[5] Few historians have recognized the importance of the communitarian tradition in early modern rural Castile. This is unfortunate, because the Castilian economy and society were profoundly influenced by a complex system of public ownership of the soil and its fruits. Both arable agriculture and animal husbandry were affected, and the communitarian system played an important role in preserving the relatively open society that characterized late medieval and early modern Castile (Vassberg 1974).

One explanation for the short shrift that historians have given the communitarian tradition (e.g. Smith 1966: 432-8; Weisser 1976: 48) is that the tradition has not generated much readily accessible evidence of its existence. It is characteristic of usages (including communal practices) that they do not normally need to be written down. This was particularly true in the traditional rural setting, where life revolved around the oral rather than the written word.

There was no necessity to set to writing the local communitarian customs unless they were seriously challenged. By contrast, the institution of private ownership has provided historians with an abundance of documentation in the form of contracts and other documents -- essential for the protection of legal ownership -- regarding rentals, sales, inheritances, and other transfers of possession or of ownership. This type of documentation was not normally necessary in most forms of common ownership, particularly in a village setting. Consequently, the weight of evidence has suggested that private property ownership was far more important than public ownership. It is the dearth of written evidence that has masked the existence of many communitarian practices, and that has obscured the fact of their significance in the rural world.
 
 

[6] The principle that serves as the starting point for public property ownership is that no individual has the right to take for himself and monopolize those resources of Nature that are produced without the intervention of man. According to this idea, the only thing that an individual has the right to call his own is that which he has wrought from Nature through his personal efforts in the form of crops, flocks, or manufactured goods. Land, therefore, cannot be privately owned, but must remain permanently at the disposition of anyone who wishes to benefit from it (Costa 1944: 370). In the purest and most primitive application of this principle, an individual could use a piece of land simply by occupying it -- no external authority would be needed. The use might be for pasture or for cultivation, but possession would be dependent solely upon use. When the individual no longer wished to use the piece of land, he simply abandoned it, upon which all of his claim would cease, and the land would be available for the next person who wished to use it. But it was rare to find public ownership in such a pure form. Usually the institutions of public ownership represented some form of accommodation with local conditions.

Historians do not agree on the origin of Castilian public ownership. It has been variously attributed to pre-Roman, Roman, and Visigothic civilizations (Costa 1944: 310; Hoyos 1947; Beneyto 1932; Salomon 1964: 137, n. 2; Nieto 1964: 27-54). But none of these suggested origins is entirely satisfactory, because examples can be given to refute each one. It is probably best to conclude that public ownership had not just one, but several origins, and that different communal practices were developed during the pre-Roman, Roman, and Visigothic periods. But whatever the origin, or origins, of public ownership, it is clear that the Reconquest of Castile from the Moslems (Salomon 1964: 150, n. 2), and the Repoblación (resettlement by Christian Spaniards) had the effect of strengthening it and of giving it important legal sanctions.

Throughout medieval Europe, the monarchs enjoyed the theoretical right of eminent domain over all the property in their kingdoms. In most places this right was limited, in practice, to certain types of property. But in Castile, the pretensions of the monarch were amplified because of the Reconquest, the success of which was in large part attributed to the efforts of the royal army. In principle, and according [7] to the Siete partidas (codification of law under the late thirteenth century king Alfonso X), all property won from the enemy was at the disposition of the king, who could grant it at his will. Furthermore, the Castilian monarch could invoke the ancient Germanic tradition according to which any ownerless property belonged to the crown; or the Roman principle according to which any ownerless property (bona vacatia) belonged to the state (Concha 1951; Valdeavellano 1968: 239-40; Higueras 1961: 112-13).
 
 

During the Reconquest of territory from the Moslems, the Castilian monarchs tried to attract settlers to the newly conquered areas by offering generous grants of land to their chief military supporters, and to settlers who would move in and colonize the new lands. All the lands in the realm that had not been apportioned through royal grants remained theoretically the property of the crown. Therefore, these ungranted lands were known as crown lands (tierras realengas). The monarchs were anxious to promote the colonization of their newly won territories, and for that reason they were generous in allowing the public use of crown lands. Furthermore, there was a pragmatic reason for generosity: the crown lands were usually so extensive that it would have been virtually impossible to keep people from using them. Crown lands tended to be lands of inferior quality, because the best lands were normally the first to be disposed of in royal grants. These tracts of inferior, largely unworked and idle crown lands were also known as tierras baldías, or baldíos (Vassberg 1974: 385-6).

