1. Economic and political development Spain in the first half of the 16th century.
Spain, which completed by the end of the XV century. reconquista and turned by this time into a single state (as a result of the unification in 1479 of Castile and Aragon), immediately took one of the first places among the states of Europe. It included almost the entire Iberian Peninsula, with the exception of its western part, which was the territory of Portugal. Spain also owned the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily, and from 1504 the Kingdom of Naples. The population of Spain was, according to the most conservative estimates, 7.5 million people, but it is possible that it reached 10 million during this period. Despite the significant successes of industrial development at the beginning of the 16th century. and the flourishing of a number of cities, Spain remained an agrarian country with backward agriculture, in which there were no economic shifts characteristic of the agriculture of England and other economically developed countries of Europe at that time.
Agricultural system
Sheep breeding was the main branch of agriculture in most parts of Spain. Several million sheep were driven twice a year across the entire peninsula; in densely populated areas, herds walked along wide roads (kanyads), in more deserted places they dispersed around the surroundings. The attempts of the peasants to enclose their lands, in order thereby to save the fields from being trampled by herds, ran into resistance from the union of large sheep breeders - Mesta.
The power of the Place reached at the beginning of the 16th century. its apogee, since the development of the textile industry in the countries Western Europe sharply increased the demand for wool, and Mesta sold it to Flanders, France and other countries with great profit. Royal power, found in sheep breeding important source revenues of the treasury, provided energetic assistance to the place, not caring that the activities of this union had a disastrous effect on the state of the country's agriculture as a whole. A royal decree of 1489 granted the Mesta the right to use the pastures of the communities for their needs, and on the basis of a decree of 1501, each member of the Mesta received on a permanent lease any piece of land on which his herds grazed for a season or at least several months, if the former holder land has not declared during this time the protest. During the 16th century laws were repeatedly issued, each of which dealt with the allotment for pasture of lands plowed 10-12 years before the publication of this law. Thus, the legislation provided the Mesta with convenient pretexts for seizing peasant lands. Royal officials and judges helped her to destroy the hedges that surrounded these fields.
The position of the peasantry worsened even more as a result of various permanent and extraordinary taxes. In 1510, a direct tax - service (servicio), previously levied irregularly, was turned into a permanent one, by the middle of the 16th century. its size increased by 3 times.
Being in such difficult conditions of existence, suffering from frequent crop failures and hunger strikes, many peasants fell into dependence on usurers, which completed their ruin. Worried about the sharp decline in grain production and the rising cost of food supplies, the Cortes repeatedly complain that moneylenders are buying up grain at a low price from needy peasants, selling bulls to them on credit and lending money at such a high interest rate that the peasants are not able to to pay it, and usurers buy up peasant lands for next to nothing. "The main thing that ruins the peasants of these kingdoms, and probably will destroy them completely, is buying on credit." Already in 1528, the Cortes declare: "The peasants are so burdened that they are close to complete ruin." Twenty years later, they again point out that the peasants do not sow vast territories because of the lack of draft animals, and in lean years they are forced to sell their property. Both the Spaniards and foreigners who visited Spain wrote about the insignificant size of the cultivated area and the vast wastelands.
Even with the transfer of land into the hands of new owners, farming methods did not change. Agricultural machinery was very primitive. Only in the south - in Granada, Andalusia and Valencia - Morisco peasants (descendants of Arabs and Berbers converted to Christianity who remained in the country after the completion of the reconquista) still widely used irrigation and grew grapes, olives, sugar cane, date palms, mulberries and citrus crops. The production of agricultural products in the country did not even satisfy local needs. All Northern Spain needed imported foreign bread.
In Spain, the growth of commodity-money relations did not lead to the birth of the capitalist mode of production in the countryside, but, on the contrary, contributed to the conservation feudal relations, the decline of agriculture.
The former kingdoms of Spain, which turned at the end of the 15th century. in the provinces of the united state, have retained the features of their historical development; therefore, the situation of the peasants of individual regions of the country was different.
preserved in Aragon serfdom. The feudal lords still had full power over the personality of the peasant: the peasant had to ask the consent of the master to marry, he could be deprived of his property, put in prison without trial; moreover, some grandees used the right to kill the peasant without even hearing him first. Preservation of serfdom in Aragon XVI-XVII centuries. received legal sanction: in their writings, Aragonese lawyers who defended the interests of the feudal lords, referring to Roman law, equated the peasants with Roman slaves and sought to prove that the lords could control the life and death of the peasants. The duties of the peasants of Aragon were especially burdensome: the peasants paid for grazing, for fishing, for entering into inheritance rights, often for grinding grain and baking bread; feudal lords seized the property of peasants who died childless.
In Catalonia, large peasant uprisings of the late 15th century. led to the elimination of the most difficult personal duties of the peasants ("bad customs") and to the release of the peasants for a ransom. However, some lords arbitrarily determined the amount of the ransom or refused to release the peasants at all. Therefore, in the following time, the remains of serfdom were preserved in this area.
In Castile, most of the peasants have long been free. Only a relatively small stratum of peasants was under the judicial authority of the feudal lords; these peasants carried numerous duties (for shearing goats and sheep, for movable property, etc.). Free peasants - holders of the land of the feudal lord paid him a certain chinsh established by custom; they had the right to leave their land and go to another place. During this period, when part of the peasants, as already indicated, was deprived of their land, a stratum of landless laborers - peonies, who were often forced to work only for shelter and food, gradually grew. Many peasants left the village altogether and often turned into homeless beggars or vagrants.
In the southern regions of Spain, the situation of the Moriscos, driven from the best lands, was very difficult. They were dependent on the Spanish feudal lords who settled here, paid rent to their lords and high taxes to the state and church.
Peasant movements in the 16th century.
In the XVI century. - during the period of increasing impoverishment of the peasantry - a fierce class struggle was going on in the Spanish countryside. The stubborn resistance of the peasants to the Mesta's claims to peasant fields and communal lands to some extent restrained the scope of its activities, which caused such significant damage to the country's agriculture.
The greatest sharpness social contradictions reached in Aragon. The peasants tried to seek relief from their lot in flight; sometimes whole villages left. So, in 1539, the lord of the village Fabaro seized all the movable and immovable property of the peasants, punishing them for leaving the village. Peasants often submitted petitions to the king with a request to include this or that area in the crown lands, hoping in this way to escape the arbitrariness of the lords.
Local uprisings broke out from time to time. The largest of these was the uprising of 1585 in the county of Rivagorsa, located on the southern slope of the Pyrenees. The rebels organized their army and elected leaders. The whole county was in their hands. The local Moriscos joined the Spanish peasants. The Aragonese Cortes, frightened by the great scope of the unrest, issued a decree that anyone who dares to rebel against his lord with weapons in his hands will be subject to the death penalty. Only after the accession of the county of Rivagorsa to the lands of the crown was it possible to suppress this uprising.
Catalan peasants also raised uprisings during this period, the main goal of which was the complete elimination of the remnants of serfdom.
The development of industry in the first half of the XVI century. 
The end of the 15th and especially the first half of the 16th century. are characterized by a significant rise in handicraft production, concentrated in the cities and urban districts of Spain, and the appearance in it individual elements capitalist production in the form of scattered and centralized manufacture.
Seville, whose flourishing rested primarily on its monopoly of trade with the American colonies, was the largest center of trade, banking and industry. In its suburbs, cloth, soap, porcelain and silk were produced, in the development of which Seville was far ahead of Granada. Seville maintained lively trade relations not only with the regions of Spain itself and the colonies in America, but also with Antwerp, the cities of England, southern France, Italy, and some port cities in Africa.
The greatest success was achieved in Spain by the production of felts and silk fabrics, distinguished high quality. In Toledo - one of the major industrial cities - in the middle of the XVI century. more than 50 thousand artisans and hired workers were employed in the production of cloth and silk fabrics, while in 1525 there were only 10 thousand of them. Toledo was also famous for the production of weapons and leather processing. Shipbuilding developed in Asturias and Biscay.
Segovia occupied one of the first places in terms of production volume and especially in terms of the quality of its thin cloths. The ceramic industry was developed, except for Seville, in Malaga, Murcia, Talavera and other cities. Some cities specialized in a narrow industry: in Cuenca, cloth headdresses of all colors were produced almost exclusively, exported to North Africa, and gloves were made in Ocaña.
