The monasteries played an important role in the recruitment conducted by Christian aristocracy during and after the progress of the Reconquista, with the consequent decline in the Muslim south of the peninsula.
The first monasteries arose in the fourth century and were humble buildings erected in the shadow of shrines dedicated to or graves of beloved local martyrs.
With the arrival of the monks of Cluny in the eleventh century, and the order of St. Benedict and observers of their rule, the Spanish monastery complex took on new importance and influence.
The political role of Cluny and its link with the monarchy and noble houses was decisive in the Europeanization of the Christian kingdoms of the mainland and the formation of feudal society in Spain.
With regard to the social and economic role of the Benedictine monasteries, the classic materialistic interpretations—that of a feudal lord overseeing and creating the monastery—are tempered by recent historiography.
There were a number of reasons individuals might found a monastery, largely self-serving ones: to reserve a burial there, which came with perpetual prayers by the monks on behalf of the founder's soul, sheltering a princess, widow, unmarried or bastard, in the case of kings.
This is the case of the monastery of San Juan de Ortega which originally was a humble chapel founded by the saint to preserve relics of St. Nicholas of Bari Over time, sufficient people arrived to care for the shrine to require the formation of an official community.
San Fructuoso de Braga founded the monastery of Compludo in the early seventh century and twenty other foundations from Galicia to Andalusia.
According to the surviving descriptions and annotations, the maior domus should be a dependency of high architectural quality and large size, standing next to the church, at the height of the atrium.
The monks who created this kind of monastery came from both the South (especially Cordoba, at a time of persecution of Christians in that city) and the North, bringing with them the influence of their region of origin, but without forgetting the traditional Spanish-Gothic forms.
From this monastery, nuns departed to found the communities of Perales (Palencia), of Gradefes, Cañas (La Rioja), Trasobares in Zaragoza, Vallbona, Lleida and Las Huelgas in Burgos.
In time, these monasteries came to be officially removed, but still, in the twelfth century, a group of thirty-one nuns nicknamed tuquinegras lived with a large number of monks, men who were supposed to protect and who were known by the name of milites.
The monastic ruins went on to become a commonplace instance of romanticism, and poets and musicians seeking inspiration in them; notable artists include Frédéric Chopin and George Sand in the Cartuja de Valldemossa and the Bécquer brothers Gustavo and Valeriano in the Cistercian Monastery Veruela (Zaragoza).
In the first third of the twentieth century, political and social critical junctures brought back to light the old Spanish anticlericalism which culminated in Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909.
The monks of Cluny spread throughout Europe and founded the monasteries whose architectural structure would henceforth be an example to follow, with minor variations in some monastic orders, taking into account possible regional differences.
Sculptural decoration shields were common, signifying the monastic order as appropriate, those of kings or noble founders or sponsors, bishops (where applicable) and the arms of the city.
In the center of the choir is lectern furniture that supports the great liturgical choral music book, written in large characters that can be read from afar by the monks.
In the monastery of Santa Maria de Matallana in the province of Valladolid, reconstruction of the ruins revealed the space that monks had devoted to this garden, growing plants.
Many of these monasteries had a scriptorium in addition to a library, furnished with benches, desks and shelves and equipped with pens, parchment, inks and other tools needed for writing and painting miniatures.
In Galicia, the famous monastery of San Julián de Samos had a great library that was burned in a fire in the late twentieth century.
Larger monasteries provided not only the means for the monks' subsistence but for a strong local economic base, with workshops, foundries, mills, potteries, wineries, and other small businesses.
Another example of a huge altarpiece was in the monastery of San Benito el Real de Valladolid, a masterpiece of Berruguete Alonso, which is kept at present at the National Museum of Sculpture in the city.
Its heritage spanned the provinces of León, Valladolid, Palencia, Zamora and Cantabria, thus counting a far larger number of subjects under their jurisdiction than the holdings of other important figures of the time.
From the religious point of view, Sahagun was the center from which sprang at the behest of Pope Gregory VII the new Roman liturgy which replaced Spanish Mozarabic Rite.
The principle was established with toughness and authority of perpetual abstinence, fasting and severity in the monk's practice and in their habitations; it also enforced generosity to the needy in the form of sharing food, money and fuel.
At the same time, the monk Beatus of Liébana wrote two works of great significance: the Commentary on Revelation, of which several valuable illuminated illustrated copies are held, and the refutation of heresy that had spread among Mozarabic Christians under Muslim occupation and Elipando, bishop of Toledo.
This was a two-part monastery of monks and nuns in the Visigothic tradition, founded by Abbot Froila, under the patronage of Alfonso III and located 43 km northeast of Zamora.
In a tiny space, were built several structures a chapel for the offices large enough to fit only the officiant and an acolyte, to which is attached the founder's cell, which describes Santa Teresa de Jesús this way: It seems they were forty years, he told me he had slept one hour and a half between night and day, and it was the greatest work of penance that had in the early to beat the dream and it was always or kneeling or standing.
Located in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range near Madrid, this led in the years after its building to a great social impact, not only by the vast proportion its construction but its later role in burials.
In the absence of patronage and custom or donations, these religious people adapt to modern life with modern media and subsist on the work undertaken by the community's members: confectionery, wine and spirits, cheese, bee hives, poultry farms, textiles and fiber arts, writing scores, dissertations, obituaries, advanced computing, pottery of all kinds, decorated white porcelain, artisanal food, farming, vestments, textiles, caring for sick and elderly, schools and daycare.