The word baldío had several meanings in sixteenth-century Castile. Crown lands were called baldíos not only when they were ungranted and unused, but also when they had been appropriated for private use without a specific royal grant, even if that appropriation had taken place generations before, and the land was currently being treated as private property. In other words, baldíos were considered to be crown lands, but they could also be crown lands that had been usurped into the private domain. Because of the free-use privileges associated with crown lands, the baldíos were considered to be in the public domain, although under royal control. There was a strong identification of the concept of public land ownership with the word baldío . For that reason, lands belonging as community property to [8] municipalities were also called tierras baldías, even though they were in continuous use and had been given to the municipalities by royal grant. It would confuse the reader to use the word baldío in the loosely constructed Castilian fashion of the sixteenth century. Therefore, in this work, baldíos or tierras baldías will be used to mean crown lands not having been given in grants, and therefore theoretically available for public use.

In the first stages of the resettlement of formerly Moslem territories, a large proportion of the lands were tierras baldías. The first grants of new lands were to groups of colonists who formed towns either directly under royal jurisdiction (realengos) or under seigneurial jurisdiction. In either case, the colonists used the lands individually so far as was necessary for growing crops, but the rest of the land remained free for the common benefit. As more and more royal grants were made, the baldíos were quantitatively reduced, because the grants were made from the baldíos . But large tracts of baldíos were included in the newly formed municipal and seigneurial jurisdictions. Most of the baldíos remained uncultivated, and had no express owner, but were available for the common use.

The ownership of the tierras baldías was problematical, from the very beginning. Nobody held legal title to them, but they were claimed by the monarch, by the municipalities, and even by some seigneurial lords. Normally, however, it was recognized that the baldíos were at the disposition of the monarch. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that other parties who made claims to parts of the baldíos usually based their claims on some real, or alleged, royal concession. The question of ownership, of course, was confused by the imprecise use of the term baldío in the early modern period. But the crown could always find jurists able to uphold the royal claim to the baldíos as crown lands. And when legal arguments failed, and the question was reduced to the use of brute force, the crown had an obvious advantage over other claimants. Yet, even the crown tacitly admitted that the baldíos were public property (Nieto 1964: 147; Vassberg 1975: 629ù54). In any case, in practice, during most of the sixteenth century the Castilian monarchs allowed the tierras baldías. or crown lands, to be used by the public and by the municipalities, with little interference.

It has often been assumed that the baldíos were of scant economic value (Nieto 1964: 138; Klein 1920: 92). And it is true that their value per unit area was normally much less than that of privately [9] owned lands. But one should not underestimate the role played by the baldíos in the rural economy. In the first place, it must be stressed that they were of uneven quality, ranging from rocky mountain slopes where nothing would grow, to rich valley soils that remained ownerless merely because of a low local population density, or because of physical isolation. The baldíos were typically woodlands (monte) of varying density, and had a variety of uses. For example, around 1520 the town of Salvaleón (Badajoz) reported that the baldíos in its jurisdiction were used for pasture, firewood, lumber, hunting, water, acorns, and even arable agriculture. ⁽¹⁾

The most typical baldío use, however, was for pasture. A term used in some regions for baldío pastures was alijar (from an Arabic root meaning pastureland). Far more widespread was llecos or tierras llecas (from froccus, the Latin for uncultivated land), used to describe virgin land that had never been plowed. According to the Castilian Cortes (national assembly) of 1586-8 the public lands and baldíos of the towns and villages of the realm were 'their principal source of livelihood', as pasture for their various livestock (Actas: IX, 396-7; Salomon 1964: 141, n. 2). Some parts of Castile had baldíos with splendid natural pasture resources. For example, thebaldíos of the Campo de Calatrava region of the province of Ciudad Real were used as commons by the livestock of local residents, and there was such a surplus of pasture that the animals of outsiders were also accommodated, for the payment of a fee (Quirós 1965: 228-9).

It is obvious that the cultivation of portions of the baldíos would have reduced the total amount of available baldío pasture. Therefore, in many areas it was forbidden to plant crops on crown lands, unless special permission had been obtained. Normally such permission was sought locally, from the town government. In 1560, for example, a certain Juan Muñoz received from the town of Segura de la Sierra (Jaén) permission to cultivate a certain portion of the local tierras baldías. It is significant that a dozen years later the municipal authorities took legal action against Muñoz, on the grounds that he had exceeded the limits of his license for cultivation, and was thereby damaging the baldíos . ⁽²⁾ In places such as the valley of the Andarax River (Almería) there was a general authorization to plant grain on the baldíos (this was in 1490, when population was sparse), but it was specified that these cultivated plots were never to be considered as private property (Sáenz 1974: 338).

