[143] As a major political capital, Madrid was the center of a variety of fields of influence that linked the city to both interior and maritime economic worlds. Madrid contained an important nucleus of demand consisting of a large population of poor and unskilled people and a small wealthy elite. The poor could buy only a limited range of staples, the wealthy tended to enrich their life-style by importing goods from afar. Elite prosperity brought expansion which, because of the nature of the rural economy, meant increasingly unstable urban food supplies, declining urban real wages, and a narrowing of the range of goods that the poor could buy from the hinterland. At the same time, the wealth of the elite that was not used to acquire services and palaces was used to buy luxuries from distant sources. This situation contributed to the collapse of Castile's sixteenth-century market economy after 1600 and helped lock the interior into a rigid pattern of subsistence farming, wool production, and the wheat-wine-meat triad of monocultures. This structure was little affected by urban growth in the eighteenth century; and the process went a step further when, in the nineteenth century, the capital shifted its demand for cheaper textiles to distant suppliers, undermining the textile industry that had been part of the rural economy for centuries.

Behind this dynamic relationship is the constant reality that Madrid did supply itself on a large scale from its Castilian hinterland. Having summarized the evolution of Madrid as a market, we must now examine the ways in which the capital city interacted with the rural world despite the lack of change that resulted. This implies a Castilian version of the urban "conquest of the soil" characteristic of other European cities. ⁽¹⁾ These "conquests" involved [144] control of the collection and sometimes the production of rural surpluses for the urban market. They included various combinations of regulation, reorganization of land use, and changes in land ownership. In Spain, this "conquest" oriented rural economic interests to affairs in Madrid without greatly altering the structure of landowning and rural power. ⁽²⁾ This may reflect the fact that while the urban bourgeoisie bought into the rural economies surrounding many urban centers, there is not much evidence for it in Castile. There are some indications of the process around Ciudad Real, but urban life there was more an extension of rural society than the source of potentially significant change. ⁽³⁾

Nevertheless, links between urban supply and rural surpluses encouraged the interpenetration of rural and urban elites. Landed families that accumulated marketable commodities were drawn into urban supply, while the functionaries, contractors, and wholesalers who mobilized supplies were not averse to a "vertical integration" of their activities that extended their influence into rural life. Not until the nineteenth century did Castile witness the kind of large-scale transfer of land to ostensibly bourgeois hands that marked the seventeenth-century Venetian Terrafirma or the Parisian hinterland. Even then, it is an open question whether in the process the city conquered the countryside or the Castilian countryside confirmed its conquest of the Spanish capital. ⁽⁴⁾ Whatever the relationship of urban supply agents to the land, the elaboration of the supply system brought about a long-term restructuring of the urban network of Castile and of associated long-distance trade. In Part Two we will examine Madrid's conquest of the Castilian commodities trade and try to help explain why Madrid's impact on its hinterland did so little to orient agriculture to the market, compared with that of London or Barcelona. ⁽⁵⁾
 
I. Wheat and Bread
 
In common with most larger towns, Hapsburg Madrid possessed medieval señorial privileges that obligated the towns in its jurisdiction to provide bread to the city at regulated prices. The system was so detailed that quotas were [145] assigned to individual residents in each town, ⁽⁶⁾ and in the early eighteenth century this service obligation extended to towns 40-50 miles away. ⁽⁷⁾ Even so, it quickly became a minor part of the bread supply, and in the 1660's this pan de obligación provided only a tenth of Madrid's annual consumption. ⁽⁸⁾ The regulations of 1660 were still in force in 1739, however, and in 1765 the amount of bread provided was about the same, even though the system had supposedly been dismantled after the crisis of 1753. ⁽⁹⁾ When the system finally disappeared, after the grain trade was deregulated in 1765, it was succeeded by a dispute over access to the urban market--an indication that the system of obligación had created a permanent baking industry in several communities.

The early seventeenth century saw administered production supplemented by regulation of the price and transfer of both bread and wheat. The area of control varied with the quality of the harvest, but it tended to grow with the city. In the 1580's, bread and wheat embargoes occasionally extended as far as 45 miles; but after 1598, distances of 60-70 miles were common--in 1608 and 1631, the distances reached 80 and even 120 miles. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Authorities also began to set the price of bread in the villages at a lower level than in the capital. The distorting effects of these measures are clearly present in the covariations of regional price trends between 1590 and 1640. ⁽¹¹⁾ The towns of the region continually resisted this expansion of control, and by the 1630's deterioration of the regional economy had led to the exemption of many communities, and the system was becoming ineffective. ⁽¹²⁾

Meanwhile, Madrid developed an urban baking industry, capable by 1667 of producing over 1,000 fanegas of bread daily. ⁽¹³⁾ As the industry grew, authorities shifted attention to the wheat market and improvised a structure of [146] transportation controls and purchasing agents. The first third of the seventeenth century saw the rapid development of judicial protection for long-haul transport, combined with renewal of government power to preempt transport services. ⁽¹⁴⁾ In 1600 the city council, concerned about extreme price fluctuations and rural speculation in grain, also discussed using a single broker to coordinate purchases from various supply areas. ⁽¹⁵⁾ The proposal was not adopted, but private brokers were increasingly used to acquire e rain for the Madrid Pósito, laying the basis for an expanded role by that institution. As wheat controls evolved, the detailed regulation of regional bread prices fell into disuse. ⁽¹⁶⁾ When supplies were adequate the grain administration remained in the background and bakers bought their wheat privately from suppliers in the provinces of Madrid, Guadalajara, and Toledo. This private grain market remains shadowy, although there are eighteenth-century references to grain markets in Arévalo, Guadalajara, Talavera, Alcalá de Henares, Illescas, and Guadarrama. ⁽¹⁷⁾

Crops in New Castile were sensitive to the weather, and supplies disappeared quickly after a poor harvest. Consequently, as the city grew, the supply of pan de obligación and the private wheat market used by bakers were increasingly supplemented by the municipal grain depot, the Pósito. This climaxed in the crisis of 1630-31, when the Pósito handled over 1.5 million bushels of wheat, a two-year supply. ⁽¹⁸⁾ The Pósito obtained the grain through private contractors backed by a juez protector. The costs were initially subsidized by assessments and forced loans from the city's guilds, but by the 1660's they were a regular part of the fiscal structure of Crown and city. ⁽¹⁹⁾

