En los orígenes de la ciudadanía en Castilla. La identidad política del vecino durante los siglos XVI y XVII

Abstract

Political identity in the Old Regime shares certain characteristics with social identity; it is not individual but corporate, and endowed with specific particular privileges. Vecindad is at once concrete and territorial and as such it escapes perfect generalization. But its exercise allows a certain level of political participation that, in a manner befitting an organic society with a classificatory structure and a hierarchical conception, tends to promote the consolidation of groups along lines of wealth and power. These groups enjoyed special privileges that as a whole guarantee them juridical control of the municipalities, through mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion that define the vecino and «outsider». Vecindad also allows, at the microcosmic level of the village, the reproduction of the same principles and criteria that characterize the citizenship at the macro-political national level, and place this status in opposition to that of the foreigner.