, the annual sales tax assessment (encabezamiento) for the years 1557-1561 specified 8ooo maravedís for Ibahernando, 120,000 for Santa Cruz, and 153,000 for Cañamero; in the same years the assessments for Cáceres's district ranged from 323,000 maravedís for Casar to 40,000 for Aliseda, 15,000 for Sierra de Fuentes, and a mere 4000 for Zángano, a hamlet of Cáceres. ⁽³⁴⁾

Towns like Cañamero and Berzocana in Trujillo's district were so large and distant from the city that they probably functioned with considerable independence long before they secured formal exemption from the city's jurisdiction. ⁽³⁵⁾ Self-purchase and a rash of sales of villages to nobles by the crown beginning in the 1550s left Trujillo with only fifteen towns under its jurisdiction in the late [27] sixteenth century; the city still held twice the number of towns controlled by Cáceres but far fewer than the twenty-five or more it once had. ⁽³⁶⁾ Cáceres's district was more stable in the sixteenth century, with its seven towns (Casar, Malpartida, Aliseda, Torrequemada, Torreorgaz, Aldea del Cano, and Sierra de Fuentes) and one hamlet; but the largest, Casar, fought to remove itself from the city's jurisdiction, causing considerable alarm among the members of the city council. Cáceres had lost all its towns north of the Almonte River by the fifteenth century and the sizable town of Arroyo del Puerco in the mid- l400s; in 1559 Torreorgaz was sold as well. ⁽³⁷⁾ While Casar remained subject to Cáceres's jurisdiction, it enjoyed certain privileges that other towns did not. In the early fourteenth century the crown granted the vecinos of Casar a large ejido (grazing or common lands) of half a league around the town protected from any future encroachments of private ownership, and the right to water their cattle wherever they wished. ⁽³⁸⁾ In contrast the small village of Sierra de Fuentes had virtually no lands. ⁽³⁹⁾

Land ownership, tenancy, and use throughout the area also varied considerably. Fundamentally the region's economy was pastoral, and grazing land predominated. Much of this land was under private control; but the cities themselves owned extensive pasture lands, which they rented out, and the cities and the towns of their districts had common lands for grazing cattle and usually woodlands in the montes for cutting wood or grazing pigs. Stockraising, the principal economic activity, mainly meant sheep and pigs. Other kinds of livestock-cattle, donkeys, mules, horses-served as work animals for agriculture or transport and do not seem to have been bred locally to any extent. Both city councils stalled in the implementation of a series of royal ordinances regarding the breeding of horses for cavalry, although Trujillo complied sooner and in the 1570s commissioned the construction of a magnificent gate designed by Francisco Becerra to stand at the entrance of the "pasture of the mares." ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Much of the soil of the region is calcareous, which made it poorly suited to agriculture for the most part, although the resulting local production of lime, together with abundant high-quality granite, proved a boon for local construction. Because of the region's aridity and poor soils, it often failed to produce sufficient wheat and other [28] grains to feed its residents. The cities frequently had to import grain from other areas to stock the alhóndigas (public granaries). Prices for wheat, in terms of nominal reales at least, rose overall in the sixteenth century. In Cáceres (for which information is more complete) the price of a fanega (bushel) of wheat more or less doubled in forty years; in 1534 a fanega sold for about 5 reales and in 1577 for 11 reales. But prices could fluctuate sharply at time (see table 1), since conditions for agriculture often were less than ideal. Drought or floods could ruin crops and cause shortages, and two or three bad years in close conjunction could send wheat and bread prices skyrocketing.

Bad weather was not the only problem that affected local agriculture; the untimely arrival of grasshoppers or locusts could have devastating effects on a crop. The spring of 1580 brought a plague of insects to the entire area. On April 18, 1580 the council of Cáceres ordered everyone between the ages of fourteen and seventy to help kill the insects on the following Wednesday. Two day later the council decided that the people should go out the next day, a Saturday, at sunrise, carrying enough food for two days. In April 1583 Trujillo's regidores (councilmen) were directed to find a priest "who will curse the locusts and destroy them." Later the same month one of the regidores went to Jaraicejo with a letter for the bishop of Plasencia, asking that he instruct the priest of Garcia "so that he will come to conjure away the locusts of this land, that the city will pay his salary." ⁽⁴¹⁾

In addition to pastures and grain lands (tierras de pan llevar), several other types of agricultural land were common. Alcaceres (barley fields) provided forage, probably for work animals, and as result often were located near houses or the headquarters of estates. Gardens and orchards (huertas and huertos) produced a variety of fruits and vegetables that supplied the local market. They usually were close to the cities and towns and, since they require irrigation, near sources of water. There also were olive grove (olivares) in the area. Many vecinos kept beehives, which invariably were sold with the land on which they were located (asiento de colmenar).

Given the varied nature of terrain and agriculture, the landholdings of both hidalgos and commoners characteristically were scattered. Francisco Hortún, a vecino of Robledillo (Trujillo) mentioned the following properties in his will of 1571: a vineyard he bought in Valdemorales from a vecino of Zarza; two fanegadas (a fanegada was about one and a half acres) of land in Navaredonda, purchased from an uncle in Trujillo; three, four, and one and a half fanegadas in places called Malgrado, Cerroduelo, and Cerrogordo; three fanegadas on the road to Zarza and another three on the road to Trujillo; and many other small properties, as well as a mill on the Tamuja River. ⁽⁴³⁾ While it is not possible to identify many of the places Hortún mentioned, clearly these properties were not contiguous or even necessarily very close to one another, and they served a variety of purposes.