Headed by a member of the city council, the Pósito in 1748 came under supervision of a new Junta de Abastos, which also acquired jurisdiction over beef, mutton, pork, olive oil, candles, fish, and charcoal. After the riots of 1766, the Junta was replaced by the Real Direcciónde Abastos, supervised by the city government. ⁽²⁰⁾ Between 1774 and 1799, this agency was run by Don [147] Manuel de Santa Clara, simultaneously a regidor of the Ayuntamiento and director of the Pósito. A good example of eighteenth-century bureaucracy, the Pósito now included a five-man Junta de Dirección, a five-man accounting office, three administrators, four receiving and dispatching officers, two measurers, and a corps of laborers to handle the grain. There was also an assortment of guards, messengers, chaplains, a surgeon, and four bakery inspectors. It supervised a baking industry that had 129 bakers and over 900 employees in 1757, and had by the 1780's developed a well-organized producers' guild. ⁽²¹⁾

The relative importance of public and private supply is apparent in a report from 1779 summarized in Table 7.1. The Pósito supplied 19% of the city's grain through its own roving agents and another 7% through purchase of shipments brought to the city by small vendors. The city's bakers obtained 57% of the total through their own regional market network and another 13% from small vendors who brought their grain to the public grain exchange, the Alhóndiga.

It became increasingly difficult to maintain the stability of supply and price after 1750, ⁽²²⁾ and the government simultaneously expanded its own activities and experimented with freer grain and bread markets. The wheat administration became more complex and extended farther and farther across the interior (Map 7.1). In 1753 the network of over 100 mini-depots, part of the system of pan de obligación, was abandoned in favor of large outlying granaries on major supply routes. ⁽²³⁾ By 1790 the system included resident commissioners in Arévalo, Salamanca, Toro, and Córdoba. There were five supplementary depots (two in Arévalo, two in Navas de San Antonio, and one at Guadarrama), with a capacity of 300,000 bushels, a combined staff of 12, and a complete flour mill. In 1785, concerned over the condition of the poor in the capital, the Crown opened a large bakery in the Pósito itself to produce 5,000 loaves of pan de pobres daily from cheaper flour produced at the administration's Guadarrama mill. ⁽²⁴⁾

While hardly a novel institution, the Pósito of eighteenth-century Madrid acquired a noteworthy importance within existing market and supply structures. It routinely bought sizable quantities of grain from the market created by small suppliers near the city and from sources outside the bakers' market area. Distant purchases were made at current local prices after the harvest, and as private supplies were used or hoarded, this wheat was sold to bakers in quantities designed to dampen price fluctuations. ⁽²⁵⁾ When crops were poor, [148] the Pósito mobilized supplies throughout Old and New Castile and sometimes acted as the sole agent for the city's wheat supply. In the last two decades of the eighteenth century, the Pósito handled 30% of annual supply even when the harvests were good, often providing over half the daily supply in the months before the next harvest. ⁽²⁶⁾ As supply became more precarious, the Pósito claimed to need at least a third of the market in order to remain financially stable. ⁽²⁷⁾
 

Not surprisingly, the Pósito became very protective of the thinly spread supply of movable surpluses upon which it depended. In 1779 the director expressed concern over the proposed military purchase of 150,000 bushels of wheat in the Toro-Salamanca-Zamora region and the risk of disrupting the grain market. Six years later, efforts to mobilize Castilian grain in order to supply peninsular naval bases created a confrontation between military supply contractors and Pósito authorities. ⁽²⁸⁾ All of this is a clear indication of the degree to which the city had outgrown the market-oriented mobilization of surpluses at politically acceptable prices.

[150] To accomplish its task, the Pósito of the late eighteenth century regularly purchased 200-300,000 bushels of wheat from as far away as Falencia, Sa-hagún, and Zamora--200 miles by oxcart or muleback. Agents then con-tracted with transporters for delivery to Madrid, using royal authority to preempt their services. The cost of this grain delivered in Madrid often exceeded the price at which it was distributed, representing a direct subsidy of the food supply. Less obvious subsidies were also involved. To hold down the cost of transport and assure its availability, the government strongly supported the transporters' access to common and winter pastures, despite local resistance. Moreover, the frequent commandeering of transport to move grain interfered with commerce, even when it was otherwise encouraged. ⁽²⁹⁾ The government also interfered with grain exports in quite distant areas for the sake of Madrid. In 1789, for example, export of Andalusian wheat was prevented on the grounds that Andalucía was an area that often supplied Madrid, even though the regional contribution was quite small. ⁽³⁰⁾

Meanwhile, the supply of bread itself continued to arouse discussion. By 1765 the old system of pan de obligación and related positillos had disappeared, but it left in a number of communities a developed baking industry that was dependent on access to Madrid. At least six towns possessed authorized flour scales, and in 1771 nine communities were providing over 300 fanegas of bread daily to the Plaza Mayor. The Bakers' Guild successfully expelled this competition between 1771 and 1791, but in 1790 residents of ten towns still sold 85 fanegas of bread daily outside the city gates. In 1791, pan defuera was readmitted on the grounds that "a free commerce" would bring "the best results at the best price," but on the condition that partici-pants also sell to the Pósito the equivalent in wheat of one-third of their bread. Complaints over this liberalization appeared in 1794, and in 1801 the Crown rejected a Bakers' Guild proposal for a joint-stock company with a complete monopoly of the urban bread supply. ⁽³¹⁾

While participating directly in the wheat and bread trades on a large scale, the government assumed the presence of private grain markets and was laying the basis for their increased prominence in the nineteenth century. Hapsburg Spain is notorious in the textbooks for its use of a tasa (price ceiling) to hold down prices as grain left the farm. ⁽³²⁾ In fact, this ceiling was [151] periodically adjusted, ⁽³³⁾ and by the later seventeenth century was widely ignored. ⁽³⁴⁾ In 1755, movement of grain to Madrid was deregulated, allowing grain merchants, bakers, transporters, and private individuals to bring in grain freely. ⁽³⁵⁾ In 1765 the entire Castilian grain trade was freed from price regulation, although import and export controls soon reappeared. One of the preliminary reports on the reform contains a classic statement of faith in the free market: 

In this manner, with the modifications indicated, the supply of Madrid would be assured, since the bakers cannot run short of grain as long as any is available in Spain. It might be expensive, but this would attract more to the market and thus its very expensiveness, attracting competition, will produce cheapness. The only additional requirement is that the bakers, even though wheat is very expensive, be required to continue producing bread. ⁽³⁶⁾

