CHAPTER X
LOCAL TAXES DURING THE RISE OF THE MESTA
(1273-1474)
Fiscal clauses of the charter 0(1273. Policies of Alfonso X (ɪ252-84) and Sancho IV
(1284-95). Aggressive fiscal administration of Alfonso XI (1321-50). Sheep
taxes during the civil wars of the later Middle Ages. Extravagant tax concessions
to the towns and liberal exemptions of the Mesta. Concordias or tax agreements.
The earliest extant charter of the Mesta was issued by Alfonso X
in 12 73.1 In its opening paragraph reference is made to the exist-
ence of certain royal letters patent previously given to the herds-
men, which had been violated and which were therefore to be sup-
plemented and strengthened by a new charter. This document is
divided into four sections, the first three of which discuss various
practices observed by the herdsmen on their migrations and at
their semiannual meetings. The fourth section is as long as the
other three combined, and is devoted to the abuses suffered by
the sheep owners at the hands of the local tax collectors.
With reference to these exactions, the herdsmen are first assured
that “ they are not to pay any portazgos2 on the cloth they carry
from which to make clothes, nor on the provisions and other sup-
plies which they bring with them for their flocks.” Taxes were
not to be collected in the woodlands, or along the canadas or sheep
walks, but only at certain specified town gates. In a supplement-
ary privilege of 1276, this clause was extended by forbidding the
towns to lay restrictions upon the purchase of grain (pan)3 by the
herdsmen for the use of their flocks. Furthermore, declared the
privilege of 1273, the practice of taxing a shepherd who might
take one of his animals to the town market to trade it for supplies
ɪ Arch. Mesta, Privilegios Reales, no. ɪ : printed with notes by the writer, in
the Botetin de la Real Academia de Historia, February, 1914.
2 See above, p. 164.
3 “ El pan que Ios pastores ouvieren mester para sus cabanas.”
176
TAXES DURING THE RISE OF THE MESTA 177
should cease. “ Shepherds may take to the town markets for sale
as many as sixty head from every flock without paying the por-
tazgo on them.” 1 The horses and other beasts of burden, used to
carry the supplies of the flocks when on the march, were not to be
subject to any local taxes, whether montazgos or portazgos; nor
were they to be preempted for temporary services by any monks
or knights. This practice was quite common and “ resulted in
reducing the value of the animals by half.” A fee of one maravedi
a day 2 was to be paid to the herdsman for the use of any of his
beasts of burden. No montazgos were to be collected from the
sheep owners unless the right of such a collection was secured by
a privilege from Ferdinand III (1217-52), and in no case was the
rate to be more than two head per thousand,3 a figure which was
in keeping with those named in the documents cited above.
It is significant that the first charter of the Mesta should give
as much space to the question of regulating and restricting the
local taxes on migrants as to all other topics together. This was
the subject which seems to have been of most significance to the
sheep owners. It is interesting to note here that the documents
devoted to it form by far the largest single group in the archive of
the Mesta. Even the vital question of pasturage rights was a less
frequent subject for litigation than this one of local taxes, though
the two were often joined in the same case. It will be observed
that the charter of 1273 made no attempt to specify the points at
which the montazgo was to be collected, as did the Santiago code
of г 253 ; not did it provide that only one such tax was to be levied
in any one jurisdiction. The toll points of the military orders, as
named in the code of 1253, were not referred to. In other words,
the first efforts of the Mesta were directed not so much to the
restriction of the area in which its members were liable to taxation
as to the limitation of the kinds of taxes collected. The measure
struck at the more fundamental phase of the problem by defining
the various dues, and especially by emphasizing the exemptions
ɪ Quad. 17jι, pt. i, pp. 22, 26, з&.
2 This would be equivalent to the cost of two sheep, according to the official
aSsessment of the montazgo; see above, p. 172.
’ The migrations were usually made in flocks (cabotas) of about 1000 head.
See ante, p. 24.