In the rather arid landscape of the region, sources of water often determined the patterns of productive activity. Rivers, springs, and reservoirs provided water for irrigation and for livestock, as well as for industrial uses, such as milling, washing wool, and clothmaking. In Cáceres flour mills, tanneries, and dyeing and fulling shops clustered around the Fuente del Rey on the outskirts of the city, and the same spring irrigated orchards. Several small rivers traverse the area. The Almonte runs parallel to the Tajo; the Salor and Ayuela bisect the southern half of Cáceres's district, while the Tamuja and Guadiloba run through both districts. Trujillo's jurisdiction included the Búrdalo and the Magasca. Ponds and reservoirs served as places for watering cattle or washing wool. Two ponds in Cáceres's tierra- the Berrueco near Malpartida and the Ancho near Arroyo del Puerco-were lavaderos (places for washing wool); and within the city's dehesa (pasture) of Zafra, near the towns of Torreorgaz and Aldea del Cano, lay the Generala where cattle were watered. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ In Trujillo's district the reservoir of San Lázaro served the same purpose [33] and also was used to breed fish (tencas). The city had another reservoir, La Albuhera, built in the early 1570s on the road south to La Cumbre and Mérida. Construction took place under the supervision of the stonecutter and architect Francisco Becerra and the maestro de aguas Juan García Tripa. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

Spanish society of this period is often described as corporate. Individuals belonged to a variety of social, religious, economic, and governmental entities and associations which served or sought to express and guarantee collective needs and interests. The secular clergy had their cabildo or council, lay people their cofradías, which were as much social service or even political as religious organizations, and artisans had their associations to regulate the practice of trades. Hidalgos and commoners were recognized as distinct groups with their own interests and representatives, and the sesmero was the representative for the towns of the cities' districts. Of all these local institutions and associations, by far the most powerful was the ayuntamiento, the city or town council. The council directly or indirectly affected the functioning of other corporations, supervising (although rarely interfering with) the trade associations, deliberating upon the petitions of the sesmero or the alcaldes of the hidalgos or pecheros (taxpayers), and at times involving itself in the conduct of religious life. The council entered directly into many aspects of local life-the economy, religion, social welfare and charity, education-largely because of the nature of society itself in which all these spheres overlapped.

A combination of historical factors endowed the ayuntamiento with considerable power. First, despite the fact that the election and composition of the council were controlled locally, the ayuntamiento was a royal institution, established by the fuero (set of rights) given the cities after the reconquest. The council represented the intersection of royal and local power and interests. Regulated by royal ordinances, the council implemented royal directives, collecting normal and extraordinary taxes and producing military levies; even the salaries paid to local officials were tied to royal ordinances. The demands and limitations of the monarchy constrained the actions and authority of the council; but at the same time the ayuntamiento's ties to the [34] crown strengthened its hold over local society. Second, the council could exercise power at least in part because of its wealth. Substantial holdings in lands and rents-the propios of the city-gave the council the economic means to implement decisions. The council's financial support for a hospital or construction of a new church, for example, could be crucial. Last, the composition of the council, whose members were among the wealthiest and most important local nobles, reinforced the power and prestige of the institution. The council served as a vehicle for the expression of the interests of the nobility, and the nobility dominated local society by virtue of their economic and political power and social position.

The composition of the councils varied somewhat over the course of the sixteenth century, although the basic structure remained the same. The royally appointed corregidor served a term sufficiently short to preclude any substantial involvement in local affairs. He presided over deliberations and could overrule the decisions of the council members. An assistant (teniente de corregidor) assumed some of the corregidor's duties and presided in his absence. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ In the sixteenth century the councils of Cáceres and Trujillo functioned under the ordinances promulgated by Queen Isabella in the 1470s and confirmed by Charles V in the 1520s. The late fifteenth-century ordinances did not differ greatly from earlier ones; basically they revised and standardized some features. The ordinances provided for the election of twelve or thirteen regidores (councilmen) from the principal noble families; a regidor could not be a taxpayer or, in Cáceres, a "señor de vasallos." ⁽⁴⁷⁾ The seats on Trujillo's council were to be divided between the principal rival factions-half for the Altamiranos, half for the allied Bejaranos and Añascos. In theory these were distinct lineages and kinship groups; but in fact by the sixteenth century the Bejaranos had faded from importance, the surname "Añasco" as such had disappeared altogether, and a number of the important families represented on the council cannot be assigned with certainty to one or the other of the original groups. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ Similarly although it has been suggested that the regimientos of Cáceres's council were divided between Castilians and Leonese, by the sixteenth century the distinctions between the groups doubtless had blurred, and they no longer constituted separate and exclusive categories.

Because Cáceres's council in the sixteenth century was smaller [35] and more stable in its membership than Trujillo's, it is easier to describe how it functioned. The council saw to its day-to-day responsibilities by selecting a sort of rotating executive committee each month of four regidores who took care of routine business. The councils employed a large number of officials, usually on an annual basis, and in Cáceres each regidor was responsible for nominating individuals to fill certain offices. Approval generally came automatically, but occasionally disagreement among the regidores or with the corregidor, either over the nature of an office or the person nominated to fill it, disrupted the proceedings. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

The councils employed a range of officials, from doctors and lawyers to chaplains, musicians, constables, guards for the dehesas and montes, and a variety of artisans; they also appointed the alcaldes of the hidalgos and pecheros. The small salaries allotted to many officials suggest that they worked only part-time for the city. The artisans employed by the ayuntamiento included people who made arms and other items for military or ceremonial use. They received annual salaries ranging from 2000 to 6000 maravedís. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ The councils also employed artisans to take charge of various public works; the alarife was responsible for repairs of public buildings, fountains, and streets. A key employee was the mayordomo, who administered the city's funds; in Cáceres a merchant usually filled this position and received an annual salary of 30,000 maravedís. ⁽⁵¹⁾ Ecclesiastics also worked for the municipality. The ayuntamiento of Cáceres paid a chaplain 8000 maravedís annually to say mass for the council and the prisoners in jail, and Trujillo paid a maestro de capilla 25,000 maravedís a year. ⁽⁵²⁾

