faults in the metropolitan economy. For instance, in 1616 the city magistrate Mateo Lopez Bravo argued that the maldistribution of wealth had worsened the economic inefficiency of Madrid by creating too many idlers at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy.65 For their part, the French travelers Barthélemy Joly, Antoine de Brunei, and Francois Bertaut (who were not arbitristas) pointed out in 1604, 1655, and 1659, respectively, that Madrid, like Spain as a whole, seemed incapable of producing and accumulating wealth. These tourists’ writing paints the insatiable metropolis as a mere channel through which American gold flowed to Spain’s European competitors while the latter funneled their manufactures into Spain.66
Recent scholarship has confirmed the basic accuracy of assessments such as Brunei’s, yet it has also corrected a tendency of the arbitristas, of foreign observers, and of several historians to overstate the gravity of the Spanish crisis. New research has shown that while an economic depression was certainly real at the national level, it affected different Iberian regions differently, at different times, and was not always so deep that it embraced all aspects of local economies.67 Even wars, for instance, did not cause a cessation of Spanish international trade, not even with Spain’s wartime enemies.68
Though mired in poverty and crime, Madrid had a bustling economy because it was the economic and political nerve center of the Iberian Peninsula. The court alone was an enormous consumer of imports. So too was the large urban population that served it. As the hub of a complex economic system, Madrid had unparalleled access to the wealth of Spain and its far-flung possessions. In return for the service of governing the Habsburg Empire, the city received a host of taxes and revenues. By offering lucrative and prestigious governmental offices, Madrid also attracted nobles from the provinces who brought rents from their estates to the city. The resulting concentration of wealth in the capital was unprecedented in Spanish history. This concentration meant that Madrid had an equally unprecedented power to attract vast resources from beyond the Iberian hinterland. Simply put, Madrid became an enormous consumption-oriented market, and thus a giant magnet for long-distance trade.69 As we shall see in subsequent sections, Madrid provided commercially inclined New Christians—including Portuguese immigrants, native Spanish conversos, and especially returning exiles of both groups—plentiful opportunities to make a living, even in periods of economic depression.
Beyond Madrid, there were other areas of Spain (encompassing Portugal until 1640) that were economically viable, if not always prosperous, and therefore especially attractive to conversos during the seventeenth century. Seville, the gateway to the riches of the New World, stood apart as the most economically vibrant pivot of the realm. Further inland, a few medium-sized cities functioned as the axes of peninsular commerce. Valladolid remained the economic center of the Leonese province despite the city’s loss of preeminence after a brief stint as the seat of the Habsburg court (1601–4).70 Burgos and Bilbao were main links in the northern trade routes that covered the Basque country and Old Castile. In particular, Bilbao enjoyed a relative reprieve from the hardships that beset major economic centers in the Peninsula because it was a main exporter of iron (crucial for arms manufacturing in an age of constant war) and because it emerged as the wool-exporting capital of Spain during the 1600s, at a time when wool was one of the country’s chief products.71 Zaragoza was economically prominent in the Aragonese interior, while Barcelona and Valencia were the economic capitals of the northeastern and far eastern coasts, respectively. Lisbon, Porto, La Coruña, Cadiz, Malaga, and other ports formed a crucial outer rim of the Iberian Peninsula’s commercial and industrial networks (see Map 1). Converso merchants frequented and conducted business in all of these economic centers.
Besides major cities, there were numerous nodes of industrial and agricultural production that continued to function despite the general economic downturn of the 1600s. Most larger cities and principal rural centers were linked by a system of major roads that converged in Madrid, a fact that attested to the geographic and economic centrality of the Spanish capital (see Map 1). These roads were a fundamental component of the economic life of the country, for much Iberian trading was done by land.
Peninsular Trade Routes: Some Salient Aspects
The transportation infrastructure of early modern Spain was an amalgam of different roadways dating from the times of the Romans, the Muslims, and the Catholic monarchs. Toward the end of the sixteenth century most peninsular carreteras or calzadas (highways) and caminos (roadways or trails) were in a state of disrepair. For example, in 1593 the arteries surrounding Valladolid were so deteriorated that according to municipal officials, “people cannot walk on them.”72
Given copious evidence of the sorry state of Spanish highways, one might conclude that the crown was not interested in maintaining an adequate system of roads, yet that was not entirely the case. Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile built some of the main peninsular thoroughfares, while their Habsburg successors invested in ones that linked Madrid to the periphery.73 The central problem, then, was the upkeep of a vast majority of the country’s roads and bridges. That task usually fell upon local authorities such as lords and municipalities.
According to David Vassberg, local agents were not particularly effective in maintaining the country’s infrastructure.74 One reason for this was that the authorities were not always able to secure the necessary manpower to undertake road repairs: Local villagers avoided construction and maintenance work because it was usually unpaid. A second problem was financial. Already impoverished by crushing fiscal obligations, local citizens tended to resist extraordinary taxes earmarked for infrastructural improvements, while travelers were often loath to pay usage tolls since (to paraphrase Vassberg) these levies were meant for the maintenance of somebody else’s roads.75
Most of Spain’s principal thoroughfares were unpaved. Some public highways encompassed stretches that were no more than well-trodden trails.76 Consequently a number of so-called carreteras were barely fit for travel by coach. A French tourist commented in 1659 about the rough paths that led to the capital, “everything arrives [in Madrid] by land, and not by coach as in France, but on asses and mules which is one of the reasons that all merchandise … [is] so costly there.”77
Commerce by overland routes was a predominantly seasonal activity. Because most commercial roads had earthen surfaces, they became very dusty in dry months (August, September, and October) and totally impassable in wet ones (December and January).78 To make matters worse, the accumulation of snow hindered or totally impeded traffic at high altitudes. Many calzadas were thus effectively useless for nearly half of the year. It is not surprising that some highways actually consisted of several alternative routes, each of which was intended to compensate for the frequent closure of the other routes.79
Throughout the Early Modern Period, commercial land traffic in Spain consisted mainly of mule caravans and assorted carretas (carts). Outside of seasonal peaks, and especially when the weather discouraged traveling, road traffic diminished as agricultural laborers retreated to their farms to plow, sow, and harvest.
Map 1. Principal Roads of Habsburg Spain, 1608–84. Source: Santos Madrazo, El sistema de comunicaciones en España, 1750–1850 (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1984). The image above is a composite of Madrazos’s “Mapa 4” and “Mapa 6.” The former is a reconstruction of an itinerary by Ottavio Cotogno (1608); the latter is a reconstruction of a survey by Giuseppe Miselli (1684).
Itinerant merchants who traversed Spanish highways were known as arrieros, buhoneros, and trajineros. Of these commercial travelers, rural producers were most likely to use ox-driven carts to transport merchandise. Pack mules and donkeys were easier to handle in mountainous regions, and were commonly
