The Fall of the Spanish Empire

[al Roumi]

Al-Roumi, makes a good point about banking. However, this is tied very closely into ideology and social status. The strong muslim influence in Spain was apparent also in that earning interest on money (what banking is based on) was considered usury, and therefore menial labour unsuitable for an hidalgo. Since in Spain, at the time, and for a very long time after, considering someone NOT to be an hidalgo was grounds for a duel to the death, and 'cleanliness of blood' (funny concept that basically implied proving that all your ancestors as far as records exist were not descendants of muslims or jews - which gave rise to a mafia running falsifications of birth certificates, and family trees, as 'cleanliness' was a requirement for public office or any meaningful job within the government. Only hidalgos were allowed to carry swords,for example. To keep their status they couldnt engage in usury, or do manual labour. Obviously that didn't help the economy...

The main opposition to the practice of usury in europe was the Catholic church. The Hidalgos were at best tax farmers, living off agricultural tithes from their estates. Most of central and southern Spain's farmlands were owned by the aristocracy or the church, worked by non-land owning peasant labourers. Only in the Northern regions were there many smallholdings or land-owning peasants (critical to the Carlist wars, in particular Navarra).

There certainly had been a strong Muslim and Jewish influence in Spain, but most of them were evicted and dumped on the Morrocan shoreline during the reign of the reyes catolicos (Ferdinand and Isabella). This did deal irreperable harm to Spain's economy as it amputated key artisans, bankers and workers.

I think the focus on Hidalgos themselves is a littel overblown. Their role as a lid and limitation on the rest of Spanish society's development cannot be overstated however. As I mentioned before, the aristocracy have only very rarely been the engine for economic development -they have too many vested interests in the status quo, which places them at the top. The middle classes, or their emergence, are what have always been the engine and key indicator of economic -and social- development. The aristocracy, church and inquisition did such a good job of keeping the peasantry brutalised and the middle class emasculated over a quite a few centuries that only in the early 1900s did things begin to change.