The community movement and the Germanías during the beginning of Carlos I
The origins of both the movement of the community members emerged in the Crown of Castile and the Germanry Movement produced in the Crown of Aragon during the first years of Carlos I would have to look for them enough years ago, at the time of the Catholic Monarchs. Thus, to better understand the revolt of the community members, we should analyze the conflicting Castilian society of the late fifteenth and beginning of the XVI. The urban bourgeoisie and merchants of the cities focused a good part of their income in the textile manufacturing industry, a sector that had been in decay for some time due, fundamentally, to the registration of the raw material, the famous Castilian wool by prioritizing the owners of the great Livestock farms – The high nobility and aristocracy – its export to Flanders before its sale to those local manufacturing.
In this way, a marked rivalry between the leaders of the Castilian cities – that urban bourgeoisie and low nobility – and that high export nobility, who in turn were supported by a monarchy that also obtained profitable benefits with the wool trade with the trade of the wool with the commerce of the wool. In the kingdoms of Valencia and Mallorca, social conflicts originate within the cities and also have their germ at the end of the 15th century, with Fernando the Catholic, motivated by the precarious economic situation in which the artisanal sector lived in contrast to the contrast to the privileged municipal oligarchies. At the same time, there is, as a backdrop, a larger rejection of that battered urban population towards the Mudejar communities that lived in the cities and that were at the service of the oligarchic sectors.
In this context, the new king, Carlos de Austria in 1517. During the first months that low Castilian urban nobility and the middle and artisan class of the Kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon put great hope in the grandson of the Catholic Monarchs by waiting for their problems to solve. It would not take long to realize that the monarchy would continue to opt for that noble aristocracy and oligarchic sectors, disregarding their claims.
The community movement
In Castilla, the relations between Carlos I and the leaders of the cities begin to deteriorate soon when, he begins to install his flamenco and Burgundy advisors in the main public and ecclesiastical positions in a clear contempt for local elites, increase fiscal pressure, Appoint Adriano de Utrech abroad as regent of Castile during his absence and, something fundamental, press the cities via Cortievión de Cortes – such as Valladolid of 1518 or the stormy of Santiago de Compostela and continuation in the Coruña of 1520 – to collect A huge amount of money I needed to consolidate the imperial crown in Central Europe.
Unchanged from the new monarch, councilors and leaders of cities located in the Peninsular Center, enemized for a long time with the high nobility as we have said previously, they now also begin to perform a policy of criticism and distrust of Carlos I. The city of Toledo, with the councilor Juan de Padilla in front, is the first to be revealed against the government of the young monarch in April 1520, shortly before the departure of this one from Spain, expelling from the city the corregidor of the king and proclaiming the community, infecting this rebel spirit to other Castilian urban nuclei. In July of that year, it is constituted in Ávila, with the initial participation of four cities, the San Board of the Community. Relying on the figure of a separate Queen Juana – held in Tordesillas and that, by the way, at no time gave its support to the community movement – let their program know: limitation of real power and nobility, tax reduction, that they were collected by cities and not by the tenants, a greater participation of the municipalities in the country’s government and the old claim of the limitation to wool export and support for the Castilian textile industry.
In August the government governed by Adriano de Utrech reacts and organizes an army that punishes various lifting cities, including Segovia and Medina del Campo. This city is fire and generates a chain reaction of many other cities against the Government: Palencia, Zamora, Cuenca, or Salamanca, even reaching the rural world. In September, the Board, located in Tordesillas, reaches its highest point of power but also marks the beginning of its decline since discrepancies begin to emerge between cities with a more revolutionary bias – Zamora’s case – with others more moderate such as Burgos such as Burgos where they only claimed certain lower draft reforms.
It coincides with the moment that these more moderate cities leave the community movement when the then co -supporters of the Fadrique Enriquez (Almirante de Castilla), Íñigo de Velasco (Condestable of Castile) and Adriano de Utrech decide to face a definitive way to this revolution. They are joined by the high Castilian nobility, alarmed by the radical nuance that this rebellion was taking and that directly threatened their interests and privileges. The first Great Real Victoria takes place in Tordesillas on December 5, 1520, forcing the common board to move to Valladolid; The second and almost definitive will occur on April 21, 1521 near the village of Villalar that generates the capture, judgment and execution of its main leaders: Juan Padilla (Toledo), Juan Bravo (Segovia) and Pedro Maldonado (Salamanca). The city of Toledo still resisted a few months more defended by María Padilla and the Radical Bishop of Zamora Acuña, falling in October of that year. The community movement had definitely been defeated.
The Germanies
Remaining that rejection of the union classes of the city of Valencia to the dominant urban oligarchy, they achieve real authorization in the summer of 1519 to organize a brotherhood (Germanía), a kind of armed militia, under the pretext of being able to defend themselves before the possibility of an attack by the Pirates of Berbería. Taking advantage of the fact that a plague outbreak in the city had caused the abandonment of the city of its greatest authorities, the guilds constitute at the end of that year the so -called "Board of 13" having as main leaders to Pelaire (person in charge of preparing the wool who has to weave) Joan Llorens, the weaver Guillem Sorolla and the merchant Joan Caro, and whose program aims to reduce the privileges of the noble classes as well as establish a republican constitution, in the style of existing ones in cities such as Genoa or Venice.
