Mesta

The first were monasteries that owned summer pastures in the Sierra de Guadarrama, followed by the religious military orders which had acquired lands after the conquest of Toledo, in the area renamed New Castile.

It did not own any sheep or pastures, buy and sell wool or control markets, and its close association with the Spanish government gave it a status and extensive presence unmatched by any guild.

[12] This transhumance was a frequent cause of dispute between the shepherds and local inhabitants, and the Cortes of 1252 enacted laws regulating the number and amounts of tolls that could be levied upon the flocks moving through a district.

During the Cortes of Burgos in 1269, the king imposed the servicio de los ganados, a tax on migratory flocks and herds, and the recognition of the Mesta in 1273 allowed Alfonso to derive a greater portion of the resources of the sheep-herding industry more efficiently.

Dependence solely on cereal cultivation risked periodic starvation, and livestock rearing was important in the mediaeval agricultural economy of Spain's Christian kingdoms.

[21] The archaeological record shows that keeping pigs, sheep and goats was widespread, but numbers were limited by the lack of food in the dry summers and cold winters, and cattle were only kept in better watered areas.

[44] Until the 10th century, much of the land in Old Castile and León was in the collective ownership of peasants carrying on mixed subsistence farming including small-scale, local livestock activity.

[46] In the 10th and 11th centuries, several large Benedictine monasteries founded in the Duero valley began medium-range transhumance and gained royal privileges of pasturage on the slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama.

[54][55] The conquest of the Guadalquivir valley in the 13th century permitted flocks from the Duero and Tagus basins to over-winter there, extending the length of transhumance journeys and the number of sheep that could be fed through the winter.

'groups or gangs') (cuadrillas in modern Spanish) based around the principal pastoral cities of the northern meseta, Soria, Segovia, Cuenca and León, where most of the flocks of Merino sheep had their home pastures.

[64] There is little information on the annual migrations in the first century of the Mesta's charter, although as northern flocks were supplying the meat markets of Toledo then, this suggests that producing wool was not yet their predominant purpose.

[66] However, from the 16th century, if not earlier, the pastoral transhumant cycle, involving the dates of the two migrations, the length of daily marches and frequency of rests, and the times for lambing and shearing, was designed to ensure the best conditions for the feeding, growth and reproduction of Merino sheep.

The availability of fresh grass throughout the year resulted in the increased fineness of their fleeces, and it was realised that transhumance was essential to create wool of a quality that sedentary sheep flocks could not match.

They therefore relied on having a salaried Mayoral or chief shepherd with sufficient power and experience to negotiate pasture leases for all the sheep in his flock, termed his cabaña: their role in earlier years may have been less prominent than in the 1828 account.

[70][71] The shepherds were normally engaged for a year ending in June when the flocks were returned to their home pastures, and usually paid mainly in kind, with grain, a proportion of lambs born and cheese produced, but not in wool, and with a cash fee for each 100 sheep herded.

Despite being granted, in theory at least, free access to southern pastures by royal charter, from the middle of the 16th century few stockholders came south without first arranging suitable pasturage, otherwise they had to pay excessive rents for any remaining low-quality grazing, often in the hills.

[81] The cañadas in León and Old Castile may have developed from an increased range of transhumance that first occurred within those provinces, and which were extended south as the northern boundaries of Muslim states retreated.

[82] The expansion of the cañadas southward has been related to three causes, which may have all played their part, but here is no evidence of large scale transhumance in Extremadura, Andalucía and La Mancha when they were under Muslim rule, so the impetus must have come from the Christian north.

[83] From the reconquest of Toledo in 1085 to that of Andalucía, stock raising, particularly of sheep, was developed New Castile, at first by over thirty northern monasteries, bishoprics and churches, many with their summer pastures in the Sierra de Guadarrama, and secondly by the military orders, which received royal grants of pasturelands in the Tagus valley.

[82] The Leonese cañadas terminated in Extremadura and in the banks of the Tagus and Guadiana rivers, those of Segovia and Soria, which were the major routes, ended in Andalucía and the Manchegan ones in La Mancha and eastern Murcia.

However, the Mesta was able to have an interpretation of the rule of posesión accepted by the courts that was more favourable to its interests, arguing that, as its charter allowed it to represent all sheep owners, it had the right negotiate and allocate all pasturage leases in Castile to prevent disputes or competition between its members.

[98] Although this interpretation was disputed by the landowners of southern Castile, including towns, ecclesiastics, military orders and private individuals, it was upheld by the courts and confirmed in a series of laws passed in 1505.

One interpretation, based on the assumption that the privilege of posesión operated strictly in accordance with these laws and could be enforced, was that it retarded the growth of agriculture and had a negative effect on Spain's political development for centuries,[99] a view that ignores the active and passive resistance to this legislation.

[105] In contrast to his predecessors, Charles III and his reforming ministers regarded posesión as a mediaeval survival that had outlived its usefulness and considered that its continuation inhibited a necessary growth in cereal cultivation.

[111] Itinerant judicial officials, each termed an Entregador, were tasked with keeping open the cañadas and their watering and resting stations, resisting encroachments on public pastures and protecting the shepherds.

This led to the decline in smaller owners being involved in transhumance and the dominance of the Mesta by those with very large flocks, who had the money to pay for grazing along migration routes and the political influence to enforce their rights.

[119] Klein regarded the reign of Ferdinand and Isabela as the golden age of the Mesta, as their aggressive promotion of wool exports,[120] reform of local taxes and dues,[121] ensuring that the collection of what should have been royal taxes on sheep were collected only by royal agents, efficiently and at much lower rates than under the Hapsburg kings,[122] and extending and enforcing pasture privileges for transhumant flocks and enforcing these[123] put the members of the Mesta in a more favourable position than they had under later monarchs.

[127] The Mesta originated, firstly, because the dry climate of the central Meseta and the sparse population of areas conquered from the Muslims between the 11th and 13th centuries made the transhumant raising of sheep the most efficient use of its land.

[139] Pressure from would-be cultivators, in the face of Mesta opposition, enabled wheat to be grown on former pastures in the Andalusian plains, despite an immediate loss of royal income from wool taxes.

[143] The social and commercial reforms of Charles and Campomanes included a significant reduction in Mesta pasture rights by granting towns the freedom to use their common lands as they wished in 1761, and giving local sedentary flocks preference to over transhumant ones for Extremaduran pasturage in 1783.