In some places, the baldíos used for cultivation were of marginal [10] quality, either because of the nature of the soil, or because of misuse. This was true of the village of Piedras Albas (Cáceres), a poverty stricken place of eighty families near the Portuguese border. In 1575 the villagers reported that the soil of their baldíos was exhausted, and incapable of yielding enough grain to sustain the populace. Nevertheless, the villagers continued to plant them, at great effort, and little profit, because they had no other arable lands at their disposition. ⁽³⁾ On the other hand, there were places with unusually fertile baldíos . One of these fortunate towns was Castro del Río (Córdoba), which had 'a great quantity of tierras baldías that were very good for sowing grain, and a large portion of them were sown'. In certain areas, the baldíos represented the principal source of arable land. One example is the village of Tejeda de Tiétar (Cáceres), a place of 236 vecinos in 1531. It was reported that most of the residents of Tejeda lived fairly well (medianamente) in an economy based principally on agriculture and animal husbandry. They farmed 'some' rented lands, but their grain fields were mainly (la mayor parte) in the baldíos . ⁽⁴⁾
 
 

One of the most interesting and basic institutions of the communitarian tradition in Spain was the squatter's right practice known as presura (also spelled pressura). This custom had its origin during the Reconquest, when Moslem lands were seized and occupied by armed might. The Castilian word for 'seized' or 'captured' is presa, which seems to be the origin of presura, although it may also have been derived from jus adprisionis, the Latin name for the practice. The right of presura, which was also observed by the neighboring Franks, was universally recognized in the regional fueros (law codes) of medieval Spain (Nieto 1964: 124-32; Pérez 1951). It also appeared in the municipal fueros granted from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries to newly founded towns in Castile. The formula generally used was that of the fueros of Logroño (1095) and Hinestrosa (1287):

. . . and wherever these colonists find deserted and uncultivated lands within the limits [of the new settlement], they may cultivate them; and wherever they find pastures, they may use them, and they may even enclose them to make hay and so their cattle can pasture; and wherever they find water to irrigate orchards or vineyards, or for their mills, or for their gardens, or for other things that they might need, they may take them; and wherever they find firewood, and forests, and trees to burn or [11] for building houses, or for all that they might need, they may take them without hindrance. ⁽⁵⁾

It is noteworthy that in the fuero formula, the right to land was not differentiated from the right to the other benefits offered by Nature. Furthermore, the fuero guaranteed the right to use 'deserted and uncultivated lands' without distinguishing between privately owned and public lands. Hence an abstract and purely formal occupation of a plot of land by an absentee landowner would not exclude others from its use. According to the Fuero Viejo of Castile (general law code, dating from the late 1200s, and systematized in 1356) the right of presura could be effected on any plot that was thought to be unowned. If a landowner later showed up to demand a share of the crops, the occupier was to give him a third or a fourth of the harvest, depending upon the local custom. Presura was the right of possession through use. The institution, thus defined, was perfectly compatible with the pure principle of public land ownership discussed above. The use to which the land was being put might be for pasture, for planting trees, or for field crops. When it was the last, there existed a more precise term to distinguish that particular type of presura: the word escalio (from squalidus, the Latin for uncultivated) signified occupation qualified by cultivation (Costa 1944: 323-4; Nieto 1964: 124-32).

The occupation of new lands through presura, since it involved crown lands, was made either with the tacit or the express permission of the king. The presura could even be effected by the king himself, but usually the monarch delegated a noble or a clergyman (typically a bishop) to supervise it for him. There could also be spontaneous presura, either by the powerful or by the weak. The medieval Castilian right to presura could be described as a sort of 'homestead' law, providing free land for settlers in frontier areas. The principle of presura remained deeply imbedded in the Castilian consciousness. It did not by any means die out with the medieval period, but extended well into the modern period. For example, the ordinances of the city of Andùjar (Jaén) of 1567 explicitly recognized the right of presura in [12] the local tierras baldías. ⁽⁶⁾ And Joaquín Costa (1944: 250-2) found the practice to have survived in several parts of Spain as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century. Of course, the importance of the right of presura was continuously decreasing in any given locality, as the quantity of crown lands available for such exploitation was gradually reduced through royal grants.