In 1520, and coinciding with the appointment of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, count of Mélito, such as Virrey de Valencia, the guild oligarchic, starting from that moment serious clashes between the nobility and the guilds and causing King Carlos I to finally decide for supporting those. This in turn generates a spiral of violence and radicalism by the middle and low classes of the city that culminate with the control on its valence and expansion of the lifting towards the entire Valencian kingdom.
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza reacted in July 1521 by subjecting certain river populations, case of Oropesa and Almenara. The slopes, on the other hand, are even more radicalized and in those cities that control, case of Gandía, force the Mudejar population – vassals of that dominant oligarchy – to the forced baptism. A radicalization that causes the desertion of these urban middle classes in the revolutionary movement, a fact that helps the viceroy and the leading classes to decant the situation towards its side. Dead Joan Llorens the situation was progressively restored until in October 1921 the real troops are made with the absolute control of the city of Valencia and make Germany disappear.
During the following months certain sources of resistance continued in areas such as Játiva and Alcira led by the "undercover" – self-proclaimed grandson of the Catholic Monarchs -. A resistance that ends in 1522 with the death of this enigmatic character and a subsequent repression by real power with the execution of hundreds of rebels. Already in 1523, with German from Foix as Viceroy of Valencia, a general forgiveness will be granted. On the other hand, also in the ancient kingdom of Mallorca there were similar problems, forming urban and peasant guilds in 1521 their own Germania with moderate pelaire Joan Crespí. As happened in Valencia, the movement suffered a radicalization process in which extremist Joanot Colom. A revolt that was finally crushed by real troops in October 1523.
Similarities
- Both movements take place in the same historical period, between 1519 and 1523, coinciding with the first years of reign in Spain of the young Carlos de Austria.
- The germ that causes the emergence of these two rebellions should be located decades ago, at the time of the Catholic Monarchs.
- Social type movements, class struggle, uprisings of a sector of the population of a highly compartmentalized society against another higher type.
- The two have moderate leaders who request reforms within the legal framework and the two evolve towards clearly revolutionary radicality and proposals.
- Some movements that will have a short life, around two years, and that will end up being crushed by the coalition formed between the oligarchic nobility and royalty.
Differences
- Germanías arise as a clear urban conflict between the increasing. Only later, with the progress of the most revolutionary positions, it will also end up facing the power that represents the king. On the other hand, with the community movement, the process will be inverse. At first, the confrontation will originate between the average and small nobility, merchants and manufacturing of the textile industry of certain Castilian cities – which make up the third estate of the Courts – and the monarchy itself headed by a Carlos I much discussed by those. Subsequently, this high nobility will be involved in the conflict that in the Crown of Castile that is enriched with the wool export business to the North European and receives wide favors by the monarchy.
- On the other hand, Germanies, as John Lynch states, really lacked a specific social base since it was formed by a conglomerate of artisans, small farmers, day laborers, merchants and even under clergy. The common rebellion, however, was channeled by a clear group of representatives of the so -called "third state" in the Cortes of Castile: urban bourgeoisie, nobles and lawyers.
- There was no thread of connection between the two movements or their interests coincided. The agermanos, unlike the community members, never presented a political program, characterizing their revolts spontaneity and the desire to escape a very low quality of life. The community members, on the contrary, from the beginning they left their political and economic pretensions in torders.
- Personally value the consequences that resulted from the community movement and the Germany Movement.
Once both social movements have been analyzed under the optics of two of the main Hispanics of the sixteenth century, the British Henry Kamen and John Lynch, my personal opinion on the consequences that they brought together align – how can it be otherwise – with that of These prestigious historians: it was a clear triumph of the high nobility and high clergy over that other medium and small nobility of an urban nature, the artisanate and the mercantile bourgeoisie. Thanks to the support borrowed to the monarch with his powerful armies, they saw how its social privileges and its properties greatly increased.
But who truly was more strengthened from these clashes was, without a doubt, Carlos I. Since then no social movement emerged in the peninsular interior altered the long reign of his (1516–1556). He monopolized all political power, leaving the three estates that composed the courts applying to achieve a good strategy as Kenry Kamen tells us: guide their interests towards other lands such as the lucrative races in court and bureaucracy. However, the Courts continued to function regularly and retain their rights – case of the fueros or the regional prerogatives – and even saw them increased in some periods, case of 1525 and in 1534 when they obtained the right to be able to collect taxes.
Finally, highlight as an indirect consequence of the German movement the outcrop, once again, of the antimorisk feeling by the lowness and plain state of the Crown of Aragon (in Castile the decree of conversion or expulsion of the Muslims of the kingdom of the kingdom from Granada is 1502). Some Moorish that mostly worked in the field for the great landowners and that were progressively pressed by the aforementioned social layers until Carlos I get the little effective decree of forced conversion of 1525.
Bibliography
- Kamen, Henry. "A conflicting society: Spain, 1469-1714", 1983. Madrid, Editorial Alliance.
- Castilla Soto, Josefina and Rodríguez García, Justina. “Modern history of Spain (1469-1665). 2011. Madrid, Edit. Ramón Areces Studies Center. 2nd reprint July-2017.
- Floristan, Alfredo (coordinator). "History of Spain in the Modern Age", 2011. Barcelona, Editorial Ariel. 5th impression January-2018.
- Lynch, John. “Los Austrias 1516-1700”, 1993. Barcelona, Critical Editorial. 8th impression January 2019.
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