Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe

The Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe (Arbitral Decision of Guadalupe) was a legal decree delivered by King Ferdinand II of Aragon at the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain on 21 April 1486 to free the Catalan remensa peasants who were subjects of the lord of the manor and tied to his lands and subject to numerous onerous fees and maltreatment under the so-called evil customs (mals usos).

Finally, King Ferdinand dictated the Sentencia Arbitral that allowed the end of the evil customs in exchange for a payment (not only for the "mal ús" remença),[1] and postponed the conflict that had lasted more than four centuries between lords and peasants.

In exchange for a payment of 60 sous per farmstead, the right to mistreat peasants and many other minor statutory abuses were abolished.

The upshot was that the abolition of the feudal system for which the peasants were fighting, was converted only into the possibility of freeing themselves from the evil customs, or "malae consuetudines", as people called it at that time.

The decree meant the beginning of a new phase in the Principality of Catalonia: the right to freely contract emphyteutic agreements, which led to general prosperity in the Catalonian countryside.