Education was a continual concern of the ayuntamientos, which frequently experienced problems in locating and retaining Latin instructors (preceptor de gramática). In 1528 Trujillo's council spent 100,000 maravedís on a house to be used as a grammar school and residence for the preceptor. ⁽⁵³⁾ In 1571 Cáceres's council hired a man from Salamanca at 21,000 maravedís a year and gave him 4 ducados to cover his moving expenses. In the 1570s conflicts arose between Cáceres's preceptor and some of the clergy, such as Bachiller Ojalvo, who also were accepting students. The preceptor, who was supposed to have a monopoly over Latin instruction, threatened to quit if the competition continued. One of the regidores went to the bishop to ask him to order the priests to desist from teaching. But the [36] following year the preceptor complained that students were abandoning his house to study with Alonso Gómez, and the council worried that if they could not enforce the terms of their contract, would lose their credibility along with their Latin teacher. In 1578, Cáceres's cátedra de gramática was vacant once again; the council advertised in Salamanca, Alcántara, Alcalá, and other places for a teacher to be paid 30,000 maravedís a year. But several months passed before they hired someone from Alcalá, who apparently stayed only a short while; in 1579 a new preceptor, Bachiller Alonso Fernández, who had taught previously in Montánchez in the city. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

Trujillo might have experienced fewer difficulties in retaining teachers because it paid them better; salaries there rose steadily from 37,500 maravedís in the 1550s to 75,000 in 1579. Even so, Trujillo's council also at times seems to have become rather desperate in its search for that elusive commodity, a Latin instructor would come and stay. In January 1558 one of the regidores wrote to Fray Felipe de Meneses (a native of Trujillo and professor at Alcalá) asking him to send a preceptor for at least a year (preferably three) declaring they would accept without conditions or oposiciones (the system of competitive examination) whomever he sent. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the cities offered meager attractions in the realm of education and intellectual lift. In 1574 Cáceres's council had to make a contract with a bookseller in Salamanca, offering a salary of 6000 maravedís a year to induce him to come to the city for three years "with his books and trade." ⁽⁵⁶⁾ Toward the end of the century, however, both cities seem to made some progress in education. From at least 1569 Trujillo employed a primary school teacher, who received 10,000 maravedís a year in 1599, to teach children to "read, write and count." ⁽⁵⁷⁾ More formal institutions of secondary or higher education took shape both cities. In 1579 the bishop of Coria decided to establish a seminary in Cáceres, supported in part by the diocese and in part by the city, which was to provide a site for the future school continue to employ a preceptor. In the early seventeenth century Philip III authorized the creation of a "cátedra en artes y estudios" in Trujillo's convent of the Encarnación. ⁽⁵⁸⁾

The ayuntamientos supervised and supported a range of social services, retaining physicians, surgeons, midwives, and sometimes [37] pharmacists on salary. The ayuntamiento was responsible for the quality of medical care dispensed by practitioners and hospitals. In September 1553 Cáceres's council put a stop to the activities of Diego Genio, a barber who had seriously injured several persons while bleeding them because he was getting old and his hands shook. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ Hospitals, which were more shelters for the sick and homeless than they were places of treatment, usually drew their support from a combination of sources, including the city. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ During times of crisis (famine, epidemics) the councils dispensed additional funds to the hospitals.

The role of the ayuntamiento in law enforcement does not emerge very clearly from the records. Crime and disorder within the city itself doubtless came within its purview, while the hermandad maintained law and order in the countryside, and royal constables and officials dealt with matters that were not strictly local. The local law enforcement establishment could not have been very large or complex, probably consisting of a few constables, a jailer, and an executioner. While violent crime was not at all uncommon, criminal cases and complaints frequently were settled out of court. The city jail served mainly for short-term internments, as prisoners awaited trial, release, or execution. In 1572, for example, the corregidor of Cáceres, Dr. Espinosa, responding to a royal directive instructing the cities to hand over any prisoners sentenced to the galleys, found that there were none in Cáceres. In fact only one man, an accused thief whose case was still pending, was in jail. A morisco accused of seriously injuring another man by throwing him off a wall had not been arrested because he had taken refuge in the parish church of Santa María. For alleged blasphemies the suspect subsequently had been turned over to the Inquisition in Llerena. ⁽⁶¹⁾ Regulation of the marketplace and protection of the use and access to public and municipal resources (pastures, woodlands) doubtless were more important law enforcement activities and concerns of the city council than were prevention and prosecution of personal crimes as such.

Religion played an important and complex role in local society. Ecclesiastical institutions such as parish churches with their secular [38] clergy, monasteries, and convents formed the core of the local religious establishment but did not monopolize religious life, which also depended to a great extent on lay initiative and participation. The laity organized and supported cofradías, charitable works, and numerous shrines (hermitas) in the city and countryside. The municipality also was closely intertwined with the religious establishment, not only contributing financially to the establishment and upkeep of churches, monasteries, and hospitals but also intervening directly in some aspects of religious observance and practice. Trujillo's council employed someone "who will teach the catechism," and in 1575 the regidores of Cáceres noted a shortage of preachers (predicadores) in the city, which they thought was affecting the religious instruction of the populace. One regidor suggested that they not contribute to any monastery that failed to provide a preacher, and the council instructed one of its members to talk to the guardian of San Francisco to "remedy" the situation and also to consult with the bishop on the matter. ⁽⁶²⁾

