Thanks for that link. Although I had heard of that poem I had never actually read it. Don Juan of Austria is a fascinating character in his own right and a sort of opposite to Philip II in many senses. He was a dashing young man who was popular and had a gift with people while his half brother was introspect and guarded. At a very young age was a great captain, first in the Morisco revolt and later at Lepanto. He finally died at the age of 31 in the low countries and his body was cut in 3 and smuggled through France to Spain. A fascinating biography. It was his secretary Escobedo who was murdered at the suggestion of Philip the second’s secretary Antonio Pérez. It all makes for fascinating reading. Cloak and dagger adventures and plots which really happened.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk!
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed–
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade!
Last I heard about 15% of the US population was Hispanic, and 50% of all new immigrants were Hispanic. It’s not impossible that two generations from now Anglos will be learning Spanish and voting Democrat as part of the process of assimilating into the Estados Unidos. If this was the case, it might be interepreted as a triumph from beyond the grave of - the Spanish Empire!
And thus is the hi-jack re-jacked.
What I found interesting is that Western Sahara is still technically part of Spain, despite the fact it’s basically uninhabited. Yet the Polisario and Morocco have been fighting over it since 1975. It’s almost as bad as that Kashmiri glacier the Indians and Pakistanis maintain garrisons on for no better reason than it’s there and if they leave the other side might take it and… I don’t know, turn it into mineral water or something.
Nope, Spanish rule over the Western Sahara ended in 1975.
My understanding is the Spanish abandoned the territory in 1975, but the UN still regards it as being “Under Spanish Administration”.
The Spanish Administration doesn’t, perhaps the UN didn’t get the memo.
It seems to me that what you mean by “direct control” is what I mean by “ignoring Parliament.” In all of their Kingdoms, it was Parliament who could raise taxes - the Kings didn’t have the legal right to do so. But in Castilla, a high nobility that was busy draining resources and a low nobility that was busy sending sons to Flanders and other overseas locations let them raise taxes without opposition, whereas in Aragon and Navarra the respective permanent representatives refused to break procedure; that sentence “se obedece pero no se cumple” (we obey your orders but we can’t implement them) became standard with Phillip V’s orders for Diputación to raise taxes in Navarra, but only because previous Kings had bothered as little as possible with “that puny barbaric land”.
If the King wanted to raise taxes in Aragon and Navarra, he had to call Parliament, go there and expose his case. Since he wouldn’t follow this procedure, he didn’t get what he wanted.
But any “direct control” in Castilla was because there the King was allowed to ignore the existence of a Parliament. Carlos V famously had to ask the Castillian Parliament for money for his Emperorship campaign three times (including a Meeting in Coruña) before finally extracting it.
For what territories are those figures for Aragon and Castilla? They can’t include the whole of each Kingdom, as they don’t make up anything near the 90+% I’d expect. Both Aragon and Castilla included “sub territories” with their own taxation.
That’s exactly what I meant, and what monarchs felt was their due in the quasi-feudal part of the early modern period (England had this problem in spades too). I’m not saying kings should be able to raise taxes on a whim, but the Hapsburgs had more ability to do it in Castille than they could in any of their other territories.
The rest of the income figures (I’m at work so don’t have the book I was quoting from) were things like sale of offices, the bullion from South America, salt tax, Church income etc. Obviously I don’t know for certain but I’d imagine the headings of Castille and Aragon cover all their sub-territories.
That’s what I thought, too. It seems odd, almost like the UN telling Australia that PNG is still their problem despite the fact Australia bailed from the territory in 1975.
Aye, I always find it kind of interesting that people conflate medieval monarchs with Louis XIV of France so much. The time of the Hapsburgs saw, in many countries, a tremendous shift from having to depend a lot on Parliament to “I am the State.” The power pull had been there all through feudal times (see stories like “the bell of Huesca”, a King of Aragon having the most important nobles executed for treason for opposing him more than he was willing to accept) but the shift went really sideways during those two centuries.
I agree it was quite odd how royal absolutism happened later in Europe’s history. People with less knowledge of history think it’s some kind of smooth continuous upwards progression towards modern democracy when in fact it was anything but (the 17th century being a firm step back when it came to what we consider to be “progress” in a political sense).
Yup. Spanish kings preferred dealing with Castile than with Aragon. Castile was one unified kingdom and very much under the King’s control while Aragón was still technically a conglomerate of kingdoms whose Cortes (parliaments) met at one place (often Tarazona) only for convenience but they were still distinct.
Contrary to common popular belief the kings of Spain at that time had far from absolute power. They were very limited in what they could do, by law and by custom. It is only with the Bourbons later that Spain slowly drifted towards centralism and a more authoritarian system.
Witness the obstacles Philip II had to surmount in trying to judicially try and punish Antonio Perez and in the end Antonio Perez managed to escape to France. At that time the rule of law was far stronger than the king and yet most people today think otherwise.
There is a famous formula used in the crowning of the king,0 somewhere in Aragon I believe, which reminded the king he was only primus inter pares and which went something like “we [the nobles] who are worth as much as you, and joined together more than you, swear allegiance to you so long as you respect and abide by the laws, customs and usages of the kingdom”. (Nos, que valemos tanto como vos, y juntos más que vos, os juramos fidelidad etc)
Driven by curiosity I looked up the quoted formula and found several variations of it.
I like the one which says “we who are worth as much as you make you aour king and lord if you will respect our privileges and freedoms and if not, not.”