wool-exporting capital of Spain during the 1600s, at a time when wool was one of the country’s chief products.71 Zaragoza was economically prominent in the Aragonese interior, while Barcelona and Valencia were the economic capitals of the northeastern and far eastern coasts, respectively. Lisbon, Porto, La Coruña, Cadiz, Malaga, and other ports formed a crucial outer rim of the Iberian Peninsula’s commercial and industrial networks (see Map 1). Converso merchants frequented and conducted business in all of these economic centers.
Besides major cities, there were numerous nodes of industrial and agricultural production that continued to function despite the general economic downturn of the 1600s. Most larger cities and principal rural centers were linked by a system of major roads that converged in Madrid, a fact that attested to the geographic and economic centrality of the Spanish capital (see Map 1). These roads were a fundamental component of the economic life of the country, for much Iberian trading was done by land.
Peninsular Trade Routes: Some Salient Aspects
The transportation infrastructure of early modern Spain was an amalgam of different roadways dating from the times of the Romans, the Muslims, and the Catholic monarchs. Toward the end of the sixteenth century most peninsular carreteras or calzadas (highways) and caminos (roadways or trails) were in a state of disrepair. For example, in 1593 the arteries surrounding Valladolid were so deteriorated that according to municipal officials, “people cannot walk on them.”72
Given copious evidence of the sorry state of Spanish highways, one might conclude that the crown was not interested in maintaining an adequate system of roads, yet that was not entirely the case. Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile built some of the main peninsular thoroughfares, while their Habsburg successors invested in ones that linked Madrid to the periphery.73 The central problem, then, was the upkeep of a vast majority of the country’s roads and bridges. That task usually fell upon local authorities such as lords and municipalities.
According to David Vassberg, local agents were not particularly effective in maintaining the country’s infrastructure.74 One reason for this was that the authorities were not always able to secure the necessary manpower to undertake road repairs: Local villagers avoided construction and maintenance work because it was usually unpaid. A second problem was financial. Already impoverished by crushing fiscal obligations, local citizens tended to resist extraordinary taxes earmarked for infrastructural improvements, while travelers were often loath to pay usage tolls since (to paraphrase Vassberg) these levies were meant for the maintenance of somebody else’s roads.75
Most of Spain’s principal thoroughfares were unpaved. Some public highways encompassed stretches that were no more than well-trodden trails.76 Consequently a number of so-called carreteras were barely fit for travel by coach. A French tourist commented in 1659 about the rough paths that led to the capital, “everything arrives [in Madrid] by land, and not by coach as in France, but on asses and mules which is one of the reasons that all merchandise … [is] so costly there.”77
Commerce by overland routes was a predominantly seasonal activity. Because most commercial roads had earthen surfaces, they became very dusty in dry months (August, September, and October) and totally impassable in wet ones (December and January).78 To make matters worse, the accumulation of snow hindered or totally impeded traffic at high altitudes. Many calzadas were thus effectively useless for nearly half of the year. It is not surprising that some highways actually consisted of several alternative routes, each of which was intended to compensate for the frequent closure of the other routes.79
Throughout the Early Modern Period, commercial land traffic in Spain consisted mainly of mule caravans and assorted carretas (carts). Outside of seasonal peaks, and especially when the weather discouraged traveling, road traffic diminished as agricultural laborers retreated to their farms to plow, sow, and harvest.
Map 1. Principal Roads of Habsburg Spain, 1608–84. Source: Santos Madrazo, El sistema de comunicaciones en España, 1750–1850 (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1984). The image above is a composite of Madrazos’s “Mapa 4” and “Mapa 6.” The former is a reconstruction of an itinerary by Ottavio Cotogno (1608); the latter is a reconstruction of a survey by Giuseppe Miselli (1684).
Itinerant merchants who traversed Spanish highways were known as arrieros, buhoneros, and trajineros. Of these commercial travelers, rural producers were most likely to use ox-driven carts to transport merchandise. Pack mules and donkeys were easier to handle in mountainous regions, and were commonly preferred by poorer wayfarers and by full-time salesmen whose goods could be borne by one or a few beasts.80
Traveling on inadequate roads was an exhausting, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous and expensive affair. Arrieros and other voyagers usually had to pay local highway tolls. Merchants who traveled long distances also had to pay royal customs (usually set at 10 percent) at posts located between Castile, the Basque lands, Navarre, Aragon, and the Andalusian province.81 Of course, traveling comerciantes had to meet the additional cost of any merchandise they purchased on the road, not to mention the cost of food and lodging.
Stays at rural and urban inns, usually called mesones or posadas, were the nightly lot of most merchants who traveled beyond a day’s riding or walking distance. Typical hosting establishments were humble places run by peasants or poor city dwellers, and were known for being filthy and generally uncomfortable. Mesones offered travelers little more than some straw to sleep on, a modest amount of food for pack-bearing animals, and a stall to keep the animals. Local ordinances in many towns forbade the sale of food by innkeepers. Therefore, in order to have meals, guests often had no choice but to purchase uncooked ingredients at local markets and then ask the innkeepers to prepare the ingredients. Alternately, travelers could go to local taverns, whose keepers were infamous for serving rotten and otherwise revolting food.82
The fact that itinerant merchants carried money and commercial goods made these voyagers attractive targets in the eyes of thieves at lodging sites and on the roads. Although Spanish thoroughfares were relatively safe in some areas,83 road banditry was a manifest danger in regions where the disorder of war and civil uprisings had loosened the grip of law and order. Such was the case in Catalonia, elsewhere along the border with France, and as far south as Valencia, throughout the seventeenth century.84
Besides having to beware of bandits, wayfarers had to contend with an understandable sense of isolation as they traveled long distances through alien territory, particularly when they traversed regions as desolate and sparsely populated as early modern Castile. François Bertaut, a traveler from France, observed in 1659 that Castilian villages were so far apart that one could ride for an entire day without seeing a single person.85 It is no surprise that many voyagers banded together for purposes of security and companionship. Even this practice, however, could not erase the stigma of being “foreign” in a country where rural and urban folk were typically prejudiced against forasteros (outsiders).
As Vassberg has explained, local solidarity in early modern Spanish towns and villages was so intense that it encouraged an exclusionist attitude toward anyone who was not a vecino—a taxpaying citizen of the local municipality or federation of municipalities.86 Prejudice against outsiders took many forms. Some forms were patently discriminatory. For example, local officials often fined forasteros more than local residents for violating the same ordinances.87 Rules governing local marketplaces enshrined the spirit of exclusion in similar fashion. A common municipal policy was to prohibit the sale of outside products until local supplies had been exhausted. A corollary to that approach was to proscribe the sale of inside products to aliens until all internal demand had been satisfied.88 Through this and a myriad of similar regulations, protectionism became well entrenched in Spanish towns and villages during the Early Modern Era. This form of economic exclusionism worked against non-native, itinerant