The councils organized all kinds of processions, responsibility for which usually devolved upon the regular and secular clergy; cofradías and members of different trades often participated formally as well. The purpose of the processions could range from celebration of Philip II's victory over the Turks at Lepanto (1571) to religious observances to entreaties for good weather in times of heavy rain or good health in face of rumored or actual epidemics. The councils supervised the conduct of fiestas, procuring bulls, and seeing to the construction of barricades in the plaza for the holidays that featured bulls. For Corpus Christi the councils would instruct city residents who lived along the procession's route to hang out tapestries and "make altars" and hire troupes of players to perform miracle plays and short farces. ⁽⁶³⁾

Churches, monasteries, and shrines filled the cities. Cáceres had four parish churches and Trujillo six, as well as the archpriestal church of Santa María la Mayor. Both cities were headquarters for archpriests, a sign of their importance within their dioceses. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ Cáceres had two monasteries and two convents and Trujillo two monasteries and a total of six convents in the sixteenth century. During the sixteenth century the religious establishment felt the impact of some of the forces creating changes throughout local society. Demographic growth and shifts in the distribution of population [39] meant that some parishes (like San Martín on Trujillo's plaza) would grow whereas others (like the old church of Vera Cruz) languished. New infusions of wealth funded the construction and elaboration of sacristies, chapels, and hospitals. Francisco de Chaves, a native of Trujillo who died in Arequipa (Peru) in 1570, willed 2000 pesos for the establishment of a capellanía (chantry) in Trujillo's church of San Martín and construction of an altar to the Immaculate Conception. Francisco de Godoy, a returnee from Peru to Cáceres, purchased the upper and lower sacristy of the church of Santa María for 600 ducados in 1560 and established a capellanía in the church in his will of 1564, naming one of his sons as chaplain. The church's council had auctioned off the sacristy to raise money for "a very sumptuous and costly altarpiece" they were building. ⁽⁶⁵⁾

The patronage of the crown, municipality, and individuals was crucial to religious institutions; the religious establishment was expensive. The monastery of San Francisco in Trujillo owed its establishment to Queen Isabella, who in 1501 instructed the city to donate 50,000 maravedís for the purchase of the site for the church and garden. The monastery's expansion reached a peak in the 1560s, when the council, with royal authorization, donated over 5700 ducados. The ayuntamiento was the patron of the monastery's church and spent some 600 ducados in the 1590s for the construction of the choir loft and other items for a new church that opened in 1600. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ Given the rapid expansion of the religious establishment in the sixteenth century, it is not surprising that a proposal in 1590 to found a Mercedarian monastery in Trujillo encountered considerable opposition. Members of the city council pointed out that similar petitions from the Jesuits and Franciscan Descalceds had been rejected because the city could not support any more religious houses. The debate carried into the seventeenth century. Finally, in 1602, with the patronage and financial backing of the Pizarro family (don Francisco Pizarro, son of Hernando and doña Francisca Pizarro, became the patron), the Mercedarians secured the council's approval to establish a monastery in Trujillo. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

Cofradías were active in the sixteenth century. The exclusively hidalgo cofradía of Espíritu Santo in Trujillo supported the hospital of that name, in part through the rental of pastures. ⁽⁶⁸⁾ The cofradía [40] de la Caridad, which accepted members from all social classes, began construction of a hospital in Trujillo in 1578. Gonzalo de Sanabria contributed over100 ducados to the project, and the ayuntamiento provided 300 ducados in the 1580's. The cofradía of San Lázaro and San Blas supported the shrine and leprosarium of San Lázaro, and the cofradía de Nuestra Señora de la Piedad the shrine of the Virgen de la Piedad built in 1500. Another cofradía of hidalgos, dedicated to San Martín and the annual observance of his saint's day on November 11, included among its statutes the obligation to come to the defense of the city if necessary "to favor justice and everything else for the good, peace and tranquility of the city and its commonwealth. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ Thus cofradías fulfilled a number of social functions, acting as exclusive associations for people of a similar social background (hidalgos, members of a particular trade) or as vehicles for integrating individuals from a range of social groups and both sexes. The cofradías, which operated independently of the clerical establishment (priests could join but enjoyed no special status), encouraged active lay participation in religious life and charitable institutions while providing social services for their members; cofradías generally made the arrangements for the funeral and burial of members and often assisted the deceased's family as well. Furthermore, since membership fees were fairly low, the cofradías were accessible to people from many levels of society.

The obras pías or charitable works founded by individuals took a number of forms, such as dowries for poor or orphaned young women or clothes for the poor. The wealthy archpriest don Juan Pizarro, long a dominant figure in Trujillo's ecclesiastical establishment, is said to have founded numerous charities, providing money for students, dowries for poor women, food and clothing for the poor, care for abandoned children, and ransoms to redeem captives. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ The specific terms of an obra pía often reflected the personal loyalties and interests of the founder. Francisco de Chaves, who died in Arequipa, in addition to the 2000 pesos he sent to Trujillo for the capellanía-patronage of which he willed to the city-also designated 500 pesos for charitable works. Of the total, l00 pesos were to go to the city's hospitals, 100 to the poor of the parish of San Martín, and 300 to help marry three poor young women, with preference given to the servants of his sister Francisca de Chaves or to relatives. ⁽⁷¹⁾

The society of the sixteenth-century cities of Cáceres and Trujillo and their region had its historical roots in the period following the reconquest. Apart from basic environmental and economic patterns (sites of settlement, the mix of pastoralism and agriculture that formed the economic base of the region), the region's modern history began in the thirteenth century, although development there of course was tied to historical developments earlier and elsewhere in the Iberian peninsula. In a sense, then, society in the sixteenth century was relatively new and in its two hundred to three hundred years of existence had experienced considerable development and change. By 1500 the great military orders had reached the peak of their expansion and power and had begun to feel the effects of the extension of royal authority; the small but thriving Jewish communities had been eliminated, although very likely at least a part remained and continued to play a role in commercial and professional life; and the origins of the wealthy and conservative local nobility could be traced to some time within the preceding couple of centuries. Movement characterized all levels of society; people moved around, into, and out of the region. The fortunes of families rose and fell. Nonetheless sixteenth-century society was fundamentally traditional. The basic way of life and means of making a livelihood changed but little over the centuries. The majority of people worked the land and devoted most of their time and energy to providing themselves and their families with the basic necessities of life. Wealthy nobles employed large numbers of servants and slaves because the maintenance of large households and estates required considerable amounts of human labor.