There were large manufactory-type enterprises in the cloth industry (for example, in some workshops in Segovia, 200-300 workers were employed), in the coin production of Seville, Granada and Burgos. A scattered manufactory began to develop in the vicinity of Toledo, Segovia, Seville, Cuenca and other cities. According to contemporaries, the textile industry of Seville was employed in the first half of the 16th century. 130 thousand people; this number includes the spinners, most of whom lived in the countryside and worked at home for the buyers.
The rise of handicrafts and more advanced forms of industrial production was due to a number of circumstances. Spanish hidalgos - conquerors and robbers of the newly discovered New World - needed food, clothing and weapons. The colonies in America became rich buyers of Spanish goods, and paid for them in gold and silver. Thus, in Spain there was an accumulation of capital necessary for the organization of large enterprises.
The growth of production was also favored by the fact that a large number of free laborers appeared, since the flight of peasants from the countryside assumed massive proportions. In some areas, beggars and vagabonds were forcibly turned into workers. In 1551, the Cortes of Castile filed a characteristic petition: they asked that in every town with a population of more than 1 thousand people a special official be appointed who would detain all vagabonds and force them to work in industry.
However, compared to production advanced countries Europe, the overall size of Spanish industry was rather modest. So, mining, despite the rich Natural resources remained underdeveloped.
Due to the economic disunity of the provinces, which persisted even after the unification of the country, internal trade was poorly developed, although during this period Spain still had busy shopping centers - Medina del Camiao, widely known for its fairs, Burgos, etc. Economic disunity was conserved by the privileges of the provinces , obstructing the development of trade relations with neighboring regions, the privileges of individual giants and cities. Numerous customs offices continued to operate on the borders of Castile.
Even at the beginning of the 16th century, the time of its highest economic prosperity, Spain's imports exceeded exports, and the latter was dominated by raw materials and agricultural products: olive oil, wines, fruits, leathers, and above all wool, as well as metals. It is significant that during the first half of the 16th century, the period of the greatest development of cloth production in Spain, the export of wool from the country - raw materials, not only did not decrease, but even increased: from 1512 to 1557, the volume of exported wool increased 3 times. Iron was exported to France even when Spain was at war with her. The textile industry of Spain not only failed to conquer the external - European - market, but also in the domestic market could not successfully compete with the Dutch, British and French goods. The Spanish nobility preferred to buy imported goods, which greatly contributed to the further decline of Spanish industry, the first signs of which appeared already in the 30s of the 16th century. During these years, the Cortes complained about the poor quality of Spanish shoes and cloth. From the middle of the XVI century. there is an increasingly sharp decline in industrial production associated with the general economic decline of Spain.
The reign of Charles I. The place of Spain in the Habsburg state
Charles I, King of Spain, came to the throne in 1516 after the death of his maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon. After the death of his other grandfather, Maximilian I of Habsburg, in 1519 he was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire under the name of Charles V by bribed German electors. Thus, Spain, part of Italy (Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia) were under the rule of Charles , Netherlands, Franche-Comte and empire. Together with Spain, the newly founded colonies in the New World passed to him, where the most economically important territories were conquered in the 20-30s of the 16th century. During the war with France, Spanish troops captured part of northern Italy. In 1535, as a result of a military campaign, Tunisia was taken from the Turks and turned into a vassal state of Spain (soon, however, again captured by the Turks). Contemporaries were close to the truth when they said that the sun never sets in Charles's domain. Spain in the 16th century was a great sod and occupied a leading position in the system of international relations. But this power, which was an extremely fragile association of possessions scattered throughout the world, was threatened by serious internal and external dangers.
In the Netherlands, Charles was forced to reckon with the very significant liberties of the provinces; his financial extortion caused indignation in the country, which became especially strong towards the end of the reign of Charles. In Germany, the princes had long ceased to obey the emperors, and the Reformation and the Peasants' War were an even more serious threat to imperial power than princely separatism. Main Habsburg possessions in the southeast corner Central Europe were under the threat of Turkish invasion. The shores of Spain became the object of constant attacks by Algerian pirates. And, finally, in the north, beyond the Pyrenees, a large French monarchy grew up and strengthened, no less warlike than Spain itself.
Despite all this, Charles, with the support of all the reactionary forces in Europe and, above all, the papacy, steadily pursued a great-power policy and cherished the plan to create a "worldwide Christian monarchy." He waged continuous wars with France, with the German princes of the Protestant camp, etc. The goal of creating a world monarchy, Charles subordinated his policy in all countries under his rule, including Spain.
Karl, who was born in the Netherlands and brought up there, did not know at all Spanish. He arrived in Spain in 1517, surrounded by Flemish advisers, who occupied the most important state and church positions and behaved in the country in the most defiant manner. These favorites of Charles immediately began to plunder the treasury, which aroused the indignation of the Spanish grandees, who considered the robbery of the state to be their inalienable right. The main goal pursued by Charles in Spain was to extract funds from it for the implementation of his foreign policy plans. At the same time, he pursued an absolutist policy and did not want to reckon with the rights and privileges of feudal lords and cities.
Charles with difficulty obtained from the Cortes his recognition as king of Spain; his attempts to get money from the provincial Cortes were far from successful everywhere. The main requirements presented by the Cortes to Charles were formulated as early as November 1519 by the city of Toledo in its appeal to other cities of Castile: the king should not leave Spain and distribute government posts to foreigners; he is obliged to prohibit the export of gold coins and horses abroad. But Charles paid little attention to the discontent of the cities. After his election as emperor in 1519, he, having obtained at the cost of a number of concessions and promises of a new subsidy from the Cortes of Castile, left in May 1520 for Germany. Charles immediately broke these promises, leaving a foreigner, his favorite, Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, as viceroy of the king. This was the immediate impetus for the uprising of the urban communes of Castile, the so-called uprising of the comuneros.
Comuneros uprising
After the unification of Castile and Aragon, the royal power, based on numerous hidalgos and cities, managed to subdue the old violent nobility, which went to the service of the kings.
However, true centralization was still not achieved. The provinces, which were previously independent states, retained a certain autonomy, their tax systems, their own features of the administrative and judicial structure. In Castile, Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, the Cortes continued to function, consisting of representatives of the nobility, clergy and cities. The Cortes decided the most important local affairs and voted taxes. The Spanish grandees retained in many areas, especially in Aragon, judicial power over the population of their territory. Their judicial and administrative power extended even to some cities. This was the basis for the separatist claims of the feudal nobility and served as the basis for clashes between the nobility and the cities, which usually supported the royal power in its centralization policy.
However, this support by the cities of the policy aimed at the centralization of the country was not unconditional: it lasted as long as the royal power did not affect the self-government and liberties of the cities themselves. Despite commercial and industrial development, cities still largely retained their medieval appearance - both in terms of political structure, and in relation to their economic life. Power in them was in the hands of the oligarchic elite, which consisted mainly of representatives of the nobility and large merchants, and partly of wealthy craftsmen.
The largest number of free city-communes survived in Castile. Therefore, in the first half of the 16th century, when the last stage in the history of the centralization of the country came (the liquidation of urban liberties) and the royal power began to subjugate its former ally - the cities, it was the cities of Castile that raised the most powerful uprising. Until that time, they played an important role in the Castilian Cortes, with the requirements of which Charles had little regard. The cities of Spain largely bore the brunt of the costs of Charles's great power policy, which hampered their economic development.
Grandees took part in the movement, taking advantage of the unrest in the cities in order to try to restore their former power, broken by royal absolutism. The petty and middle nobility, which also retained to a certain extent the desire for independence and was dissatisfied with the dominance of foreigners in Spain, initially supported the cities.
The city of Toledo became the organizing center of the movement, in which the uprising broke out the earliest - already in April 1520. The leaders of the movement, the aristocrats Juan de Padilla and Pedro Laso de la Vega, were the Toledans. Soon, in May-June, Segovia, Tordesillas, Zamora, Burgos, Madrid, Avila, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Salamanca, Toro, Murcia and other cities rose. Attempts by the Cardinal Viceroy to put out the fire that threatened to engulf the entire country were unsuccessful. Toledo sent out letters everywhere with a proposal to organize a confederation of cities, the center of which was the city of Avila. On July 29, 1520, the representatives of the cities gathered here proclaimed the "Holy Junta" ("Holy Union"), vowing not to spare their lives "for the king and the commune."
The social composition of the participants in the movement at this first stage was variegated: grandees, nobles, wealthy citizens joined the uprising, but the vast majority belonged to artisans and the plebs of the cities, who suffered most from the increased tax oppression. In many cities, artisans became the leaders of the movement: in Guadalajara, a carpenter stood at the head of the rebels, in Burgos - a gunsmith, hatter and cutler, in Avila - a weaver, in Salamanca - a wool shearer and goldsmith, a weaver was a representative of Zamora in the junta, later a representative of Valladolid - saddler, etc.