Did the occupation of land through presura convey ownership along with the right of possession? That is a question which can not be answered easily. Certainly when the presura occurred with the express license of the king, there was a conveyance of ownership, as in a royal grant. But it is not clear whether the spontaneous presuras by peasants really resulted in legal ownership, even though they were made through the general authorization of the crown. Joaquín Costa (1898: 249-50; 1944: 332, 346) did not think so. He insisted that the inalienable property of the medieval Castilian peasant included only his house and adjoining yard and garden. Grain fields and pasture were not included, because there were ample public lands for those purposes. Therefore, when the possessor of a field taken in presura ceased cultivating it, his right to the field was extinguished.⁽⁷⁾

But there are also indications that presura was indeed associated with property ownership. In his study of viticulture in northwestern Spain, Alain Huetz de Lemps concluded that the system of presura favored the development of small property ownership in the ninth and tenth centuries, but he did not insist that ownership was necessarily conveyed directly through presura. In other parts of Castile, however, it is clear that proprietary rights were involved (Costa 1898: 261-2; Huetz 1967: 171). For example, the Fuero of Cuenca (late twelfth century) extended property rights to those who cleared and cultivated lands in the tierras baldías. Several different parts of Castile followed the example of Cuenca: in the Campo de Montiel (Ciudad Real and Albacete) the Order of Santiago stimulated the Repoblación according to the Cuenca principle (Planchuelo 1954: 131). And in 1569 the people of Quesada (Jaén) claimed to hold part of their lands according to the Fuero of Cuenca, explaining that 'whoever plows the [baldío] woodlands for the first time, or digs a ditch to irrigate [baldío] lands, shall have both the one and the other in possession and in property'. ⁽⁸⁾

In conclusion, it is clear that the meaning of presura varied, depending upon the place and the time. The one constant behind the [13] institution was the principle of the right of possession through use. Sometimes possession through presura was tantamount to proprietorship, and sometimes it was not. Insofar as it did convey property ownership, that ownership diminished the total available amount of publicly owned land, but it should be remembered that presura could also be applied to the unexploited lands of an absentee owner. Public rights were thus still maintained.
 
 

There was a far more important way in which privately owned fields were subject to public use. This was the custom of stubble grazing, called the derrota de mieses, or simply the derrota. It was by no means peculiar to Spain -- it existed contemporaneously in most of the rest of Europe (Blum 1971; Salomon 1964: 141). The derrota de mieses was a mixed system of communal and private rights that was well suited to the complementary relationship of the pastoral and arable agriculture of the medieval and early modern periods. According to this custom, private rights to a field were limited to the period between planting and harvest. After harvest, every possessor of a grain field or meadow was obliged to open his lands to the animals of the general public. The entire territory of a town -- fields and pastures -- then became a continuous commons open to all the local livestock, and perhaps to those of neighboring towns as well, until the next sowing time, when individual rights to the cultivated plots were reestablished.

Joaquín Costa (1944: 374-5) considered the derrota de mieses to be a semi-collectivistic remnant of a previous totally collectivistic state of agriculture. He shows that there was a perfectly clear juridical system in which a 'privately owned' plot of land had not one owner, but two: one was individual, limited to the period when the plot was planted; and the other was collective, covering the stubble and spontaneous vegetation on the plot between harvest and the next sowing. According to Costa, the community had been originally the sole owner of the soil, but over the years it had lost one of its two uses (cultivation), and retained only the other (pasture). Costa's theory of the origin of the derrota is borne out by the agreements through which the towns rented, sold, or gave cultivation rights to the local inhabitants (García Fernández 1965: 709-15). The agreements [14] stipulated that when crops were not growing, the fields, whether in stubble or in fallow, would be treated as common pasture -- in other words, the derrota de mieses was to be observed.

The derrota, of course, was not created by jurists rationally manipulating legal principles of ownership. Rather, it had its origins in the needs of the rural community at a certain time in history. There were several broad economic factors explaining the adoption of the custom. The basic justification for the derrota was the need to maintain an adequate supply of accessible pasture resources for the important pastoral sector of the rural economy. The celebrated development of transhumant herding was one solution to the problem. But it was not possible to send all animals on seasonal migrations across the peninsula in search of green pastures. Most of Spain's animals, in fact, did not participate in the periodic transpeninsular migrations, but instead remained near the villages of their owners. It was essential to devise a way to feed them.