It is possible to quote provincial officials to the effect that there was no Castilian grain market in the eighteenth century, but such sources were biased toward protecting local economies, and the elements of a Castilian commercial network were appearing. ⁽³⁸⁾ The Cinco Gremios Mayores were active in the Castilian grain trade in 1737 and 1753, ⁽³⁹⁾ while the regulations of 1755 and 1765 clearly assume the presence of a market network. The Pósito's use of roving agents offered a model for private traders, and it is suggestive that some of its purchases were made through established local brokers. The muleteers of Sangarcia in Segovia offer an example of private enterprise building upon commercialization developed by the state. Starting as transporters for the Pósito, after 1770 they developed a private supply link between [152] Old Castile and the market in Madrid. The eighteenth century also brought a growing number of local fairs and markets, many of which were in grain-exporting regions. While these fairs were dominated by local subsistence exchanges, they could be used to consolidate stocks for long-distance commerce. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Not surprisingly, most private grain merchants were clustered around Madrid, and the official register contains 230 entries between 1768 and 1785. Of these, 178 represent neighborhood stalls retailing fodder, including 23 connected with taverns and various other retail enterprises; ⁽⁴¹⁾ 31 merchants ran wholesale-retail outlets within the city, while 26 wholesalers maintained warehouses in 15 outlying towns. Several of the latter were owned by residents of Madrid, and some combined rural storehouses with outlets in the city. The most intriguing figures are Antonio Corte, who had warehouses in Loeches and San Martín de la Vega; Manuel Ángulo, with warehouses in Vallecas and Fuenlabrada; Don Juan Angel de San Pelayo, with warehouses in Madrid and Vicalvaro; and Francisco Cabarrus, who registered in 1776 as owner of grain warehouses in five different towns, making him the city's biggest private grain speculator well before his emergence as a financier in the 1780's. ⁽⁴²⁾

The location of outlying wholesalers matches the geography of the grain markets proposed in 1765 for Arévalo, Guadalajara, Talavera, Alcalá de Henares, Illescas, and Guadarrama (Map 7.1). Given capital, provincial brokers, and transporters like those of Sangarcia, these businesses were equipped to enter the Old Castile market at times when regional price differentials were great enough. The private system thus imitated and built upon that of the Pósito, with its roving agents, secondary granaries along the highways, and provincial commission agents. Here we have an important link in the chain of connections between the bakers of the city and their suppliers, and a glimpse of the increasingly sophisticated system that channeled grain to the urban market.

Another link in this system was the Alhóndiga, Madrid's commodity exchange for private grain transactions. This was an old institution that increased in prominence whenever government intervention in the grain supply [153] was reduced. It was the place where bakers bought or registered wheat they did not get from the Pósito. In 1755 it became the sole municipal exchange for wheat, barley, rye, oats, and carob beans. By 1790, very few staples actually passed through the Alhóndiga except for luxury-grade flour. This reflects the increased role of the Pósito and the bakers' use of grain dealers outside the city. Additional exchanges were created in 1806, and the Alhóndiga continued to register grain imports and provide monthly reports of grain movements. ⁽⁴³⁾

In the ideological climate of the nineteenth century, the emphasis shifted from the Pósito to the Alhóndiga, but the government was unable to withdraw from direct intervention. Napoleonic authorities abolished transport controls and preemptive bidding for grain shipments, ⁽⁴⁴⁾ and in 1814 Ferdinand VII renewed the legislation of 1765 freeing the grain trade. Wheat remained scarce, however, with a long period of disorganized supply; ⁽⁴⁵⁾ and in 1820, despite the Liberal premises of the new regime, the Alhóndiga was intervening to stabilize prices as the Pósito had done earlier. In 1824-25 the restored monarchy went to great lengths to bring state- and Church-owned wheat to the city, but sold it at the Alhóndiga rather than at the Pósito. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ In 1832-34, the Alhóndiga was still submitting reports of grain flows in conformance with the regulations of 1790. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ The markets for all foodstuffs were freed of regulation in 1836, but the Alhóndiga continued to figure in the documents, while in 1837-38 and again in 1847 the Pósito was subsidized to provide supplements to the grain supply. As of 1852-54, the city still provided 15% of annual consumption and spent another 450,000 reales on subsidizing bread prices for the poor. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

It does not appear that increased emphasis on market institutions in grain made much difference in supply conditions. The wheat supply does appear more stable in the 1840's as grain farming expanded, but severe shortages reappeared in 1847, 1853,1857, and 1867-68, and New Castile remained the focus of the most severe price fluctuations in Spain. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ The persistent tension [154] between free market, speculation, and public order maintained government intervention and encouraged opposition to the tariff barriers sought by agricultural interests. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ Thus the institutional framework of the wheat supply may have changed over the generations, but the fundamental reality of a politically subsidized market remained part of the urban-rural relationship from Madrid's rise to prominence through the mid-nineteenth century. ⁽⁵¹⁾ Without cheap transportation, a true market could not function beyond a radius of 50-75 miles. The alternatives were administrative organization of grain movements or subsidization of the consuming market so that it could pay a market price high enough to absorb the costs of an extended supply network. The outcome was a combination of open market exchanges, administered transfers of supplies, and a subsidized urban market structure staffed by a cadre of functionaries and merchants. The system was superficially becoming market-driven, but it still depended on the ability of the state's "revenue economy" to maintain the economic base of the consuming market. In any case, the system operated to draw producers and owners of surplus grain over a wide region into regular commercial relationship with the capital city.
 
II. Other Staple Commodities
 
No other commodity was as basic to public order as wheat, and government supervision of other supply trades involved less direct intervention. ⁽⁵²⁾ The system that evolved in the seventeenth century covered seven commodities: meat, pork (which was administered separately), olive oil, fish, charcoal, soap, and candles. The government used a pattern of annual contracts or concessions of the sort seen in various forms throughout Europe. Contracts were let in competitive bidding, sometimes to one individual who supplied two or three commodities, sometimes to a consortium of investors and suppliers providing a single staple. The successful bidder (obligado) negotiated retail prices, market guarantees, control of supplies, and access to transport. The commodities were then retailed through private stalls and vendors in the city. Some contracts included advances from the government, [155] but ultimately the contractor paid the government for the concession. With occasional exceptions, the government relied on private contractors until 1786, experimented with a combined contract with the Five Major Guilds until 1794, and thereafter used various forms of provisional administration. ⁽⁵³⁾