The rebels lacked organization: only a part of the risen cities sent their representatives to Avila, the cities did not forget their old strife. However, an event soon occurred that served as an impetus for the further deployment of the movement: in August, the royal troops staged a terrible pogrom of one of the main economic centers of the country - Medina del Campo, which refused to transfer the artillery that was in it to the representative of the king. Over 450 buildings were burned during the pogrom; a huge amount of valuable goods with which the city supplied all of Spain perished in the fire. The news of this pogrom prompted almost all the cities of Castile to join the junta, “because,” as the chronicler notes, “the repeated calls of the junta for the desired freedom, the elimination of unjust taxes and bad government were very convincing.” The uprising also engulfed the seat of government - Valladolid. The junta proclaimed Juan de Padilla commander-in-chief of its troops. The cardinal-vicero was declared deposed, the junta completely seized power in Castile, and every city had to accept its decisions as law.
But the union of the nobility and the cities turned out to be temporary and fragile, and it could not be otherwise. The antagonism between them came out already in the program of the rebels, which was set out in a petition sent in October 1520 to Charles. The cities, as before, wanted the king to live in Spain, and only Spaniards were appointed to the highest government posts. They insisted on the obligatory convocation of the Cortes every three years and on the complete independence of the deputies of the Cortes from the royal power, as well as on the cessation of the export of gold and silver abroad, the prohibition of the sale of posts and control over officials. But the cities also included in the petition demands directly directed against the aristocracy and nobility: the royal lands, alienated and plundered by the aristocracy after the death of Isabella, should be returned to the treasury; it is necessary to abolish the freedom of the nobles from paying taxes: from now on they should be taxed on an equal basis with all the inhabitants of the country; in addition, the cities demanded that the grandees and caballeros (nobles) be deprived of the right to hold positions in city government.
The nobility, whose privileges were encroached upon by the townspeople, began to move away from the movement, and the king took advantage of this. He appointed two new members of the regency from among the most influential members of the nobility. On behalf of the king, they promised the nobles some concessions. They also succeeded, using the enmity between Toledo and Burgos, to persuade Burgos to go over to the side of the king.
Meanwhile, the actions of the artisan and plebeian masses of the cities acquired an ever wider scope and contributed to the fact that the movement as a whole assumed at this stage a clearly pronounced anti-feudal character. The townspeople declared that the privileges, huge estates and luxury of the grandees lead to the impoverishment of the kingdom, while the cities are the source of the strength and power of Spain. Some cities withdrew from the vacillating and compromising "Holy Junta". In November 1520, a new junta was formed in Valladolid - the "Junta of the Detachments", representing the most radical part of the rebels. In contrast to the "Holy Junta", she considered herself the highest authority in Castile. In the spring of 1521, she issued a manifesto declaring that "henceforth, war against the grandees, caballeros and other enemies of the kingdom, against their property and palaces, must be waged by fire, sword and destruction." Peasants began to protest. The “junta of detachments” forced the “Holy Junta” to abandon the search for ways of reconciliation with the king and begin preparations for a decisive armed clash.
The contradictions in the camp of the rebels, the indecisive position of the wealthy citizens represented in the "Holy Huta", the betrayal of most of the grandees and nobles (among those who betrayed the uprising was one of its leaders - Pedro Laso de la Vega) weakened the uprising. On April 23, 1521, the poorly organized and socially diverse troops of the "Holy Junta" suffered a complete defeat near the village of Villalar. Padilla and other leaders of the junta were captured and executed. The cities of Castile ceased resistance, with the exception of Toledo, which staunchly defended itself under the leadership of Padilla's widow, Maria Pacheco, from the onslaught of government troops. Only six months later, Maria Pacheco, seeing the hopelessness of her situation, entered into negotiations with the government and soon, fearing arrest, fled to Portugal. When Charles returned to Spain in July 1522 with 4,000 German landsknechts, the uprising had already been basically liquidated. Soon he granted amnesty to the participants in the uprising, with the exception of 293 of its most prominent representatives. Thus ended the uprising of the free cities of Castile.
The unsurmounted separatism of the provinces was the reason that the uprising was limited to the territory of Castile. It almost did not affect the south of the country: Cordoba, Seville, Granada and other large cities of the south remained aloof from the movement. Aragon and Catalonia also did not join him. Valencia was the scene of an independent uprising, although there were attempts to establish a connection with the comuneros movement. In Castile itself, the rivalry between the cities was one of the sources of contention in the camp of the rebels, "... however, the main service to Charles was rendered by the sharp antagonism of the classes - the nobility and the townspeople, which helped him to humiliate both." (K. Marx, The Spanish Revolution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. X, p. 720.) At first, the prosperous townspeople themselves showed - until the actions of the urban lower classes gave the movement a different, more radical character - the desire to achieve victory if possible through an agreement with Charles. Owing to the backwardness of the Spanish cities, a bourgeoisie has just begun to emerge in them, which benefits more from the unification of the country than loses from the loss of its medieval liberties and privileges. The Castilian communes, to a certain extent supporting the central government, nevertheless preferred to preserve their liberties, to return, as they stated, to "the good customs of the times of Ferdinand and Isabella." The guild burghers, despite the discord that existed between the burghers and the nobility, did not dare to lead the anti-feudal actions of the masses of the city and countryside, which constituted the second, most powerful stream of the comuneros uprising. The movement of bankrupt urban artisans, the plebeian masses and peasants was defeated. The burghers paid a heavy price for their inconsistency. “The communes of Castile raised an uprising,” writes one of his contemporaries, “but a good start ended in a bad end, and the power of the king, which they tried to weaken, increased even more.” Having lost the ability to resist the absolutist policies of the kings, the cities became the object of increasingly cruel financial extortion. Spain became an instrument of politics that undermined the foundations of its own economy.
Revolts in Valencia and Mallorca
The dissatisfaction of the cities with the policies of Charles took such sharp forms not only in Castile. Almost simultaneously with the uprising of the urban communes of Castile, interconnected uprisings broke out in Valencia and in 
the island of Mallorca.
In the city of Valencia, artisans were completely excluded from participation in city government, concentrated in the hands of the nobility and the patriciate. In 1519, a plague broke out in the city, and most of the nobles and wealthy citizens left the city. Soon a rumor spread about the upcoming raid of the Algerian pirates; members of the 40-50 workshops of Valencia began to arm themselves to repulse the alleged attack. The attack did not happen, but the artisans nevertheless refused to comply with the demand of the governor of the province to disarm and created their own organization - "Hermania" ("Brotherhood"). This organization sent a petition to Karl, in which she complained that the nobility treats artisans as slaves, and asked to confirm the right of artisans to bear arms, legalize their organization and give them the right to send their representatives to the city government. "Germania" elected its governing body - a junta of 13 people, which included mainly artisans - the weaver Guillen Sorolla and others. The city actually ended up in the hands of the rebels. He was joined by other cities in the province of Valencia, as well as part of the peasants of this region. The rebels called for the extermination of the nobles and the confiscation of their property; in the city of Valencia itself, the houses of the nobility were destroyed. All this caused a split among the leaders of the movement. Some members of the junta, representing the interests of "those who had something to lose" (in the words of one of the contemporaries), entered into negotiations with the viceroy of Valencia, but these negotiations were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, battles were going on between the troops of the "Germania", commanded by the cloth merchant Vicente Peris, and detachments of nobles. In the south, the Germania units won a number of victories. It was not until 1522 that the uprising was largely suppressed. Paris made an attempt, returning to the city of Valencia, to re-organize the resistance of the masses and fortified several streets with barricades. The nobles and moderate-minded townspeople, having openly betrayed the uprising, took up arms against Paris and defeated his detachment. Paris himself died in battle. The massacre of the rebels began. Sorolla and other leaders of the Germania movement were executed.
