El comportamiento del precio del trigo en Guadalajara: influencia del pósito (1547-1632)

Abstract

Castilian society, living under conditions in which wheat was the main source of food, witnessed a series of subsistences crisis in the course of the Modern Age, endangering supplies to the big cities. This article aims to show how the fluctuations in the price of the wheat in Guadalajara over a period of almost one hundred years (1547-1632), in our view the most critical years for the Castilian treasury in that prices were experiencing a profound revolution, reflected in the price of wheat. These were years in which the royal regulation was directed to eliminate as much as possible the causes of the high price that this product was reaching in the market, which was considered to be generated by hoarding and commercial moneylending. At the same time, they imposed tax after tax in pursuit the proposed objective. Nevertheless, it was the action of the public granary, in this case that of Guadalajara, that succeeded in lowering prices through the redistribution of wheat; although it is true that on other occasions it caused inflation of wheat prices during times of regular cereal production.