The center of this system of concessions was another old institution, the administration of the peso real, where commodities other than grain had to be weighed and registered before sale. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ In the eighteenth century, this agency complemented the Pósito and Alhóndiga, administering controls at the city gates, monitoring the contracts negotiated by the Junta de Abastos and its successor agencies, and adjusting retail prices of commodities to market conditions. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ Through this institution, the food and merchandise of daily life flowed out to the stalls of the rastro, which serviced the poor, and the Plaza Mayor, central market for household supplies for more affluent families. ⁽⁵⁶⁾

In the late eighteenth century, joint-stock companies organized by merchant guilds and the Cinco Gremios Mayores became active in supply contracting as an urban business elite developed. The supply business became risky after 1785, as supply fell behind demand, and many concessions became losing propositions, forcing the authorities into administrative improvisation. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ The state's obligation to maintain stable supplies and "just" prices was challenged as the fiscal desperation of the government of Charles IV (1788-1808) coincided with pressure from speculators and landowners to hasten experiments with freer markets. The pressure for access to the Madrid market had already been reflected in a reluctance to concede true supply monopolies. The hostility to supply monopolies appeared as early as 1766, and the admitted difficulty of making peso controls actually work is indicative of the problem. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ Since each commodity involved a different network of urban-rural connections, it is worth our while to examine them individually.
 
[156] A. Wine
 
By 1600, city authorities were granting annual concessions to groups of suppliers who agreed to obtain and retail wine at prices regulated by the city. The concessionaires in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were the Gremio de Herederos Cosecheros de Madrid and the Gremio de Taberneros. The first began as a guild of the vintners in the jurisdiction of Madrid, with privileged access to the market. As the city grew, they had become middlemen for wine from more distant sources. The second competitor was the Guild of Wine-sellers within the city, which also was involved in wholesale trading. The guild that held the contract negotiated for a set price to the rural supplier and a radius of control within which wine had to be marketed in Madrid.

The price and area of control reflected both the grape harvest and estimated urban demand, and were intended to forestall sale to other markets. The embargo zone grew from 8 leagues before 1586 to 15-20 leagues during the first half of the seventeenth century. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ Unlike the tasa on wheat, the farm price of wine was adjusted every year, while retail prices were changed every few weeks. By the 1620's, the tasa or maximum price allowed producers was scaled to compensate for the supply contractor's transport costs from more distant sources. Thus when the price was 7.5 reales an arroba within 5 leagues, it was only 6.25 reales for wine originating from beyond 10 leagues. Producers complained that they were forced to accept legal prices when crops were short, but that the contractors were not held to them if the supply was more plentiful than expected, nor would they buy wine that had been stored from the previous year. The supply contractor, meanwhile, constantly dickered with the government for higher retail prices and complained because wine was sold in Madrid for less than it brought in Toledo. ⁽⁶⁰⁾

In 1650 we see the Herederos providing not only their own wine but large quantities from the region around Toledo. By 1678 they held a six-year concession for the entire wine supply, except for a few specified exclusions. The inclusion of the contract to farm the substantial wine taxes was attractive, and the competition with the Taberneros was intense. By 1683 the contract had passed to the Taberneros, who in any case controlled the final retailing of the commodity. ⁽⁶¹⁾

In the eighteenth century, official attention shifted to taxes and away from actual supply, leaving the wine market relatively free. Annual summaries of taxable and nontaxable wine appear, ⁽⁶²⁾ along with more careful regulation of [157] the wine that religious communities sold to the public at their wine-shops. ⁽⁶³⁾ By midcentury the authorities farmed the taxes for collection at the city gates, and there are no further mentions of wine price controls in the countryside, although the peso continued to set retail wine prices. There is no indication of a monopoly concession, and the government used a system of vending licenses available to Herederos, Taberneros, religious communities, and out-of-town suppliers. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ Once taxes were paid on entry, the wine market was surprisingly free and involved wholesalers, the retailers' guild, and rural producers seeking direct access to the urban market. This clearly represents a functioning regional market that provided the basis for nineteenth-century supply. ⁽⁶⁵⁾
 
B. Olive Oil and Soap
 
The city's olive oil supply contracts were similar to those for wine in the seventeenth century; but while the wine concession was deregulated after 1700, the olive oil supply remained highly monopolistic. The contracting broker provided a guarantor (abonador) for the contract and supplied oil at negotiated prices that varied with the season and proximity of the new crop. In the 1740's the contract specified two warehouses in the city, 12 wholesale outlets with a staff of 24, and a minimum of 130 retail stalls (tiendas). Retailers could not deal with other suppliers, while the contractor could deal with carriers arriving with oil and with producers in Andalucía. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ The monopoly was often violated, and in 1734 the concessionaire complained bitterly about nonresidents selling oil in the streets at less than the negotiated price. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ Officials became convinced that important amounts of oil were escaping taxes and, after an investigation in 1745, temporarily placed the oil supply under municipal administration. ⁽⁶⁸⁾

Judging from the tenor of the documents, the oil monopoly was one of the most difficult for contractors and administrators to enforce. In part this was because olive oil was a major raw material for the soap industry. Soap manufacturers were forbidden to sell oil in the city; and when the two were controlled by the same concessionaire, conflict was minimized. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ Between 1780 [158] and 1785, the oil supply was taken under direct administration. The concession was sought by the Compañía de Longistas (mercantile wholesalers), who had other interests in the supply system, but it ultimately passed to the Cinco Gremios Mayores. They agreed to a stipulated price, provided 240 retail shops, and paid rent for city-owned facilities. Responding to objections to the monopoly, the government authorized producers and transporters to sell their own oil in their own shops. The concessionaire, meanwhile, got permission to send itinerant retailers through the city streets, and obtained the contract to supply oil for the city's streetlights. The Cinco Gremios also got a parallel concession for the soap supply that included control of the city's retail outlets and the right to distribute soap to neighboring towns. Here, too, they had to accept the presence of wholesale outlets belonging to independent producers, but the latter had to obtain licenses for their stores. ⁽⁷⁰⁾

The contract was not a success, and three years later, agents of the Cinco Gremios were complaining that the concessions were ignored by many towns and urban wholesalers, and that they could not find transport for oil purchased in Andalucía. Transporters apparently preferred to work for producers and urban distributors outside the concession. Consequently, the Cinco Gremios Mayores had trouble meeting contract terms and were losing money. ⁽⁷¹⁾ The licensing of supplementary vendors and the persisting evasion of regulations suggest the elements of a more flexible distribution resembling that for the wine supply. Thus the nineteenth-century abolition of the government's role in coordinating oil supply did not disrupt the market, and coincides with rising demand. ⁽⁷²⁾ Oil producers and transporters, regional soap manufacturers, and urban distributors had developed a web of contacts which supplanted monopolistic concessions.
 