During part of the year the baldíos and common municipal pastures could provide for the local herds and flocks. But from the outset of summer there was normally a problem. The harsh Mediterranean sun parched the natural pastures in most parts of Spain, causing them to be of little value for grazing. It was then that the fresh stubble (rastrojos) and fallow (barbechos) of grain fields became a valuable resource. The stubble contained not only the residues of harvest, but also an abundance of spontaneous vegetation (weeds) that served as pasture until winter was well along. After the rains of autumn had greened the uncultivated lands again, the animals could move there for a while, then return to the stubble to graze on the new sprouts brought up by the rains. In this way the stubble maintained its value as pasture, though very diminished, until the following spring. The system of stubble grazing just described could not have functioned in an area where annual cropping was practiced. The prevalent system in early modern Castile was biennial cropping (año y vez), with half the land always left fallow. And to gain the full benefit of the derrota, Castilian peasants postponed plowing their stubble until March of the post-harvest year. Such a delay would have been totally irrational in the absence of stubble grazing, because it reduced to a bare minimum the time needed for soil recuperation and absorption of moisture before the next planting (García Fernández 1964).

The derrota de mieses freed cattle owners from the expense of having [15] to maintain their animals in the stable during several months of the year. But it should not be thought that the derrota provided a benefit for cattle growers at the expense of the arable farmer The nineteenth century writer Francisco de Cárdenas (1873: II, 276-94) denounced the practice as such, referring to it as 'the ancient servitude of rural property for the benefit of the stock industry'. Cárdenas was thinking specifically of the Mesta (cattlemen's association), which was the bête noire of defenders of unrestricted property rights. But actually, there was no clear cut dichotomy between cattle growers and arable farmers Grain farmers could not work their fields without draft animals -- mules or oxen. Furthermore, most peasants found it expedient to combine crop growing with the raising of a few other animals such as sheep, goats, or pigs. All these animals had to be fed. But in most parts of Castile it was too and for the kind of large-scale forage cropping that would properly provide for them. Therefore, the sparse weeds and stubble left after harvest were a pasture resource that could not be disparaged.

Even granting the above, one might well ask why the derrota was needed Why did not each peasant graze his animals on his own stubble? The answer lies partly in the extreme subdivision of farmland. The plots of cultivated land belonging to each peasant were scattered around the territory of the town, and it would have been a great inconvenience to take one's animals to graze exclusively on one's own land. Moreover, the value of the stubble pasture was probably not sufficient to justify putting out guards to keep out intruders. And finally, it was the usual practice for each village to form a municipal herd made up of the few head of animals owned by each individual The collective herd was watched over by special guards named by the village fathers. Thus animal care was made more efficient, and, since the village herd contained animals owned by possessors of fields dispersed throughout the village territory, it was sensible to allow the herd to graze on all the stubble lands of the village, without exclusion. So the custom of the derrota was by no means illogical. It was clearly of benefit not only to cattlemen with large herds, but to everyone owning animals. The custom was so strongly infused in Castilian life that it was defended even by the jurists most hostile towards communal practices. It was recognized as one of the irrevocable rights of the Castilian peasant. According to one sixteenth-century authority, 'neither the lords of vassals, nor even the King, could enclose their fields, to keep them from becoming common pasture after the harvest'. Even 'enclosed' fields were subject to the derrota, as were vineyards after the grapes had been picked. Naturally, when the kingdom of Granada was added to the crown of Castile in 1492, the derrota was extended to the new lands, as it was also to the American colonies. ⁽⁹⁾

In addition to the pragmatic justification for the practice, there existed also a theoretical justification for the derrota, based on the medieval Castilian concept of property. According to the principle of public ownership, the only criterion for the individualization of the soil -- apart from royal grants -- was its cultivation. From this viewpoint, the growth of spontaneous vegetation in the stubble of harvested fields was not the result of the peasants' work, and thus had to be common like the baldío pastures (García Fernández 1964: 142).