Society was hierarchical, divided into ranks or orders, conditioned by authority and dependent upon habits of deference. Yet while the gap between wealthy and poor, noble and commoner was wide, it was scarcely unbridgeable. The various groups were bound by socioeconomic relations and even kinship ties; they shared a common environment and collectively formed the "república" or commonwealth. The maintenance of the social order depended to a great extent on the collective recognition of the rights and duties of the many corporations that overlapped and sometimes competed within the hierarchical structure. Social contact, work relations, [42] and residence patterns all fostered a high degree of familiarity among people from all levels of society. This familiarity stemmed at least in part from the relatively small size of the cities and towns; up and down the social ranks people knew of and about one another, saw one another in the plaza or marketplace, belonged to the same cofradías.

Familiarity, common membership in the república, and Christian ideals created a kind of moral equality or classlessness. An individual merited regard and respect by adhering to and exemplifying the ideals and norms of behavior associated with his or her rank and occupation; in historical documents one encounters such standard types as the honorable farmer ("labrador honrado"), the good taxpayers ("los hombres buenos pecheros"), the virtuous or humble poor ("pobres virtuosos" or "avergonzantes"), as well as the brave and generous noble. Certainly one might argue that such epithets were purely formulaic; yet the very fact that they existed as formulas reflects a perception of the social order that ascribed to each group and rank its particular qualities, rights, and duties.

This sense of moral (as opposed to social, economic, or political) equality sheds a different light on the old cliche of ostensible Spanish contempt for manual labor. Manual labor in itself did not engender contempt, although earning one's living by this means was not compatible with the behavior and ideals to which the nobility aspired. But even at the level of hidalgos and nobles there is room for doubt that manual labor was held in universal disdain. The towns and villages of the cities' districts were filled with hidalgo-labradores; and in the suits or petitions for hidalguía (noble status) of that period, the question of the performance of manual labor never surfaced, leading one to believe it would not be a stigma in achieving status. And given the nobility's enthusiasm for physical pastimes and the amount of time they spent on their rural estates, it is hard to imagine that nobles did not know a great deal about agricultural routines. The Hinojosas, uncle and nephew in sixteenth-century Trujillo who compiled a chronicle of some of the city's hidalgos, wrote that one of their ancestors, Diego de Hinojosa, el viejo, in his old age cultivated a garden in the country outside the city for reasons of exercise; the observation was in no way negative. ⁽⁷²⁾ The perceived incompatibility of work with privileged status was relative, not absolute. [43] The adaptability and flexibility of early modern Spanish society are factors that are often overlooked, particularly when viewed from the perspective of contact with the peoples of the New World; yet those qualities made it possible for Spanish society to absorb and integrate change while maintaining its stability and structures intact. Study of the participation in and impact of the Indies enterprise affords an almost ideal vehicle for examining the question of adaptability. The Indies meant, above all, new infusions of wealth. The effects of this wealth could be incremental or largely indirect, as probably was true for Cáceres; but in Trujillo the wealth of the Indies had repercussions that reverberated for years. By the middle of the sixteenth century Trujillo's city council, previously dominated by the noble families, included five returnees from Peru (all of them men who had shared in the division of treasure at Cajamarca in 1532); at least three of these returnees were from middle level hidalgo families at best, and one-Alonso Ruiz-was not even a native of Trujillo. The wealthy returnees to Trujillo, whose families became perhaps the wealthiest in the city, intermarried, built huge houses, and bought up the villages that the crown put on sale in the 1550s. The kind of wealth the early returnees had at their disposal, the large numbers of trujillanos who followed their successful predecessors to Peru, the connections people in America maintained with people at home, all meant that the impact of the Indies was far from limited. Yet Trujillo's society remained stable; it was flexible enough to absorb the impact of the Indies and retain its structures essentially intact.

The question of adaptability also bears on the conquest and settlement of the New World. The conquest is often pictured in terms of Spanish rigidity and fanaticism, the ethnocentric drive to dominate cultures and societies deemed inferior. Yet the ability to absorb and subsume difference was fundamental to the success of the whole colonial enterprise. Certainly fanaticism and militarism were underlying factors of the reconquista as well, but it must be recalled that the centuries of reconquest produced not only conflict but the unique pattern of convivencia, in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in relative tolerance and learned from and influenced one another. The Spaniards who went to the New World were heirs to the traditions of both conquest and convivencia.
 

1. Eugenio García Zarza, Evolución, estructura y otros aspectos de la población cacereña (Badajoz, 1977), 50 writes "la extensa comarca cacereño-trujillana es la que mejor encarna el severo y grandioso paisaje extremeño."

2. García Zarza, Población cacereña, 41. See also Gonzalo Martínez, SI., Las comunidades de villa y tierra de la Extremeña Castellana (Madrid, 1983), 658.