C. Fish
 
The arrangements for supplying fish, particularly the widely used dried cod, paralleled those for olive oil and soap. The commodity came from a distant source, there were few intermediate suppliers, and regulation was relatively easy. Consequently, we see an exclusive concession to a contractor who provided a guarantor and made the commercial arrangements with the suppliers in Bilbao. ⁽⁷³⁾ This particular supply trade was part of the commerce [159] between Madrid and the periphery of the peninsula, and in 1768 the contractor had a Catalán name and the guarantor was a French commercial house with contacts in Bilbao and Bayonne. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ Here, too, there was little real reason for control once supply was separated from taxation, and nineteenth-century governments did little to regulate the fish supply. By that time the trade showed a reduced volume and a greater variety in what was basically a luxury food. ⁽⁷⁵⁾
 
D. Pork and Pork Products
 
The supply of fresh and preserved pork followed the same pattern as olive oil and soap. In the 1730's and 1740's, there was an exclusive concession which gave the contractor a monopoly on sausage as well as fresh pork sold. The contractor had access to salt pans, got a ban on street vendors, and was protected from competitive bidding in the first two days of regional livestock fairs. The contract also precluded competition in the city from other suppliers.

There were a number of supplements to the main concession that suggest that a true monopoly of this trade was hard to enforce. Hogs were raised in the mountains, fattened on barley, and brought to the livestock fairs in Talavera, Medellin, and Trujillo. Bakers and millers in the city customarily bought hogs to be fattened on waste materials from the bakeries, and they were suspected of selling pork below the established price. Stockmen, like the organized group at Talavera, also sought access to the city market independent of the concessionaire. To prevent interloping, the contractor obtained a ruling that hogs had to be in the sellers' possession for six months and properly fattened on barley. City residents could buy whole carcasses outside the walls, but the stock-owners were prevented from making sales inside the gates. ⁽⁷⁶⁾

These regulations changed little in the course of the eighteenth century, although, as with other commodities, the pork supply passed for a time under contract with the Cinco Gremios Mayores. ⁽⁷⁷⁾ The decreased regulation of supply that marked the nineteenth century was less complete in this case, but coordination of supply gave way to regulation of the quality and cleanliness of the product. The government-contracted supplier of the eighteenth century was replaced in the nineteenth century by a number of private slaughterhouses and purveyors. In 1841 the government established a municipal slaughterhouse and sought to impose tighter quality controls. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ There is no [160] evidence that the authorities assisted in financing the pork supply after the mid-1830's, and market-oriented supply systems that can be glimpsed in the eighteenth-century sources became the central feature of the trade.
 
E. Beef and Mutton
 
Beef and mutton were the most important of the supply trades after wheat, and their administration was correspondingly complex. As with other commodities, the basic mechanism was a concession granted to a contractor who undertook to provide meat at stipulated prices under defined conditions. The prices fluctuated within limits designed to protect the consumer from sharp changes caused by weather and speculation. Prices were scaled in advance to allow for seasonal availability, with beef being about 10% more expensive in December, January, and February. Retailers in the rastro (slaughteryard) got an established mark-up, and those in other markets around the city were allowed a slightly larger margin to cover distribution costs. More than in the other commodity trades, contracts often involved government loans for initial purchases at the livestock fairs. Agents of the concessionaire could buy cattle and sheep in Extremadura, Andalucía, Galicia, Asturias, La Mancha, and throughout the two Castiles. They had precedence over buyers from other towns, and could make preemptive matching bids within eight days of any sale, while purchasing agents from Aragón, Valencia, and Catalonia were forbidden to compete for Castilian cattle. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ The supply contractor also had the right to pasture cattle en route to Madrid in any common or council-owned pastures within 20 miles of the capital, and was guaranteed rental of pastures for cattle in transit. ⁽⁸⁰⁾ In the late 1780's, the concession was held by the Cinco Gremios Mayores, which channeled part of the business out of Castile to Portugal and Morocco. ⁽⁸¹⁾

The presence of interlopers on the concession, suggested by various special regulations, is confirmed by a proposal made in 1805-06 by graziers and brokers from outlying towns. They sought the right to maintain their own urban outlets outside the official concession, offering a kind of market-sharing agreement in which they would agree to fixed quotas on the amounts sold. The proposal confirms the presence of developed market structures and shows the same tendency for the supply to become more open which we have seen in the wine, olive oil, and pork trades. ⁽⁸²⁾

The Napoleonic wars created a livestock shortage in Spain, and after 1814 [161] meat was again brought from France, Portugal, and North Africa. ⁽⁸³⁾ In the 1820's the government stopped granting concessions, and meat was provided by a group of private suppliers. Actual processing of meat was done at a municipal slaughterhouse, with a staff of 21 employees and numerous casual laborers, but government intervention was confined to quality rather than market control. ⁽⁸⁴⁾ Once again, a nineteenth-century "free market" was peopled by purveyors who appeared as organized interlopers in the eighteenth-century system of monopolistic concession.
 
F. Charcoal
 
The organization of the charcoal supply was basically similar to that of other concessions, but the nature of the commodity imposed important differences. Charcoal is a bulky commodity and needed substantial storage facilities and transport services. The industry also required extensive forest tracts that were harvested every 15-20 years. Of necessity, the concession involved owners of large tracts of land.

With the exception of mandatory firewood supplies for royal palaces around Madrid, there is little mention of fuel in the seventeenth-century sources until the severe winter of 1694-95. At that time, the Alcaldes ordered registration of all supplies warehoused in the city, and authorized anyone paying the appropriate taxes to sell fuel, regardless of the existing concession. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ Similar shortages in 1715 led to attacks upon shipments brought in by the supply contractor. By the 1730's the position of the contractors had been strengthened by delegation of the Crown's right to preempt transport services. This was made more specific in 1739, when complaints that construction of the royal palace was monopolizing transport resulted in the allocation of 4,000 carts to the charcoal suppliers. ⁽⁸⁶⁾

The form of the charcoal supply contract in the eighteenth century is exemplified by the multiple partnership that undertook a two-year concession in 1745. Only the concessionaires could buy timber for charcoal from montes within 40 miles of Madrid. They were authorized to force landowners to sell timber, given general access to transport, allocated full use of carters from 11 mountain towns near charcoal-processing sites, and received exclusive access to several pastures on supply routes. The contract stipulated two wholesale warehouses and 16 retail outlets within Madrid. It allowed for vendors outside the concession, but they were restricted to wholesale transactions, limited to one outlet each, and required to maintain a minimum volume of sales; [162] these exceptions were restricted to charcoal producers marketing their own product.