The rules for the derrota varied slightly from place to place. In all parts of Castile there were towns that shared their stubble grazing rights with neighboring towns in communities of pasture. For example, there were reciprocal stubble grazing rights between the citizens of Andújar and Arjona (both in the province of Jaén) and of a number of other towns in the vicinity. And in the early 1500s in the jurisdiction of Arévalo (Avila and Segovia provinces), the inhabitants of one village could pasture freely in the stubble of another village. But the reciprocity of derrota rights could cause hard feelings, if the residents of one town had significantly more livestock, or less land than the residents of neighboring villages. This often led to local ordinances to deny stubble grazing rights to the animals of nonresidents. Inevitably, the restrictive ordinances led to fines, arrests, and to lawsuits initiated by one side or the other. Documents in the archives of the Chancillerías (Supreme Tribunals) of Granada and Valladolid attest to the frequent litigation about the denial of reciprocal pasture rights in all parts of Castile. For example, in 1573-4 there was such a suit lodged against the city of Córdoba; in 1548-9 the villages of Valdetorres and Guareña (Badajoz) went to court for the same reason; and in the 1520s the villages of Repariegos and Donhierro (in the jurisdiction of Arévalo) began a suit over the denial of derrota rights. ⁽¹⁰⁾ It should be said that it is often difficult, or even impossible, to distinguish suits involving derrota rights from suits involving other common pastures, because stubble was frequently described merely as 'common pasture'.

A troublesome feature of the derrota de mieses was that not all fields [17] were harvested at the same time, and when pasturing animals on the stubble of one field, it was nearly impossible to keep them from straying into adjacent fields of unharvested grain. A related problem was the question of exactly when the derrota began on any given field, because some peasants wished to maintain possession of their fields for a few days after the gathering of the sheaves, to take advantage of grain lost through sloppy reaping, sheaving, or gathering. The town of Horche (Guadalajara) dealt with this question by delaying the derrota for a few days after harvest, to allow for the gleaning of fallen grain (García Fernández 1953: 214-16). In some places, the problem of the starting date was solved by fixing the date at which the derrota would begin. For example, the city of Loja (Granada) had an ordinance that permitted landholders to maintain exclusive rights to their stubble until mid-September -- an ordinance which provoked a suit by cattle owners who maintained that such a delay was illegal. ⁽¹¹⁾ And the towns in the jurisdiction of the City of Málaga established the day of St Mary (15 August) for the initiation of the derrota. The Málaga ordinance also established a regimen for the types of animals who successively would have the right to pasture on the stubble. In the village of La Rinconada (Seville) there was a lawsuit from 1543 to 1546 when two landowners from the city of Seville tried to monopolize the stubble on their lands until mid-August. The village council declared that although it had denied derrota rights to animals from Extremadura, there had never been any such restriction for local animals. According to the council, the local rule had always been that after the sheaves had been gathered, the oxen and other local work animals of all the residents of the village had the right to pasture freely on the stubble of any landowner's fields. It is interesting that the La Rinconada custom was to keep out 'foreign' animals from Extremadura. Perhaps the Extremaduran animals were primarily sheep, and the local residents, having no sheep of their own, resented the incursions of the sheep. Perhaps it was merely because they belonged to outsiders, and perhaps it was because sheep, who graze much more closely than bovines, posed a real menace to the local pasture resources. ⁽¹²⁾

Theoretically, derrota rights applied not just to local animals, but also to outside animals, including the migratory Mesta herds, which consisted primarily of sheep. But many communities, like La Rinconada, resented the migratory animals and attempted to curtail their rights. The consequence was a large number of suits between [18] the Mesta and local governments. The outcome of these Suits was mixed, but in the sixteenth century the Mesta tended to lose its legal battles, because the royal government no longer favored the cattlemen's association as it had in earlier times. ⁽¹³⁾

The derrota represented a compromise between the two extremes of completely individualized and of completely collectivized exploitation of the soil. It was also a compromise between completely enclosed fields and the open range. In historical perspective, it can be seen as a rational utilization of the available pasture resources, both natural and cultivated, while maintaining the integrity of planted fields. Through the derrota, the livestock of a village, or group of villages, could move through an extensive and almost uninterrupted expanse of land in search of pasture. While pasturing on the stubble and fallow lands of cultivated fields, they enriched them with their manure, thus in a sense paying for the vegetation they were able to find there. In many places, the pasture accorded by the derrota was probably superior to the natural pasture of the local montes, which were frequently overgrown with a tangle of scrub brush of scant value. In conclusion, it should be said that the derrota is not merely a historical curiosity belonging to centuries past. It still existed in Spain in the second half of the twentieth century, showing that in many places it was still considered to be an essential custom. ⁽¹⁴⁾