The uprising on the island of Mallorca broke out under the influence of unrest in Valencia. In February 1521, both the artisans and the plebeian ranks of the cities, as well as the peasants, rose up. The whole island was in revolt, with the exception of Alcudia, where the nobles, wealthy citizens and officials of the island fled. In the winter of 1521/22, the rebels undertook a siege of Alcudia, but could not take the city. During these winter months, the struggle with the nobility and wealthy citizens reached its climax; the masses put forward demands for the massacre of the rich and the division of their property. They stormed noble castles, killed nobles, attacked the houses of the nobility, merchants and judicial officials. In October 1522, 4 galleys and 800 royal soldiers were sent to the island. By December, the island was largely conquered. Numerous peasants who participated in the uprising took refuge in the main city of the Balearic Islands - Palma. On December 1, its siege by the royal troops began. Famine and plague raged in the city, many of its defenders perished. In March 1523, Palma capitulated. Until the end of the year, the massacre with the participants in the uprising lasted, hundreds of people were executed.
The uprising on the island of Mallorca had the most pronounced anti-feudal character: not only artisans and the urban poor, but also the peasants took in it Active participation, and the nobles, officials and wealthy citizens from the very beginning joined forces to fight the formidable popular movement.
After the suppression of the uprisings of the 1920s, the established absolutist regime no longer met with serious resistance. The Hidalgos, who during the Castilian uprising went over to the side of the royal power, benefited from its victory: they gradually took over the city self-government. The representatives of the cities in the Cortes were also now mostly nobles, who generally supported the policies of Charles, although sometimes they denied him too frequent and large subsidies. As for the grandees, after their refusal in 1538-1539. to vote a new tax, they were deprived of the right to attend meetings of the Cortes. The political role of the grandees, nobility and cities was reduced to nothing. True, as the history of Spain in the second half of the 16th and 17th centuries showed, the successes of absolutism did not at all indicate the economic and political consolidation of the country. However, under Karl, as Marx writes, “... the ashes of ancient liberties rested at least in a magnificent tomb. That was the time when Vasco-Nunez Balboa hoisted the banner of Castile on the banks of the Darien, Cortes in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru; it was a time when the influence of Spain reigned supreme in Europe, when the ardent imagination of the Iberians was blinded by the brilliant visions of El Dorado, chivalrous deeds and universal monarchy. The freedom of Spain was disappearing ... but streams of gold were pouring around, swords were ringing, and the glow of the fires of the Inquisition burned ominously. )
2. The beginning of the decline of Spain.
Domestic and foreign policy of Philip II
In 1556, Charles, who was defeated in the fight against the German Protestant princes and convinced of the failure of his fantastic plans for creating a world empire, abdicated the imperial and, in the same year, the Spanish throne. Charles divided his possessions: the empire went to his brother Ferdinand; His son Philip II (1556-1598) became king of Spain, who also inherited Franche-Comte and the Netherlands, Spanish possessions in Italy and America.
The abdication of Charles V and the collapse of his monarchy did not mean that the Habsburgs had abandoned the use of the Catholic Church as an instrument of their policy. One of the darkest periods of Spanish history has come, when all the worst aspects of the regime that has developed in Spain have manifested themselves with particular force. Philip fanatically pursued one goal - the triumph of Catholicism and the merciless extermination of heretics. He sought to achieve unlimited dominance over the subjects of his vast possessions. A reign of terror reigned in the country. The Spanish Inquisition, which essentially became part of the state apparatus, became a terrible tool of absolutism. Subordinating only to the king, she enjoyed almost unlimited power. The Inquisitorial tribunals dealt with the Protestants, who were in small numbers in Spain. Moriscos were subjected to cruel persecution by the Inquisition. They were forbidden to wear ancient costumes, speak, read and write in Arabic. The whole life of the Moriscos was under the vigilant supervision of the inquisitors, who often accused them of non-compliance with Catholic rites and punished them for it. In 1568, the Moriscos of Andalusia raised an uprising, which was suppressed only in 1571, and the men were completely exterminated, and women and children were sold into slavery by the thousands.
Often, the Inquisition accused the political opponents of absolutism of heresy, which provided a convenient pretext for reprisals against them. During the reign of Philip in Spain, more than 100 auto-da-fes were arranged for the glory of the Catholic Church; during some of them, 80-90 people were burned at the stake. An extensive espionage system covered the entire country. False denunciations and the desire of the Inquisition to enrich itself at the expense of the property of the executed increased the number of its victims.
Philip II moved the capital from Toledo to Madrid and was almost constantly in his gloomy palace built near Madrid - Escorial. In an effort to concentrate all the administration of the country in his hands, he interfered in the work of state bodies and single-handedly resolved all, even minor, issues. The extremely overgrown bureaucratic apparatus demanded colossal funds for its maintenance, and chaos reigned in management affairs.
Taking advantage of the fact that the Portuguese king died during a military expedition to North Africa, leaving no direct heirs, Philip achieved in 1581 the annexation of Portugal and its vast colonial possessions to Spain. For a while, the Iberian Peninsula turned into a single state.
The centralization policy pursued by Philip caused in 1591 an uprising of the townspeople and nobles of Zaragoza, who defended the liberties of Aragon, which still retained a significant degree of independence. Philip for the first time introduced Castilian troops into the territory of Aragon and brutally cracked down on the rebels, exterminating all opposition-minded groups among the nobility and residents of Zaragoza. He established his unlimited power in this province.
Continuing the policy of his father, Philip led the European Catholic reaction: he dreamed of subordinating all the states of Europe to his power or influence with the help of Spanish soldiers and the Inquisition and eradicating heretics in them - be they French Huguenots, Dutch Calvinists or Anabaptists, German Protestants or supporters of the Anglican Church. But the attempt to establish the hegemony of feudal Spain during the period of formation and strengthening of national states was doomed to failure. In the 60s of the XVI century. The Netherlands rebelled against Spanish absolutism, and as a result of a long and bitter struggle, which cost Spain dearly, she lost the rich northern Netherlands.
The struggle of Philip II with England, the main rival of Spain on the seas, also ended in a shameful defeat. The plots of the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, supported by Philip, were revealed. The huge Spanish fleet, sent to the shores of England and previously called the "Invincible Armada", was completely defeated in August 1588 by a small, but excellent in its seaworthy and combat qualities, the English fleet. Part of the ships of the armada died on the way back during a storm. Of the 130 ships, only half survived. Spain's maritime power was dealt a mortal blow.
Soon, Philip intervened in the civil war in France, sending troops to fight the Huguenots in Normandy, Brittany, Languedoc and other areas. In 1591, a permanent Spanish garrison was introduced into Paris. Philip expected to marry his daughter to one or another contender for the royal throne and make her queen of France. But after the entry into Paris in 1594 of the leader of the Huguenots and the enemy of Spain, Henry IV of Navarre, the Spanish troops had to leave the capital of France. The war continued for several more years and ended in a peace favorable to France (1598). Philip's plans failed again.
Philip continued to fight the Turks. In 1560, he sent a fleet to the shores of North Africa in order to return to Spain shortly before lost Tripoli and, having strengthened there, prevent the Turks from penetrating into the Western Mediterranean. But quickly arrived Turkish fleet utterly defeated the Spanish Armada. True, in 1571 there was a major naval battle in the Gulf of Lecanto, and in this battle the Turkish fleet, which actually represented all the naval forces Ottoman Empire, was completely broken. Some of the ships were destroyed, and the rest were taken prisoner by the Spanish-Venetian flotilla, commanded by Don Juan of Austria (the natural son of Charles I). The dominance of the Turks and North African pirates in the Mediterranean Sea was undermined for a while. However, Philip did not manage to sufficiently use the results of this victory, and the failures that soon followed in the fight against European states and against the rebellious Netherlands undermined the international prestige of Spain.
Philip's adventurist policy absorbed the huge funds extracted from Spain and placed a heavy burden on the exhausted country. The reign of Philip II was a time of rapid economic decline in Spain.
Spain's economic decline
The decline in industrial production, which began around the middle of the 16th century, was completed by the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century. deep decline in industry. In Toledo, most of the wool and silk weaving workshops closed. In Granada, the production of silk almost completely ceased, and in Zaragoza - cloth. In Cuenca, 3-4 cloth workshops survived. Segovia continued to produce only coarse cloth in a small volume, fine cloth was now imported only from other countries. In Seville alone, the center of trade with the colonies, at the beginning of the 17th century there were still 3,000 silk-weaving looms in operation. In Cordoba and other cities of Andalusia, leather production has completely died out.
A crushing blow to trade was the increase in 1575 of alkabala (Alkabala is a tax levied, starting from the reign of Ferdinand, in the amount of 10 percent of the value on the sale of almost all goods. The government determined in advance how much each of the provinces of the kingdom should pay as alkabala. ) 3 times compared to 1561 and a simultaneous increase in other taxes. Despite the influx of precious metals from America, there was an acute shortage of them in the trade turnover, and in the first half of the 17th century. as a result of the minting of an increasingly depreciated coin, gold and silver disappeared from circulation altogether. Since only copper remained in circulation, for a wax candle, for example, one had to pay such a quantity of copper coins that their weight was 3 times the weight of the candle.
