98
THE MESTA
Probably the most important aspect of the entregador and his
history, from the point of view of the student of Spanish institu-
tions in general, was his relations with the towns, and especially
his conflicts with the local political and judicial authorities. At
every turn in the performance of the two chief duties of his office
— the supervision of the canadas and of the pastures — he was
met by confficting claims of jurisdiction on the part of the town
justices. The communities with which the Mesta came into con-
flict were, for the most part, in the southern plains of the penin-
sula: districts reconquered from the Moors in the comparatively
recent times of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.
This reconquest had left to the newly gained provinces the usual
grants of modified autonomy which fall to the lot of all frontier
strongholds. This advantage was accentuated in the present
instance by the ancient Spanish tradition of separatism, an atti-
tude of innate suspicion toward all Jorasteros, or strangers,
whether from a neighboring province or from a foreign country.
Having in mind this characteristic of strong local self-con-
sciousness, it is easy to understand the constant series of entangle-
ments in which the itinerant magistrates found themselves in
their efforts to enforce the privileges of the Mesta against the
town officials. The latter were strongly intrenched behind the
liberal fueros granted by the late kings of the Reconquest. When
the sweeping permission of the Mesta ‘ to pasture freely in all
parts of the realm without the payment of any taxes or imposts ’
was met by concessions granting the right to a given town ‘ to
exclude all stock coming from outside the limits of its jurisdic-
tion,’ there was bound to be a conflict of the authorities em-
powered to enforce these respective privileges. This was the basis
of the struggle between the entregadores and the local justices.
The story of that conflict is the more interesting because it affords
an excellent opportunity for the study of the tension and clash
between those two ancient forces in all administrative systems,
the national and the local, the centripetal and the centrifugal.
It should be remembered that the lands coming under the juris-
diction of the mediaeval and early modern Spanish city were fre-
quently as extensive as provinces. Such cities as Ciceres, Bada-
the Entregador and the towns
99
joz, and Plasencia had as many as a hundred and forty villages
within their jurisdiction.! The four great Aragonese comunida-
des, or town leagues, of Albarracin, Daroca, Calatayud, and
Teruel comprised a total of about three hundred and fifty smaller
hamlets centring about these four cities.2 The chief object of
these leagues was the regulation of the pasturage used as commons
among them. There was a noteworthy absence of any such
closely knit town unions in Castile on anything like an extensive
scale. This is one of the chief explanations of the readiness with
which the growing strength and solidity of the Mesta and its
system of itinerant officers were able to cope with the isolated
resistance of small towns in the southern pasture lands. It is
true that Caceres, Badajoz, and a few others of the larger and
better organized cities were able to contend on even terms with
the Mesta. In the case of the smaller localities, however, it was
not until they had united for the expensive process of carrying
their cases by appeal from the entregadores’ courts to the high
appellate Chancillerias, late in the sixteenth century, that they
were able to check the obnoxious interference of these itinerant
magistrates with their purely local affairs. Had there been in
Castile any counterpart to the Aragonese town leagues for the
administration of rural affairs, the Mesta and its entregador
would have had a far different and a far less triumphal history.3
It was only the organization of a union of the southern and
western towns in the eighteenth century, under the leadership
of Badajoz and the inspiration of Prime Minister Campomanes,
that ultimately brought the tottering Mesta to its knees.
As a safeguard for the local interests, it had been specified that
each entregador, in the exercise of his office in a given community,
should be accompanied by the alcalde, who was the chief execu-
tive and judicial officer of the town. Just what the latter was to
accomplish is not made clear. It is evident that he was not em-
powered to sit in the case with an equal voice in forming the
1 Costa, Colectivismo Agrario (Madrid, 1898), p. 399.
2 See below, p 299.
3 An account of one of the few CastUian examples of such an organization is
described in Lécea y Garcfa, La Comunidad y Tierra de Segovia (Segovia, 1893).