3. Antonio C. Floriano, Estudios de historia de Cáceres, 1 (Oviedo, 1957): 53, 58.

4. Floriano, Estudios, 1:72; Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 447; a Roman burial site was found behind the castle.

5. Floriano, Estudios, 1: 44, 68, 77, 98-99.

6. Ibid., pp. 165, 167; García Zarza, Población cacereña, 39-40; Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 15. Martínez, Las comunidades, 661 says that the orders of Santiago and Calatrava and the militia of Plasencia played an important role in the reconquest of Trujillo under Fernando III el Santo. The key town of Santa Cruz was reconquered in 1234.

7. In principle Cáceres was within the lands of León and Trujillo belonged to Castile, and therefore each should have been settled accordingly; see García Zarza, Población cacereña, 41. In reality, however, given the difficulties of reoccupying such a large region, probably virtually anyone willing to come could settle wherever.

8. Ibid., 40-42.

9. Floriano, Estudios, 2: 53; he writes that Jews were coming to settle in Cáceres from the late thirteenth century. For the Jewish community in Trujillo, see Haim Beinart, Trujillo. A Jewish Community in Extremadura on the Eve of the Expulsion from Spain (Jerusalem, 1980).

10. Miguel Muñoz de San Pedro, Extremadura: La tierra en la que nacían los dioses (Cáceres, 1981), 33-34.

11. Floriano, Estudios, 1: 126, 149, 171.

12. See Miguel Muñoz de San Pedro, La Extremadura del siglo XV en tres de sus paladines (Madrid, 1964) for the careers of Gutierre de Sotomayor, Francisco de Hinojosa, Captain Diego de Ovando de Cáceres, and other men from Cáceres and Trujillo.

13. Simón Benito Boxoyo, Historia de Cáceres y su patrona (Cáceres, 1952), 124-125. For a critical discussion of the earliest manuscripts and interpretation of the legend, see Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcoatl y Guadalupe: La formación de la conciencia de Méxco (Mexico, 1977), 304-407.

14. Lafaye, Quetzalcoatl y Guadalupe, 309-310 points out the connections between the important Jeronymite monasteries and the Spanish crown. Monks from San Bartolomé de Lupiana founded the Jeronymite monastery at Guadalupe, and subsequently members of the Guadalupe monastery went to Yuste (founded 1408) and the Escorial (sixteenth century), the prior of Guadalupe himself went to the Escorial. The monastery also had connections with the Indies from the start. The royal capitulaciones granted Columbus were signed there, and on his return the first Indians brought to Spain were baptized there (see p. 311).

15. See Muñoz de San Pedro, La Extremadura del siglo XV, 258,269, 298. Captain Diego did not actually ally himself with the Catholic monarchs until Isabella's brother Henry died in 1474, and he only handed over the fortress of Benquerencia in 1480. Two years later he received 250,000 maravedís in juros from the crown, subsequently the basis of the family entail. His son Nicolás de Ovando succeeded him as Comendador de Lares of the Order of Alcántara (Captain Diego de Ovando had accepted the encomienda of Lares in exchange for giving up the fortress). In 1502 King Ferdinand appointed Frey Nicolás de Ovando governor of the island of Hispaniola. Sancho de Paredes's descendants also upheld the tradition of service to the crown. One of his grandsons, don Alvaro de Sande, became a high-ranking military officer and eventually the marqués de Piobera. In 1535 the Emperor Charles V's brother Ferdinand wrote to Sancho de Paredes in Cáceres in response to the letter that Sancho had sent with his grandson don Alvaro when he went to the Habsburg court. The German Habsburgs later played a key part in arranging Sande's ransom from the Turks in the 1560s; see Boxoyo, Historia de Cáceres, 47-48 and Huberto Foglietta, Vida de don Alvaro de Sande, with notes by Miguel Angel Orti Belmonte (Madrid, 1962), 88 (notes on book 1). The Chaves family also maintained the royal connection. A great-great-grandson of Luis de Chaves, el viejo, Juan de Chaves, accompanied the queens of Portugal and Hungary (sisters of Charles V ) when they traveled through Extremadura in 1558; see Miguel Muñoz de San Pedro, cd., Crónicas trujillanas del siglo XVI (Hinojosa manuscript) (Cáceres, 1952), xxx, 138.

16. Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 17 writes that one or the other or both visited Trujillo seven times between June 1477 and August 1479; Isabella spent a total of nine months in the city. Ferdinand in fact died in the village of Madrigalejo (in Trujillo's district) in January 1516, in a house owned by the monastery of Guadalupe.

17. Archivo Municipal de Trujillo García de Sanabria A-1-1. (Hereafter cited as AMT.)

18. AMT Francisco Enríquez A-1-5-1.

19. Changes in the status of a town or village did modify the use of the term. People often continued to refer to towns like Berzocana and Cañamero that became independent in the sixteenth century as being in Trujillo's tierra (in fact, even after they became independent Trujillo continued to exercise certain kinds of jurisdictional functions, such as summoning people for military levies). Furthermore, certain places like Orellana la Vieja that were under señorial jurisdiction had longstanding and close ties with Trujillo because they belonged to noble families of the city and for most intents they were considered to be part of the city's tierra.

20. Juan Pérez de Tudela, cd., Documentos relativos a don Pedro de la Gasca y a Gonzalo Pizarro, 1 (Madrid, 1964): 80.

21. AMT 1584: IX-8.

22. David E. Vassberg, Land and Society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge, 1984), 62. The agreement included the right to graze pigs during the acorn season but excluded hunting, fishing, or cutting wood in the montes.