Agriculture experienced a catastrophic decline. The Cortes, frightened by this, repeatedly asked Philip to protect the peasants from the harassment perpetrated by the judges of the Place, and also to issue a law allowing working cattle and agricultural implements to be taken from indebted peasants as collateral only if the peasants had nothing else. These petitions in themselves clearly testify to the condition of the peasants. In the second half of the XVI century. both the tax burden on the peasants and their debts to usurers increased sharply. At the beginning of the XVII century. there were almost no mulberry trees left in Spain, and even olive groves began to produce a meager harvest, not to mention grain. Peasants left the village en masse, some villages disappeared altogether from the face of the earth. One of his contemporaries wrote bitterly: “Foreigners passing through the fertile Spanish countryside see fields covered with nettles and thistles, abandoned by farmers, since most of the Spaniards have turned into real idlers - some into idle nobles, others into idle beggars.”
The essence of the changes that had such a detrimental effect on the Spanish economy was as follows. The rise in prices of raw materials, agricultural products and goods, associated with the "price revolution" of the 16th century, nowhere had such a strong effect as in Spain, through which the main flow of cheap precious metals from America went. As a result, fabrics made from Spanish wool in the Netherlands were cheaper than fabrics made in Spain itself. The "price revolution" began in Spain in the 40s of the 16th century. By the middle of the XVI century. flails grew by about 2 times, and by the end of the century - 4 times. At the turn of the XVI and XVII centuries. prices have stabilized.
Expensive Spanish goods, which, moreover, were inferior in quality to the goods of countries with a more developed industry, could not withstand the competition of these foreign goods. They began to lose a market not only in other European countries (this market for Spanish goods was small from the very beginning), but also in the Spanish colonies and even, as mentioned above, in Spain itself. Spanish merchants and entrepreneurs began to withdraw their capital from industry, preferring to bring foreign products to the colonies. But the main flow of foreign goods entered the colonies by smuggling - goods were delivered on French, English and Dutch ships. The death of industry was accelerated by the fact that the state did not provide it with patronage and material support in the form of subsidies and advances. The monarchy in Spain expressed the interests of the nobility, which received additional income from the silver mines and gold mines of America and from the robbery of the population of those countries where the Spaniards dominated or where the Spanish troops fought with the armies of other European states. Therefore, it was much less interested in the economic development of its country than the English nobility, which began to bourgeois itself, or the French nobility, which had no other resources for enrichment, except for feudal rent from their peasants and taxes on trade and industry. In addition, Charles I and Philip II waged constant wars on the fields of Europe, which were in no way dictated by the interests of the Spanish economy, and spent huge sums collected in Spain and American treasures on their campaigns of conquest.
Thus, the policy of the royal power ran counter to the interests of the economic development of the country, and sometimes directly undermined this development. In order to stimulate the growth of the woolen industry, it was necessary to prohibit the export of raw wool and thereby artificially lower the prices of raw materials. But the feudal state could not do this, since the flocks of sheep belonged to the Spanish aristocracy, who were by no means inclined to sacrifice their income in favor of the bourgeoisie. Unable to repay his debt to the Fuggers, the largest trading and usury company of the 16th century, Charles leased out to them half of the colossal land holdings of the Spanish spiritual and chivalric orders. Almost a quarter of the bread trade was in the hands of the Fuggers, which led to a sharp increase in the price of bread. On the lands they received were the largest mercury and zinc enterprises in Europe; thus, the mining of mercury and zinc was also concentrated in the hands of this company. The financial affairs of the government fell under the control of Italian and German bankers - Karl's creditors. They got the right to trade with America.
For fiscal purposes, Charles even encouraged the importation of foreign goods and the exportation of raw materials. The customs tariff of 1546 made it so difficult to import raw silk from Granada to Castile and facilitated its export to other states that, for example, Genoese merchants could buy it cheaper than the Spaniards themselves. Spain was flooded with foreign merchants and became, as the Cortes declared, "India for foreigners." Philip II for the first time forbade the import of foreign cloth, but the government willingly gave special permission for their import for a fee. During this period, the dependence of the Spanish economy on Western European merchants and bankers increased. American gold sailed abroad to pay interest to Genoese and German bankers on huge loans to the king. Philip's repeated bankruptcy brought even greater frustration to the economic life of the country. The tax burden was destroying the foundations of the Spanish economy.
Consequently, the economic decline was closely connected with the peculiarities of the Spanish absolute monarchy, which, like other absolute monarchies, did not play a progressive role, “... in other large states of Europe,” wrote Marx, “the absolute monarchy acts as a civilizing center, as the founder of national unity ... On the contrary, in Spain the aristocracy declined without losing its most harmful privileges, and the cities lost their medieval power without gaining modern significance. ”(K. Marx, The Spanish Revolution, K. Marx and F. Engels , Works, vol. X, p. 721.)
Spain in the first half of the 17th century
As industry and trade were curtailed, the disunity of the country increased and local peculiarities in laws, customs, tax systems, etc., became more and more pronounced. The absolute monarchy in Spain retained only an outward resemblance to the autocratic states of the rest of Europe. "Spain, like Turkey, remained a collection of ill-ruled republics with a nominal sovereign at their head." (K. Marx, The Spanish Revolution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. X, p. 721.)
In the 17th century not a trace remained of the former greatness and power of Spain. The reign of Philip III (1598-1621) was the next stage in the weakening and decline of the Spanish monarchy. Philip III avoided public affairs. The country fell under the control of the royal favorite Lerma and his henchmen, who looked at the treasury as their own property. Ruined hidalgos, contemptuous of work, went to the court, which was distinguished by extraordinary splendor, joined the ranks of the clergy, bureaucracy or the army. Officials, whose number grew incredibly, appropriated the lion's share of the state's income by embezzlement. At the beginning of the XVII century. a huge number of monasteries were built, the clergy owned almost a fourth of the entire territory of Spain. Countless riches were concentrated in the hands of the giants. Along with this, Spain was flooded with vagabonds, whose number reached 150 thousand by 1608, and professional beggars. Just as heavy customs duties stifled trade, so unbearable taxes destroyed the remnants of industry at this time. These years also include the expulsion from Spain of the Moriscos, who in the previous era owed their flourishing to the silk industry and agriculture in the southern regions.
Yielding to the insistence of the greedy clergy, who enjoyed great influence on state affairs, the government agreed to the harassment of the Archbishop of Valencia, who demanded the expulsion of the Moriscos in the interests of the triumph of Catholicism. By robbing them, the government hoped to fill the empty treasury.
In September 1609, an edict was issued according to which all the Moriscos of Valencia were obliged to immediately leave Spain and move to North Africa. The only exceptions were the six "oldest and most faithful to Christianity" Moriscos in each large village, who were left to teach the local population the system of agriculture they practiced. Exiled Moriscos were forbidden to take money and their property with them, except for what they could carry on their own shoulders. On the way, the Moriscos were plundered and lost what little they managed to take with them. Only a small part of the Moriscos resisted, fled to the mountains and elected their king. After a series of fierce battles in which several thousand Moriscos died, their resistance was put to an end. Edicts were soon issued expelling the Moriscos from Castile, Extremadura, Granada, Andalusia, Aragon, Catalonia and, finally, Murcia. In total, about 500 thousand people were expelled from Spain, which further deepened the decline of the country.
The general trends in domestic and foreign policy remained unchanged under Philip IV (1621-1665). Power was in the hands of the favorite of the new king - Olivares. He made a belated attempt to introduce a protectionist policy by restricting the import of manufactured goods into the country, but under the conditions of a dilapidated feudal regime, this could not equip industry, and Olivares himself was by no means concerned about the fate of the Spanish economy. Like Lerma, he primarily sought to squeeze out of the devastated country maximum amount money. Nevertheless, the treasury was always empty and the public debt increased more and more. At this time, the last surviving industrial and commercial center of Spain, Seville, freezes; only 60 silk looms remain in it. For the second half of the XVI and the first half of XVII V. the population of the country was sharply reduced due to epidemics and famines, emigration to the colonies, the expulsion of the Moriscos and long wars in Europe.