1. Suit between Don Juan de Guzmán and the council of Salvaleón (1517-26), ACHGR, 507-1919-1.

2. See a suit between Muñoz and the town of Segura [mislabeled as Hornos on the title page], ACHGR, 3-1884-6.

3. Averiguación de Piedras Albas (1575), AGS, EH, 906.

4. Testimony from the year 566, AGS, EH, 252; Plasencia y los lugares de su Tierra (1531) ACHVA, PC, FA (F), 64.

5. From the 'Privilegio de 1287 al concejo de Hinestrosa', quoted in Joaquín Costa y Martínez, Colectivismo agrario en España; doctrinas y hechos (Buenos Aires: Editorial América Lee, 1944), p. 323. First published Madrid: Imprenta de San Francisco de Sales, 1898.

6. Ordenanzas sobre colmenares de Andújar, AGS, EH, 220.

7. The question of presura ownership is examined in Luis G. de Valdeavellano, Curso de historia de las instituciones españolas, de los orígenes al final de la Edad Media (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1968), p. 241; in the pressura article of Diccionario de historia de España, 2nd edn, rev, and enl. in 3 vols., dir. Germán Bleiberg (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1969); and in Costa, Colectivismo agrario (1898), pp. 261-2.

8. The quotation is from Relación del Bachiller de la Concha, 30 May 1569, AGS, CJH, 94.

9. The quotation is from Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla, Política para corregidores y señores de vasallos (1597), given by Noel Salomon, La campagne de Nouvelle Castille á la fin du XVIe siécle d'apres les 'Relaciones topograficas' (Paris: SEVPEN, 1964), p. 141, n.1. See also Costa, Colectivismo agrario (1944), pp. 371-7; and 'Don Fernando y Doña Isabel en Córdoba a 3 de noviembre de 1490, y en Sevilla a 26 de enero de 1491', Novísima recopilación de las leyes de España, 6 vols. (Madrid: J. Viana Razola, 1805-29), libro vii, título xxv, ley II; Luis Morell Terry, Estudio sobre las causas de la decadencia de la agricultura en la provincia de Granada y medios para remediarla (Granada: Imprenta de Indalecio Ventura, 1888), pp. 131-2; Alain Huetz de Lemps, Vignobles et vins du Nord-Oest de l'Espagne, 2 vols. (Bordeaux: University of Bordeaux, 1967), p. 599.

10. Ordenanzas de Arjona (1537), AGS, EH, 223; Bartolomé Serrano y. Córdoba (1573-4), ACHGR, 3-1493-9; Valdetorres y. Guareña (1548-9), ACHGR, 3-1235-3. The Arévalo information is in Don Yerro y. Rapariegos (1520-38), ACHVA, PC, FA (F), 33.

11. Algunos criadores y señores de ganados de Loja v. la Ciudad de Loja (1580-92), ACHGR, 3-691-7. See also Burgo y. Villamunyo (1548), ACHVA, PC, FA (F), 14; Arnedo y. el consejo de la Mesta (1584), ACHVA, PC, FA (F), 64.

12. A transcription (1554) of the rastrojo ordinance of Málaga and its Tierra, apparently adopted during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and still in force, can be found in Comares y consortes v. Francisco de Santa Olallay consortes (1553-5), ACHGR, 3-792-6. The Seville-area data, contested by the village of La Rinconada, can be found in El Jurado Alonso Osorio y el Doctor Lope Rodríguez de Baeza v. La Rinconada (1543-6), ACHGR, 3-1336-4 and 3-1165-12.

13. Examples of suits can be found in ACHGR, 3-1426-9; 512-2353-II; and 508-1945-1; and in Arnedo v. el consejo dela Mesta (1585), ACHVA, PC, FA (F), 64.

14. Some arguments in favor of the derrota can be found in Costa, Colectivismo agrario (1944), p. 372; Josefina Gómez Mendoza, 'Las ventas de baldíos y comunales en el siglo XVI: estudio de su proceso en Guadalajara', Estudios geográficos, 28, no. 109 (1967), 555; Angel García Sanz, Desarrollo y crisis del antiguo régimen en Castilla la Vieja; economía y sociedad en tierras de Segovia de 1500 a 1814 (Madrid: Akal Editor, 1977), p. 28; José-Luis Martín Galindo, Artículos geográficos sobre la provincia de León (Valladolid: Editorial Miñón, n. d. [apparently in late 1950s]), p. 14.