23. AMT Pedro de Carmona B-1-23.

24. Archivo General de Indias (Hereafter cited as AGI.) Indif. General 2083.

25. In the sixteenth century there actually were two types of censos; Vassberg, Land and Society, 205 defines a censo as a "contract involving an annual payment." The "censo al quitar" was essentially a mortgage on property in which the principal was redeemable. The other type, the "censo enfitéutico" was really a quitrent or agricultural lease that usually was long term, staying in families over generations. For discussion of these two types of censos, see Vassberg, Land and Society, 94-95 and 205-207.

26. Julius Klein, The Mesta: A Study in Spanish Economic History, 1273-1836 (Cambridge, Mass., 1920), 332-333. Klein did not list all the towns that protested, so it is not clear if Trujillo participated.

27. Henry IV in the fifteenth century also granted Trujillo a mercado franco, but the privilege lapsed under Ferdinand and Isabella.

28. AMT Pedro de Carmona B-1-23.

29. Calculations of the cities' populations in the sixteenth century vary a great deal, according to the source, and further variations result from the use of different multipliers (usually 4.5 or 5.0), see Vicente Pérez Moreda, "El crecimiento demográfico español en el siglo XVI," in Jerónimo Zurita. Su época y su escuela (Zaragoza, 1986), 62-64 for discussion of coefficients. He suggests that 4.0 may be preferable to 4.5. For population figures for Cáceres and Trujillo, see Jean-Paul LeFlem, "Cáceres, Plasencia y Trujillo en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI (1557-1596)" Cuadernos de historia de España 45-46 (1967): 248-299. Angel Rodríguez Sánchez, Cáceres: población y comportamientos demográficos en el siglo XVI (Cáceres, 1977), 53 says censuses for Cáceres listed 1401 vecinos in 1557, 1471 in 1561, 1463 in 1584, 1547 in 1586, and 1647 in 1595. For population figures, see also Historia de Extremadura, 9 vols. (Badajoz, 1983), 3: 486; and Annie Molinié-Bertrand, "Contributions a l'étude de la société rurale dans la province de Trujillo au XVIe siécle," Mélanges offerts a Charles Vincent Aubrun, 2 vols. (Paris, 1972), 2: 128. While the exact figures cannot be established, it is clear that at midcentury the cities had between 6000 and 9000 inhabitants and that Trujillo was somewhat larger than Cáceres.

30. In 1532 something less than half the district's taxpaying population were vecinos of Cáceres itself-854 out of 1896 taxpayers; see Jose Luis Pereira Iglesias, "Atraso económico, régimen señorial y economía deficitaria en Cáceres durante el siglo XVI" (Memorial de licenciatura, Universidad de Extremadura, 1977), 148.

31. See LeFlem, "Cáceres, Plasencia y Trujillo," 254-255. For the most recent work on population levels and growth in the period, see Annie Molinié-Bertrand, Au siécle d'or: l'Espagne et ses hommnes: La population du royaume de Castille au XVIe siécle (Paris, 1985). Urban populations especially were growing rapidly in this period. She calculates, for example, that Burgos grew 192 percent, to 20,000 inhabitants, in the period from 1528 to 1561 (p. 135). Rates of growth in Castile's towns and cities, however, were far from uniform.

32. The status "ciudad," which the crown conceded to Trujillo in the fifteenth century, was a legal distinction that seems to have been mainly honorific. Madrid, for example, remained a "villa" even after it became Spain's capital.

33. Archivo General de Simancas Expedientes Hacienda 189-56 (hereafter cited as AGS); Exped. Hac. 66; Exped. Hac. 906. Generally the number of vecinos indicates the number of households; see note 29 above on multipliers.

34. AGS Exped. Hac. 189-56, Exped. Hac. 66.

35. Clodoaldo Naranjo Alonso, Solar de conquistadores. Trujillo, sus hijos y monumentos (Serradilla, Cáceres, 1929),280-281. Cañamero and Berzocana, each with over 400 vecinos, purchased their independence from the crown in 1538 for 6000 ducados each.

36. According to Naranjo Alonso, Solar de conquistadores, 289, in 1585 Trujillo still held Herguijuela, Zarza (later Conquista), Zorita, Logrosán, Navalvillar, Madrigalejo, Campo, Alcollarín, Santa Cruz, Abertura, Escurial, Búrdalo (later Villamesías), Santa Ana, Ibahernando, and Robledillo. In the early seventeenth century Trujillo was ordered to sell Zarza, Herguijuela, Santa Cruz, Escurial, Búrdalo, Ruanes and Santa Ana (see p. 304). Martínez, Las comunidades, 661-662 lists a total of thirty-six pueblos that were once part of Trujillo's término.

37. See Archivo Municípal de Cáceres Libros de Acuerdo del Consejo, March 1554 (hereafter cited as AMC), and AGS Exped. Hacienda 240. The council maintained that it was only seven or eight related vecinos ("de una parentela") of Casar who were campaigning for independence for their own particular interests. Gonzalo Ulloa de Carvajal bought Torreorgaz in 1559; see Historia de Extremadura, 3: 440.

38. Pascual Madoz, Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar, 3d. ed. (Madrid, 1848-1850), 6: 35-36; Pedro Ulloa Golfin, Privilegios y documentos relativos a la ciudad de Cáceres. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Ms. 430 (18?) fols. 72-77.

39. See AGS Exped. Hac. 66, "primeramente decimos que este dicho lugar no tiene tierras ni los arrenda porque se las toma la villa de Cáceres como cabecera."

40. See Carmelo Solís Rodríguez, "El arquitecto Francisco Becerra: Su etapa extremeña," Revista de Estudios Extremeños 29 (1973):333.

41. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1580; AMT Libros de Acuerdo 1580.

42. AGS Exped. Hac. 189-56. Nearly 60 percent of Herguijuela's vecinos had vineyards as well, for a total of about thirty hectares; see Historia de Extremadura, 3: 598.

43. Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Granada (hereafter cited as ARCG) 511-2284-8.

44. Madoz, Diccionario, 5: 86, 87.

45. Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 123, 563-564. Solís Rodríguez, "Francisco Becerra," 330.

46. The usual term of office for the corregidor was one or two years in the sixteenth century, and the practice of changing corregidors frequently seems to have been strictly observed. Benjamin González Alonso, El corregidor castellano (1348-1808) (Madrid, 1970), 140,160 says that corregidors were nobles and tenientes were always letrados. If the corregidor was not himself a letrado, the teniente routinely performed the judicial functions of the office At least one corregidor, Pedro Riquelme de Villavicencio, served both in Trujillo (1566-?) and Cáceres (term ended in 1570). The origins and development of the institution in the Middle Ages have been studied by Agustín Bermúdez Aznar, El corregidor en Castilla durante la Baja Edad Media (1348-1474) (Murcia, 1974). Cáceres had a "juez del rey" by 1345 and was one of fifteen cities in Castile that had a corregidor under Henry III (see p. 54, map, p. 64) and apparently continuously throughout the fifteenth century. Trujillo had a corregidor by 1480, and only three other cities in Extremadura had corregidors in the sixteenth century (Plasencia. Badajoz, and Mérida until 1520, Jerez de los Caballeros after 1520), see Historia de Extremadura, 3: 423.

47. Antonio C. Floriano, La villa de Cáceres y la Reina Católica: Ordenanzas que a Cáceres dio la Reina Doña Isabel Primera de Castilla (Cáceres, 1917), 36; Naranjo Alonso, Solar de conquistadores, 118. I have not seen a copy of Trujillo's fifteenth-century ordinances, but it is clear from the city council records that the señores de vasallos were not barred from serving on its council as was true in Cáceres.

48. See Carmen Fernández-Daza Alvear, "Linajes trujillanos y cargos concejiles en el siglo XV," in La ciudad hispánica durante los siglos XIII al XVI (Madrid, 1985), 419-432. She writes (p. 429) that Charles V curtailed the existing system of election to city council offices in 1544 because of the disturbances and factionalism that arose and made the thirteen regimientos proprietary offices. This change doubtless paved the way for the wealthy returnees from Peru to gain municipal office.

49. See AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1555 or AMT Actas 1558 for examples of disagreements between the corregidor and regidores of the cities.

50. See Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 208, 216, 218, 323. In Trujillo a gunsmith was employed for six years at an annual salary of 6000 maravedís, a harnessmaker in 1585 for 4000 maravedís and eight fanegas of wheat; an esparto grass weaver for 2000 maravedís in 1563, see AMT 1-2-70-101, 1-3-78-1.

51. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1574. The "mayordomo de propios y rentas" in Trujillo received 17,000 maravedís in 1564 and 24,000 maravedís in 1584; AMT 1-2-70-92.

52. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1575; AMT 1-2-70-74; 1-3-78-1; 1-2-70-90, 1-2-70-64.

53. Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 278.

54. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1553, 1571, 1575, 1578, 1579.

55. AMT 1-3-78-1, 1-2-70-44, 1-2-70-34; AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1558.

56. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1574.

57. AMT 1-2-70-92, 1-2-70-136; it also paid an "algebrista" 3000 maravedís in the 1570s and 1580s; see AMT 1-2-70- 103 and others.

58. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1579; Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 21.

59. AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1575.

60. Trujillo's council gave the Hospital of Santa Lucía 50 ducados in 1564 and contributed 300 ducados to the construction of the Hospital of Espíritu Santo in 1591; see Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 289, 112.

61. AGS Diversos de Castilla 28, no. 1.

62. AMT 1-2-70-90; AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1575.

63. In November 1576 Trujillo's council made a contract with Juan Granado, vecino of Baeza and "author of comedies," for 130 ducados; Granado's wife was one of the players. The council spent 60,000 maravedís for Corpus Christi in 1565 and in 1587 obtained royal authorization to spend 300 ducados a year for the next six years to celebrate the holiday; see AMT 1-20-70-58 and Libros de Acuerdo 1576; see also AMC Libros de Acuerdo 1577.

64. The arciprestazgo included a group of parishes and usually coincided with the district of a city ("comunidad de villa y tierra"). But the label was not just administrative, since the arciprestazgo functioned with some independence with respect to the authority of the bishop, and the archpriest worked with the bishop in the planning and convocation of synods and diocesan councils; see Historia de Extremadura, 3: 428.

65. AMT 1585:1-7; Archivo del Conde de Canilleros (hereafter cited as ACC), Casa de Hernando de Ovando (HO), leg. 4, no. 47; Archivo Histórico Provincial de Cáceres Diego Pacheco 4113 (Godoy's will) (hereafter cited as AHPC).

66. Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 170-175.

67. See Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 94-106 for the complicated debates and maneuvers that resulted in the establishment of this monastery.

68. In 1551 Pedro de Sosa, alcalde of the cofradía, rented out part of the dehesa of Cañadas de Orellana for three years at 14,200 maravedís a year; see AMT García de Sanabria A-l-1. In 1578 Francisco de Herrera, as the cofradía's mayordomo, rented half the estate of Cabeza de la Sal to two vecinos of La Cumbre for11,000 a year; see AMT Pedro de Carmona B-123. See also Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 112.

69. Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 149,150, 118, 311.

70. Naranjo Alonso, Solar de conquistadores, 504. Don Juan Pizarro Carvajal, who died in1580, was a graduate of Salamanca who had spent time in Rome.

71. AMT 1585: 1-7.

72. Muñoz de San Pedro, Crónicas trujillanas, 80.