Popular movements in the 17th century. Revolt in Catalonia
In the first half of the XVII century. powerful events took place in Spain popular movements caused by the extremely difficult situation of the masses and the reactionary policy of the Spanish absolute monarchy.
In 1632, unrest broke out in Biscay: the reason for them was an attempt by the central government to introduce a salt monopoly in the provinces, which would lead to an increase in the price of salt. In the main city of the province - Bilbao - the plebeian masses immediately came out actively, they began to smash the houses of the rich and put forward the slogan of social equality. The unrest took on such a scale that the government had to make concessions and refuse to introduce a salt monopoly. The leaders of the rebels were executed.
In Catalonia, the struggle of the peasants against feudal oppression assumed such a formidable character that the lords created permanent armed detachments, trying to keep the villages in fear. In 1620-1621. the peasants of La Visbala, with weapons in their hands, opposed the lords - the bishops of Girona, who refused to redeem the duties associated with serfdom. Soon a major uprising began in Catalonia, in which the peasants acted together with the plebs of the cities.
The Catalan uprising took the form of a separatist movement, since one of its causes was the despotic policy of Spanish absolutism, which sought to destroy the local liberties and customs that had survived in this province. Meanwhile, Catalonia differed from the rest of Spain both in its language, close to the southern French dialects, and in its entire culture. The immediate cause of the uprising was the introduction of heavy taxes, the forcible dispatch of the Catalans to the troops that fought the French army, and the quartering of Spanish soldiers in all the cities and villages of Catalonia, who behaved here as in a conquered country. The discontent assumed such proportions that the Viceroy of Catalonia, Site Coloma, wrote to Olivares: "Send me a royal army strong enough to crush this people."
In May 1640, the citizens of Barcelona stormed the prison and freed the prisoners. In the same month, the highlanders of the Heron region rebelled and attacked the royal troops. On June 7, armed detachments of mountain peasants entered Barcelona. Thus began an open uprising, known as the "war of the reapers." The peasants and the townspeople of Barcelona who joined them attacked the viceroy's palace and the houses of those persons who were connected with the Spanish government. Some of them were killed, including Santa Coloma. The flames of rebellion engulfed Catalonia. Two directions were clearly outlined in it. From the very beginning, the mass participation of the peasantry took part in the uprising, which in Barcelona acted together with the lower strata of the city's population. Along with this anti-feudal trend, there was a moderate trend that set itself other goals: the nobility, the urban patriciate and the burghers sought to separate Catalonia from Spain and turn it into an independent state under the sovereignty of France; they entered into a corresponding agreement with Louis XIII, proclaimed Count of Barcelona. Louis XIII took advantage of this agreement to occupy part of Catalonia.
The Spanish government began to prepare for war. “This rebellion must be drowned in rivers of blood,” said one of the members of the royal council.
Spanish troops laid siege to Barcelona, but were unable to take it and were forced to retreat. The war dragged on, French troops took part in it. Only in October 1652 Barcelona surrendered to Philip IV, who had to confirm in 1653 all the liberties and privileges of the Catalans.
Fall of Portugal
Accession in 1581 of Portugal to the Spanish state had a serious impact on its development. Portugal was a participant in those wars waged by Spain. Portugal's foreign trade suffered from the fact that its ships were attacked by ships of countries that were at war with Spain. Portugal's position worsened even more in the first half of the 17th century. If at one time Philip II, fearing to arouse the discontent of the Portuguese, nevertheless avoided violating her rights, then Olivares began the systematic implementation of measures aimed at the complete merger of Portugal with Spain. He began distributing important government posts to the Spaniards and prepared the inclusion of the Portuguese Cortes in the Castilian ones. Particular indignation was caused in Portugal by the introduction of the Castilian direct tax on all movable and immovable property. The first, insufficiently prepared attempt at an uprising in 1637 was easily suppressed by force. Olivares introduced another new tax and took further steps to eliminate Portuguese autonomy. This prompted broad sections of the population to rally to fight for independence.
Dissatisfied with the Spanish dominance, the nobles, led by the archbishop of Lisbon, organized a conspiracy. On December 1, 1640, the conspirators captured the royal palace. They were immediately supported by the townspeople. The uprising began. The Portuguese Cortes proclaimed as king under the name of João IV a representative of the old family of Portuguese kings - the Duke of Braganza. Portugal seceded from Spain. The moment was chosen well, since at that time there was a formidable uprising in Catalonia, diverting the forces of the Spanish government. In search of support in the international arena, Portugal turned to England, Holland and France. After unsuccessful attempts to restore its dominance in Portugal, Spain was forced in 1668 to recognize the independence of the Portuguese kingdom.
The foreign policy of Spanish absolutism at the beginning of the 17th century. Spain and the Thirty Years' War
The successors of Philip II, despite the complete depletion of the country's material resources and the chronic financial crisis, continued to pursue an aggressive, reactionary foreign policy. The international position of Spain was at the beginning of the 17th century. very difficult. The republic of the United Provinces (Holland), which separated from the Netherlands, continued to wage a war for its independence with Spain. English ships attacked the coast of Spain and its colonies in America, and an attempt to make peace with England was thwarted by the excessive demands of the Spanish government. The Duke of Lerma still did not give up the absurd idea of conquering England, despite the shameful failure " Invincible armada". To this end, in 1601 he sent a fleet of 50 ships to the coast of England to capture strongholds on the coast of the island. But the fleet was battered by the storm and lost its combat capability. The Spanish detachment sent to help the rebellious Irish was defeated.
Danger lay in wait for Spain on the other side as well. Relations with France were tense. The French king Henry IV was preparing a coalition against the Habsburgs. However, after his death, the new king, Louis XIII, was initially set up more peacefully towards Spain and even intermarried with the Spanish Habsburgs.
In 1603, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, a king from the house of Stuarts ascended the throne of England, who took a favorable position towards Spain and concluded peace with her in 1604. England stopped helping the Dutch. Nevertheless, Spanish troops continued to suffer setbacks in the war with the United Provinces, partly due to lack of funds and treasury (Spanish galleons with precious metals from America often fell into the hands of Dutch and English corsairs). In 1609, the Spanish government was forced to conclude a truce with Holland for 12 years; thus Spain recognized Holland as a belligerent.
The aggressive policy of the Spanish Habsburgs and their claims to world empire were bound to draw Spain into the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Other states of Europe opposed the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, who did not want to allow the political hegemony of the Habsburgs.
In 1621 hostilities resumed between Spain and Holland. The war of Spain with its opponents was on different, distant from each other fronts. Even the victories of the skillful Spanish commander Spinola did not have a decisive influence on the overall course of events. Spain was ruined, and the Cortes refused to give money for the war.
The international situation was developing very unfavorably for Spain. Richelieu created anti-Spain alliances of France with some Italian states, actively helped Holland and the Protestant princes of Germany. Denmark intervened in the war on the side of the anti-Habsburg coalition, and after its defeat, Sweden. Meanwhile, the strengthened Dutch army took away a number of fortresses from the Spaniards. The important victory of the imperial and Spanish troops over the Swedes at Nordlingen (1634) did not change the course of the war in favor of the Habsburgs, since the result of this victory was the direct intervention of the most dangerous enemy of Spain - France, which openly entered the war with Spain in 1635. French troops began military operations against Spain along the entire Pyrenean border, as well as in Flanders and Italy. Taking advantage of the fact that the Spanish troops were scattered throughout Western Europe, France beat them piece by piece. In 1638 and 1639 French troops who captured Roussillon penetrated into the northern provinces of Spain. Here they ran into the determined resistance of the popular masses of Catalonia. The Catalans, although they were hostile to the Spanish government, gave a serious rebuff to the French.
However, this failure of the French did not change the general unfavorable course of hostilities for Spain. The Dutch dominated the ocean routes and in 1639 dealt a crushing blow to the Spanish fleet. Roussillon was entirely occupied, and Aragon and the rebellious Catalonia (whose noble-patrician circles, as noted above, were looking for rapprochement with France) were partially occupied by French troops. In 1643, at the battle of Rocroi, the French army completely defeated the Spanish troops. At the beginning of 1648, Spain was forced to recognize the full independence of Holland. Ending Thirty Years' War and the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia did not stop hostilities between France and Spain. They continued for 11 more years. According to the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, Spain was forced to cede Roussillon, Artois, a number of fortresses in Flanders and part of Luxembourg to France.
Spain was reduced to the position of a minor power. The role it played in international relations in the 16th century passed to France.