Noble participation in this supply trade is documented by a clause near the end of the charcoal concession:

With the condition that, should some of those entering in this contract as partners be "Hijosdalgo de sangre notoria," as it seems unjust that there should be any derogation of their nobility for entering the agreement, the Consejo has ordered that, despite their being such contractors, the agreement cannot embarrass them during its duration, or afterwards, and they will continue to be able to have coaches and sedan chairs, regardless of any regulations to the contrary. ⁽⁸⁷⁾

Charcoal appears to have been more closely supervised in the eighteenth century than any other commodity except wheat. Government involvement in the supply was substantial, and the city maintained warehouses, equipment, and other facilities that were leased to the contractor. In 1766 the bureaucracy included a central staff of 13, plus 16 supervisors and assistants in 4 district warehouses in the city, and 4 commissioners with 8 assistants who canvassed woodlots and contracted for charcoal production. ⁽⁸⁹⁾ In the last decades, charcoal provision aroused serious concern and passed through various management arrangements. In the ten years after 1794, the charcoal supply accumulated a deficit of 18 million reales, with debts outstanding to the Pósito, the Bank of San Carlos, the Countess of La Coruña, the Cinco Gremios Mayores, and various agencies of the Crown. Ultimately, the fiscal crisis of the wars with France and England forced the government to accept the proposals of economists who favored the end of government intervention. In 1805 the state abandoned the charcoal supply and sold the system--[163] warehouses, equipment, existing inventories, and purchase contracts--at auction. ⁽⁹⁰⁾

There is little subsequent reference to regulation of fuel, and reliance on private suppliers, combined with land sales, precipitated much of the deforestation apparent in modern Spain. Traditional charcoal-harvesting cut the trees and left the stumps. The commonly harvested tree species regrew from the stumps, leaving the soil-holding root system intact. The landowners and purveyors of the nineteenth century not only harvested the trees, but pulled up the stumps to get a larger immediate return on their investment. The result was erosion and deforestation of hill areas within the urban supply network. ⁽⁹¹⁾
 
III. Conclusion
 
The bureaucratic systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries grew out of very old traditions of municipal government supplemented by improvisations during Madrid's first phase of rapid growth. The second period of urban growth, in the eighteenth century, found those arrangements inadequate and produced another set of expedients, foreshadowing the more overtly market-driven supply structures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A close examination of the regulatory arrangements of the eighteenth century reveals that the "freeing" of trade in agricultural staples in the nineteenth century was but one step in a long process through which administered economic flows were supplanted by a market network and a community of commercial intermediaries with agricultural connections. Eighteenth-century administrative expedients often involved recognition of this structure, and verify national adaptation to Madrid as the permanent economic reference point for the interior.

This did not necessarily change the underlying relationship of the landlord to the countryside or the state, nor the state-supported nature of the market in Madrid. In Chapter 8 we will look at the regional and rural markets from which supplies were drawn, and document the ways in which urban supply connected with the people who had stocks of commodities that the government hoped to mobilize for its capital city.
 

1. Marc Venard, Bourgeois et paysans au XVIIe síécle, Recherche sur le role des bourgeois parisiens dans la vie agricole au Sud de Paris au XVII siécle (1957), pp. 17, 31-33, and esp. ch. 8, pp. 93-107; Gastón Roupnel, La ville et la campagne au XVIIe siécle, Etude sur les populations dupays dijonnais (1955), pp. 199, 229-231, quotation from pp. 248-249; Daniele Beltrami, La penetrazione económica dei veneziani in Terraferma, Forze di lavoro eproprietá fondiaria nelle campagne venete dei secoli XVII e XVIII (1961), passim, esp. pp. 57-81 and 101-112.

2. On the política de abastos, see Manuel Colmeiro, Historia de la economía política de España (1965), vol. 2, pp. 863 ff.

3. Carla Rahn Phillips, Ciudad Real, 1500-1750, ch. 5, pp. 65-75, and app. C, pp. 129-134.

4. See Richard Herr's discussion of the Castilian landed elite in the nineteenth century in "Spain" (1978).

5. Stanley J. and Barbara H. Stein, in The Colonial Heritage of Latin America, pp. 85-196, discuss this pattern of dependence in Spain.

6. E.g., the reparto of 832 fanegas of bread in Leganes in 1644: AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1644, foi. 681.

7. The system is described as of 1600 in AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-140-5; quota lists for towns for 1600 and 1608 are in sig. 1-445-2.

8. Ibid., sigs. 2-109-5, 14, 15.

9.AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1739, fol. 186, and Consejos, leg. 6780; AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-122-2.

10. AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1583, fol. 78; 1606, fol. 26; 1610, fols. 570-572; 1614, fol. 241; 1618, fol. 234; 1631, fol. 118; AVM, Secretaría, sigs. 1-455-2, 2-95-23, 2-96-2, 2-98-11, 2-447-26; F. Pérez de Castro, "El abasto de pan de la Corte madrileña en 1630," p. 131. Only large-scale transactions were regulated at 120 miles.

11. Wheat prices rose faster in New Castile than in Old Castile before 1600. Old Castile prices fell faster between 1600 and 1620 as Toledo's collapse eased pressure in New Castile. Thereafter there came a sharp rise in New Castile as Madrid exhausted the regional market, but the Old Castile parallel was milder, reflecting the city's weaker impact. See Ural A. Pérez, "El precio de los granos en la península ibérica, 1585-1650," pp. 128-134.

12. AVM, Secretaría, sig. 1-455-2; AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1630, fols. 12, 64, 49, 151, 340,422; 1631, fol. 196; 1632, fols. 134,398; 1635, fols. 35, 95.

13. AVM, Secretaria, sig. 2-109-5.

14. On the development of purchasing: AVM, Contaduría, sigs. 2-103-1 and 3-580-1; and Pérez de Castro, "El abasto de pan," pp. 117-150. On carters: David R. Ringrose, "The Government and the Carters in Spain, 1476-1700" (1969).

15. AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-140-5.

16. AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1595, fol. 400; 1605, fols. 295-298, 305; 1606, fol. 41; 1610, fol. 72.

17. AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-122-1; AHN, Consejos, leg. 6774-30, memoria by Pablo de Olavide.

18. AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-102-8.

19. On no-interest forced loans to the Pósito in 1630, 1637, and 1647: AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-434-2. This is a larger if more haphazard version of the municipal takeover of grain supplies of Geneva, where the city created a municipal monopoly in the early seventeenth century. Although it involved a much smaller population (15,000 to 17,000 people), Geneva's political context created supply problems requiring official intervention in the grain market. See Anne-Marie Piuz, Recherches sur le commerce de Genéve au XVIIe siécle, pp. 44-66.

20. Maria Carmen García Monerris and José Luis Peset, "Los gremios menores y el abastecimiento de Madrid durante la Ilustración" (1977), p. 77.

21. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6780; AVM, Secretaría, sig. 2-126-7.

22. David R. Ringrose, "Madrid y Castilla, 1560-1850," p. 95; Gonzalo Anes Alvarez, Las crises agrarias en la España moderna, pp. 401-422.

23. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6780.

24. Ibid., Pósito regulations dated 1791.

25. Contemporaries were explicit about this policy. AVM, Secretaría, sigs. 2-122-1 (1767) and 2-126-7 (1784); AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1734, fols. 670-672. It is illustrated in the operations of the Pósito during the crisis of 1765-66; see Gonzalo Anes Alvarez, "Antecedentes próximos del motín contra Esquilache" (1974).

26. In 1783 and 1791, for example, the Pósito supplied half the city's grain in May, June, July, and August until the new crop was available: AVM, Secretaria, sig. 2-126-22; and AHN, Consejos, leg. 6780.

27. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6780.

28. Ibid., legs. 6775-2 and 6777-15. The latter shows that important figures in the Madrid grain supply--Pedro Casamayor & Company, and the merchant house of Cabarrús & Lalonne--were also contracting to supply the military.

29. Ringrose, Transportation and Economic Stagnation in Spain, 1750-1850, pp. 116-117 on regulation, 104-112 on pasture and privileges, and 123-124 on disruption of economic activities.

30. Miguel Capella Martínez and Antonio Malilla Tascón, Los Cinco Gremios Mayores de Madrid (1951), p. 248.

31. On bread-producing towns in the area: AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1768; and AHN, Hacienda, leg. 3713. On sales outside the gates and readmission to the city: AHN, Consejos, leg. 6780. On subsequent disputes: AHN, Hacienda, legs. 1608-C, 4608-C, and 2235. There were 3,000 two-pound loaves in 85 fanegas.

32. For the standard example, see Vicens Vives, Manual de historia económica de España, pp. 314-315.

33. AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1628, fol. 474.

34. Gonzalo Anes Álvarez and Jean-Paul LeFlem, "Las crises del siglo XVII: producción agrícola, precios e ingresos en tierras de Segovia" (1965), pp. 63-65; and Anes, Las crises agrarias, pp. 337-338.

35. Capella Martínez and Matilla Tascón, Los Cinco Gremios, p. 253.

36. Memoria by Pablo de Olavide in AHN, Consejos, leg. 6774-30. In the original it reads: Parece que de este modo, y con los auxilios indicados, se asegura la subsistencia de Madrid, pues a los panaderos no les puede faltar trigo si lo hay en España. Podía ser caro, pero siéndolo, vendrá a los mercados, y su misma carestía, trayendo la concurrencia, producirá la barratez. Sola resta, que a los panaderos aun que [sic] este el trigo muy caro, les tenga siempre cuenta panaderalo....

37. Some of these lists have been found: AHN, Consejos, leg. 6774-30; Alcaldes, libros for 1768, fols. 404-411, and 1790, fols. 1125-1135. The major list is in AHN, Consejos, leg. 6777-21.

38. Anes, Las crises agrarias, pp. 329-336.

39. Capella and Matilla, Los Cinco Gremios, p. 253.

40. Angel García Sanz, Desarrollo y crisis del Antiguo Régimen en Castilla la Vieja: Economía y sociedad en tierras de Segovia de 1500 a 1814; Anes, Las crises agrarias, pp. 321-325; Martiniano Peña Sánchez, Crisis rural y transformaciones recientes en Tierra de Campos (1975).

41. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6777-21, "Lista de comerciantes en granos, 1768-85."

42. Born of a merchant family in Bayonne, Francisco Cabarrus served a commercial apprenticeship in Valencia and married his employer's daughter. He was sent to manage a soapworks owned by her family in Carabanchel Alto near Madrid, and appears as a grain speculator on a large scale in 1776 at the age of 24. See Antonio Elorza, La ideología liberal en la Ilustración española (1970), pp. 139-140.

43. AHN, Alcaldes. libros for 1734, fols. 692-93; 1755, fols. 235-238; and 1806, fol. 244; AHN, Consejos, leg. 6780, Ordenanzas for 1790, part 4; AHN, Hacienda, leg. 2235 (1801). The new posts were in the Plaza de Góngora and the Plaza de la Cebada.

44. Geoffroy de Grandmaison, ed., Correspondence du Comte de la Forest, vol. 1, p. 423, and vol. 2, p. 108.

45. Maria Concepción Alfaya L., "Datos para la historia económica y social de España" (1926).

46. Manuel Espadas Burgos, "Abasto y hábitos alimenticios en el Madrid de Fernando VII," pp. 244-253.

47. There are two years of monthly summaries giving daily volume and price for wheat and barley in AHN, Consejos, legs. 9381-5 and 9378-1.

48. Antonio Fernández García, El abastecimiento de Madrid en el reinado de Isabel II, pp. 35-38,67-75.

49. Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, Las crises de subsistencias en España en el siglo XIX, pp. 62-65.

50. The protective controls that guaranteed the domestic market to Castilian producers were established by the Cortes of 1820 and received only minor adjustments until 1869; see Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, España hace un siglo, una economía dual, pp. 45-51, 63, 70, 73-74, 110-113; and Las crises de subsistencias, pp. 16-20.

51. Fermín Caballero--in Fomento de la población rural (1863), p. 82--speaks of the free trade in grain allowing New and Old Castile to "compete" for the Madrid market, but does not give details, and also implies that only railroads changed the market of the interior.

52. A distinction noted by Jean-Franiois Bergier in Genéve et l'économie européenne de la Renaissance (1963), pp. 100-116. Wine was regulated for purposes of morality or taxation, but not as a commodity essential to urban subsistence.