3. Spanish Renaissance culture
The completion of the reconquista and the unification of Castile and Aragon gave a powerful impetus to the development of Spanish culture. In the XVI-XVII centuries, it experienced a period of prosperity, known as the "golden age".
At the end of the XV and the first half of the XVI century. in Spain, advanced thought made great strides, manifesting itself not only in the field of artistic creativity, but also in journalism and scientific works imbued with free thought. The reactionary policy of Philip II dealt a heavy blow to Spanish culture. But the reaction failed to choke creative forces people who showed themselves at the end of the 16th-first half of the 17th centuries. predominantly in the field of literature and art.
The Spanish culture of the Renaissance had deep folk roots. The fact that the Castilian peasant was never a serf (See F. Engels, Letter to Paul Ernst, K. Marx and F. Engels, On Art, M.-L. 1937, p. 30.), And the Spanish cities conquered early its independence, created in the country a fairly wide layer of people who had a consciousness of their own dignity. (See F. Engels, Letter to Paul Ernst, K. Marx and F. Engels, On Art, M.-L. 1937, p. 30. )
Although the favorable period in the development of cities and part of the peasantry of Spain was very short, the legacy of heroic times continued to live in the minds of the Spanish people. This was an important source of the high achievements of classical Spanish culture.
However, the Renaissance in Spain was more controversial than in other European countries. In Spain, there was no such sharp break with the feudal-Catholic ideology of the Middle Ages as occurred, for example, in Italian cities in the era of the rise of their economic life and culture. That is why even such advanced people of Spain as Cervantes and Lope de Vega do not completely break with the Catholic tradition.
Spanish humanists of the first half of the 16th century.
Representatives of advanced thought in Spain, who acted in the first half of the 16th century, received the name "Erasmists" (after the famous humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam). Among them, first of all, Alfonso de Valdes (died in 1532), the author of sharp and caustic dialogues in the spirit of the Greek satirist Lucian, in which he attacks the papacy and the Catholic Church, accusing them of selfishness and licentiousness, must be mentioned. The outstanding Spanish philosopher Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) was also associated with Erasmus. A native of Valencia, Vivss studied in Paris and lived in England and Flanders. He took part in the pan-European movement of humanism. Already in one of his early works, The Triumph of Christ, Vives criticizes Aristotelian scholasticism, opposing to it the philosophy of Plato in the spirit of the Italian philosophers of the Renaissance.
More important is the fact that, rejecting medieval scholasticism, Vives brings experience to the fore: observation and experiment allow one to penetrate into the depths of nature, open the way to knowledge of the world. Thus, Vives is one of the predecessors of Francis Bacon. Man is central to his concept. Vives played an important role in the development of psychology as a science. In his work "On the Soul and Life" he considers in detail the problem of perception. In the pamphlet "The Sage" Vivss gives a humanistic critique of the old scholastic methods of teaching and develops a progressive pedagogical system, including the study of classical languages, history and natural sciences. Luis Vives was also a supporter of women's education.
Another Spanish thinker who spoke out against scholasticism and Aristotle dissected by the scholastics was Francisco Sanchss (1550-1632). However, unlike Luis Vives, the spirit of free inquiry leads Sanchez to skepticism. His main work is called "That there is no knowledge" (1581). Exploring the contradictions contained in the process of human cognition, Sanchez comes to a purely negative thesis: everything that we know is unreliable, relatively, conditional. Such a pessimistic thesis, put forward in the era of the collapse of medieval orders and dogmatic ideas, was not uncommon, especially in Spain with its sharp social contradictions and harsh living conditions.
folk poetry
The 15th century was for Spain the heyday of folk art. It was to this time that many romances appeared. Spanish romance is a national poetic form, which is a short lyrical or lyric-epic poem. The romances sang the exploits of heroes, dramatic episodes of the struggle with the Moors. Lyrical romances depicted in a poetic light the love and suffering of lovers. The romances reflected patriotism, love of freedom and a poetic view of the world, characteristic of the Castilian peasant.
Folk romance fertilized the development of Spanish classical literature, became the soil on which rose the great Spanish poetry of the 16th-17th centuries.
humanist poetry
In Spain, as in other countries, Renaissance literature developed on the basis of a synthesis of national folk art and advanced forms of humanistic literature. One of the first poets of the Spanish Renaissance - Jorge Manrique (1440-1478) was the creator of the brilliant poem "Couplets on the death of my father." In the solemn stanzas of his work, he speaks of the omnipotence of death and glorifies the exploits of immortal heroes. 
Already in the XV century. in Spanish poetry, an aristocratic trend appeared, striving to create "learned lyrics" modeled on the literature of the Italian Renaissance. Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536), the greatest poet of the early Spanish Renaissance, belonged to this trend. In his poetry, Garcilaso followed the traditions of Petrarch, Ariosto and especially the famous pastoral poet of Italy, Sannazaro. The most valuable thing in Garcilaso's poetry is his eclogues, which portrayed in an idealized form the life of shepherds in love in the bosom of nature.
Religious lyrics were widely developed in the Spanish poetry of the Renaissance. Luis de Leon (1527-1591) was the head of the galaxy of so-called mystic poets. An Augustinian monk and doctor of theology at the University of Salamanca, an orthodox Catholic, he was nevertheless accused of heresy and thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, where he was kept for over four years. He managed to prove his innocence, but the fate of the poet in itself speaks of the presence in his works of something more than a simple repetition of religious ideas. The magnificent lyrics of Luis de Leon contain a deep socially significant content. He keenly feels the disharmony of life, where “envy” and “lie” reign, where unrighteous judges judge. He seeks salvation in a solitary contemplative life in the bosom of nature (ode "blissful life").
Luis de Leon was not the only poet targeted by the Inquisition. In her dungeons, many talented sons of the Spanish people were subjected to painful torture. One of these poets, David Abenator Malo, who managed to break free and flee to Holland, wrote about his release: “He came out of prison, out of the grave broken.”
In the second half of the XVI century. in Spain there is an attempt to create a heroic epic. Alonso de Ersilya (1533-1594), who joined the Spanish army and fought in America, wrote a long poem "Araucan", in which he wanted to sing the exploits of the Spaniards. Ercilia chose Virgil's classic poem "Aeneid" as a model. The huge, chaotic work of Ersilya is unsuccessful as a whole. It is replete with sham samples and conditional episodes. In Araucan, only those places are beautiful, where the courage and determination of the freedom-loving Araucans, an Indian tribe that defended its independence from the Spanish conquistadors, are depicted.
If the form of an epic poem in the antique way was not suitable for reflecting the events of our time, then life itself put forward another epic genre, more suitable for their depiction. This genre was the novel.
spanish romance
From the beginning of the XVI century. in Spain, chivalric romances were widespread. The unbridled fantasy of these later creations of feudal literature corresponded to some aspects of the psychology of the people of the Renaissance, who embarked on risky voyages and wandered through distant lands.
In the second half of the XVI century. the pastoral motif, introduced into Spanish literature by Garcilaso de la Vega, was also developed in the form of a novel. Here it is necessary to mention "Diana" by Jorge de Montemayor (written around 1559) and "Galatea" by Cervantes (1585). In these novels, the theme of the "golden age" is refracted in its own way, the dream of happy life in the lap of nature. However, the most interesting and original type of Spanish novel was the so-called picaresque novel (novela picaresca).
These novels reflected the penetration of monetary relations into Spanish life, the disintegration of patriarchal ties, the ruin and impoverishment of the masses.
The beginning of this trend of Spanish literature was laid by the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea, better known as the Celestina (circa 1492). This short story (at least in its main part) was written by Fernando de Rojas.
60 years after the appearance of Celestina, in 1554, simultaneously in three cities, the first completed example of a picaresque novel was published in the form of a small booklet, which had a great influence on the development of European literature, the famous Lazarillo from Tormes. This is the story of a boy, a servant of many masters. Defending his right to exist, Lazaro is forced to resort to cunning tricks and gradually turns into a complete rogue. The attitude of the author of the novel to his hero is ambivalent. He sees in trickery a manifestation of dexterity, intelligence and ingenuity, inaccessible to people of the Middle Ages. But in Lazaro, the negative qualities of the new human type were also clearly manifested. The strength of the book lies in its frank depiction of social relations in Spain, where under the cassock and noble cloak hid the basest passions, brought to life by the fever of profit.