53. García Monerris and Peset, "Los gremios menores," p. 80; Vicente Palacio Atard, "Problemas de abastecimiento en Madrid a finales del siglo XVIII" (1969), p. 284.

54. The sources refer to mantenimientos y especias, y herrage, acero, lavor, lienzos, cera, seda, pez, resena, cueros y ganados. With some exceptions, the fees were 0.5% on sales brokered and 3 maravedises per arroba for certifying weight. This complex of peso real, correduría, and repeso was remarkably durable. AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1623, fol. 545 (a contract); Consejos, leg. 511-5, fols. 21-25, 58 (regulations of 1563); AVM, Secretaría, sigs. 2-307-9 (regulations of 1615) and 2-487-28 (renewal of regulations of 1563, with modifications of 1756, reiterated in 1810). Annual revenue figures for the peso begin in the mid-sixteenth century (see Chapter 2).

55. García Monerris and Peset, "Los gremios menores," pp. 81-86.

56. Arthur Hamilton, "A Study of Spanish Manners, 1750-1800," pp. 56-58.

57. By 1809 the fish supply owed 100,000 reales, the meat supply 400,000, and the Pósito 7 million. On the difficulties in 1791-1810: Archivo del Banco de España, legs. 562 and 716. Palacio Atard, in "Problemas del abastecimiento," p. 284, states that the seven supply branches lost 80 million reales under the Five Major Guilds in 1786-94, 22 million reales in 1796-98, and 11,500,000 in 1799-1801.

58. García Monerris and Peset, "Los gremios menores," p. 85; Anes, "Antecedentes."

59. AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1586, fol. 194; 1595, fol. 69; 1598, fols. 157-171; 1599, fol. 224;1613,fol. 112; 1628, fol. 176.

60. For examples: ibid., libros for 1623, fol. 520; 1625, fols. 11, 49, 73; 1628, fols. 10, 12, 175-176.

61. Ibid., libros for 1650, fol. 132; 1678, fols. 346-347; 1683, fols. 70 and 128.

62. AHN, Consejos, leg. 7222.

63. In 1739 there were 14 of these, and they were accused of selling wine that had evaded taxation and keeping the extra profits that resulted: AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1739, fols. 8-9, 48. By 1772 there was a system of rebates for tax-exempt institutions, which taxed wine on entering and returned the taxes on wine used for institutional purposes: Madoz, Diccionario geográfico, vol. 10, p. 1002.

64. AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1742, fols. 261-264, and 1743, fols. 60-62.

65. Fernández García, El abastecimiento, p. 120.

66. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6733-2; Alcaldes, libros for 1739, fols. 75-80; 1741, fols. 7, 28; 1742, fols. 54-58, 187; 1743, fols. 73-76.

67. AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1734, fols. 326, 332.

68. Ibid., libro for 1745, fol. 3.

69. Ibid., libros for 1734, fol. 321, and 1742, fol. 188. In 1768 both were provided by the same individual on a month-to-month arrangement, pending review of the joint contract. The next year a contract was granted with little change in the terms. AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1768, fols. 10, 3, 9; Consejos, libro 2703.

70. This is not surprising, considering that powerful nobles like the Marques de Mondéjar long operated sizable soap factories in New Castile. See Helen Nader, "Nobility as Borrowers and Lenders" (paper given at American Historical Association, 1976), p. 13. Also AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1787, fols. 1376-1446.

71. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6791-14.

72. Fernández García, El abastecimiento, p. 125.

73. AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1739, fol. 94; 1741, fols. 7-28; 1742 fol. 187; and 1743, fol. 79.

74. Ibid., libro for 1768, fol. 5.

75. Espadas Burgos, "Abasto y hábitos alimenticios," p. 267.

76. AUN, Alcaldes, libros for 1734, fols. 319-320; 1739, fols. 81,90; 1741, fols. 7-28; 1742, fols. 174-186; and 1743, fol. 81.

77. Ibid., libro for 1791, fol. 726. See also Capella and Malilla, Los Cinco Gremios, p. 251.

78. Fernández Garcia, El abastecimiento, p. 83.

79. This is particularly interesting, given the dependence of Valencia on Castilian mutton; see James Casey, The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth Century.

80. AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1741, fols. 427-436; Consejos, leg. 11463; and Clero, Jesuítas, leg. 27-5.

81. This was done as early as 1789-91: Capella and Malilla, Los Cinco Gremios, p. 251.

82. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6785.

83. Espadas Burgos, "Abasto," pp. 259-263.

84. Fernández Garcia, El abastecimiento, pp. 85-103.

85. AHN, Alcaldes, libros for 1648, fol. 230, and 1695, fols. 17, 30, and 362-363.

86. AHN, Consejos, legs. 6772 and 51375.

87. This contract is in AHN, Alcaldes, libro for 1745, fols. 15-23. The quotation, from clause 27, fol. 21, reads: Con condición, que respecto de ser algunos de los que entramos en esta obligación, y fueren nuestros Participes Hijosdalgo de sangre notoria, y no parece justo que por entrar a ser obligados, les obste para poder gozar de su Nobleza: el Consejo se ha servido mandar, que sin embargo de ser tales obligados, no se ¡es pueda embarazar el tiempo de la obligación, ni para en adelante, el que pudiesse [sic] tenga coche, silla-volante, no obstante qualesquiera órdenes que haya en contraria.

88. For charcoal sales by the Infantados: AHN, Osuna, leg. 70 (accounts from 1775-1808); for the Medinacelis: Archivo del Duque de Medinaceli (Sevilla), estado de Medinaceli, legs. 60-82, 83. William J. Callahan's discussion of noble business activity--in Honor, Commerce, and Industry in Eighteenth-Century Spain (1972), pp. 15-20, 27--ignores urban supply, emphasizing that land precluded other investments. But land had to yield income, which meant commercializing its products, and charcoal supply was an obvious option for those who controlled forested land. The dichotomy between commercial and landed interests is too sharply drawn, and this is but one example of noble involvement in urban supply (see Chapter 8).

89. García Monerris and Peset, "Los gremios menores," p. 78.

90. AHN, Consejos, leg. 6790-19, 24, 26, 29.

91. Eusebio García Manrique, S.J., Borja y Tarazonay el Somontaño del Moncayo (1960), pp. 161 -168; Vicens Vives, Manual de historia económica, p. 613; and Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808-1939, p. 273.