The successor of the unknown author of Lazarillo s Tormes was the outstanding writer Mateo Alemán (1547-1614), author of the most popular picaresque novel, The Adventures and Life of the Rogue Guzmán de Alfarache, watchtower human life". Mateo Alemán's book differs from his predecessor's novel in the breadth of the social background and in a darker assessment of the new social relations. Life is absurd and cynical, says Aleman, passions blind people. Only by conquering these impure aspirations in oneself can one live rationally and virtuously. Aleman is a supporter of the Stoic philosophy, inherited by Renaissance thinkers from ancient Roman authors.
Miguel de Cervantes
The picaresque novel represents that line in the development of Spanish literature, which with particular force prepared the triumph of Cervantes' realism.
The work of the greatest Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), the founder of the new Spanish literature, arose on the basis of a synthesis of all the achievements of its previous development. He raised Spanish and at the same time world literature to new heights.
The youth of Cervantes was fanned by the adventurous nature of his time. He lived in Italy, participated in the naval battle of Lepanto, was captured by Algerian pirates. For five years, Cervantes made one heroic attempt after another to break free. Ransomed from captivity, he returned home poor. Seeing the impossibility of living by literary work, Cervantes was forced to become an official. It was during this period of his life that he came face to face with prosaic real Spain, with the whole world that is so brilliantly depicted in his Don Quixote.
Cervantes left a rich and varied literary legacy. Starting with the pastoral novel Galatea, he soon turned to writing plays. One of them - the tragedy "Numancia" depicts the immortal heroism of the inhabitants of the Spanish city of Numancia, fighting against the Roman legions and preferring death to surrender at the mercy of the winners. Based on the experience of Italian short stories, Cervantes created an original type of Spanish short story that combines a broad depiction of life with sermons (“Instructive Novels”).
But everything he created pales before him. work of genius"The cunning hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" (1605-1615). Cervantes set himself a modest task - to destroy the influence of fantastic and far from life chivalric romances. But his excellent knowledge of people's life, keen observation and ingenious ability to generalize led to the fact that he created something immeasurably more significant.
Don Quixote dreams of reviving chivalrous times in an era when they have long gone. He alone does not understand that chivalry has outlived its time and, like the last knight, is a comic figure. In the feudal era, everything was built on the basis of fist law. And now Don Quixote wants, relying on the strength of his hand, to change the existing order, to protect widows and orphans, to punish offenders. In fact, he creates unrest, causes evil and suffering to people. “Don Quixote must have paid dearly for his mistake when he imagined that knight-errants were equally compatible with all economic forms of society,” says Marx.
But at the same time, the motives of Don Quixote's actions are humane and noble. He is a staunch defender of freedom and justice, patron of lovers, a fan of science and poetry. This knight is a true humanist. His progressive ideals originated in the great anti-feudal movement of the Renaissance. They were born in the struggle against class inequality, against obsolete feudal forms of life. But even the society that came to replace it could not realize these ideals. The callous rich peasant, tight-fisted innkeepers and merchants mock Don Quixote, his intention to protect the poor and weak, his generosity and humanity.
The duality of the image of Don Quixote lies in the fact that his progressive humanistic ideals appear in a reactionary, obsolete chivalrous form.
Next to Don Quixote, a peasant, the squire Sancho Panza, acts in the novel. The narrowness of rural conditions of existence left its mark on him: Sancho Panza is naive and even sometimes silly, he is the only person who believed in Don Quixote's knightly nonsense. But Sancho is not without good qualities. He not only reveals his ingenuity, but also turns out to be the bearer of folk wisdom, which he sets forth in countless proverbs and sayings. Under the influence of the humanist knight Don Quixote, Sancho develops morally. His remarkable qualities are revealed in the famous episode of the governorship, when Sancho reveals his worldly wisdom, disinterestedness and moral purity. There is no such apotheosis of the peasant in any of the works of the Western European Renaissance.
The two protagonists of the novel, with their fantastic and naive notions, are shown against the background of real everyday Spain, a country of swaggering nobility, innkeepers and merchants, wealthy peasants and muleteers. In the art of depicting this everyday life, Cervantes has no equal.
Don Quixote is the greatest folk book Spain, a remarkable monument of the Spanish literary language. Cervantes completed the transformation of the Castilian dialect, one of the dialects of feudal Spain, into literary language the emerging Spanish nation. The work of Cervantes is the highest point in the development of the Renaissance culture on Spanish soil.
Luis de Gongora
in the literature of the 17th century. gloomy, hopeless moods are becoming more and more intensified, reflecting an internal breakdown in the public consciousness of the era of the progressive decline of Spain. The reaction to the ideals of humanism was most clearly expressed in the work of the poet Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627), who developed a special style called "gongorism". From Gongor's point of view, only the exceptional, bizarrely complex, far from life can be beautiful. Gonyura is looking for beauty in the world of fantasy, and even turns reality into a fantastic decorative extravaganza. He rejects simplicity, his style is dark, difficult to understand, replete with complex, intricate imagery and hyperbole. In the poetry of Gongora, the literary taste of the aristocracy found its expression. Gongorism, like a disease, spread throughout European literature.
Francisco de Quevedo
The greatest Spanish satirist was Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645). Coming from an aristocratic family, Quevedo participated as a diplomat in Spanish political intrigues in Italy. Acquaintance with the political regime in the Spanish possessions led him to deep disappointment. Taking advantage of his proximity to the court, Quevedo submitted a note in verse to Philip IV, in which he asked the king to reduce taxes and improve the situation of the people. The author of the note was captured and imprisoned by the Inquisition, where he was in chains for 4 years and from where he came out a physically broken man. Shortly after his release, he died.
Quevedo's famous picaresque novel, The Life Story of a Rogue Called Pablos, an Example of Vagabonds and a Mirror of Fraudsters, was apparently written in the early period of his life. This book is unquestionably the deepest of picaresque novels. Telling the story of the son of a thieving barber and a prostitute - the unlucky Pablos, Quevedo shows a whole system of child abuse. Raised in such conditions, Pablos became a scoundrel. He wanders through Spain, and monstrous poverty and filth are revealed before him. Pablos sees how people deceive each other in order to exist, sees that all their energy is directed towards evil. Quevedo's novel is filled with bitterness.
In the second period of his activity, Quevedo turns to the creation of satirical pamphlets. A special place among them is occupied by his "Visions" - several satirical and journalistic essays depicting images of the afterlife in a grotesque and parodic spirit. So, in the essay “The Policeman Possessed by the Devil”, hell is presented, where kings and court camarilla, merchants and the rich are roasting. There is no place in hell for the poor, for they have no flatterers and false friends and no opportunity to sin. In the 17th century the process of degeneration of the genre of the picaresque novel began.
Spanish theater
Spain, like England and France, experienced in the XVI-XVII centuries. great flowering of drama and theatre. The social content of the Spanish drama from Lope de Vega to the Caldera is the struggle of the absolute monarchy with the liberties of old Spain, obtained by the Spanish nobility, cities and Castilian peasants during the reconquista, full of intense drama.
In contrast to the French tragedy, which was based on ancient models, a national drama arose in Spain, quite original and popular. Dramatic works were created for public theaters. Patriotically inclined spectators wanted to see the heroic deeds of their ancestors and the topical events of our time on stage.
Lope de Vega
The founder of the Spanish national drama was the great playwright Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562-1635). Soldier of the army of the "Invincible Armada", a brilliant man of the world, famous writer, Lopo de Vega remained a religious man throughout his life, and in his old age he became a priest and even a member of the "holy" inquisition. In this duality, Lope de Vega affected character traits Spanish Renaissance. He expressed in his work the humanistic aspirations of this remarkable era, and at the same time, Lope de Vega, an advanced man of his time, could not break with the traditions of feudal Catholic Spain. Her social program was to seek to reconcile the ideas of humanism with patriarchal customs.
Lope de Vega was an artist of rare creative fertility, he wrote 1800 comedies and 400 one-act allegorical cult plays (about 500 works have come down to us). He also wrote heroic and comic poems, sonnets, romances, short stories, etc. Like Shakespeare, Lope de Vega did not invent the plots of his plays. He used various sources - Spanish folk romances and chronicles, Italian govels and books of ancient historians. A large group of plays by Lope de Vega are historical dramas from the life of different peoples. He also has a play from Russian history - "The Grand Duke of Moscow", dedicated to the events of the beginning of the 17th century.
In his main works, Lope de Vega depicts the strengthening of royal power, the struggle of the Spanish kings against the rebellious feudal lords and the Moorish hordes. He portrays the progressive significance of the unification of Spain, while sharing the naive faith of the people in the king as a representative of non-class justice, capable of resisting the arbitrariness of the feudal lords.
Among the historical plays by Lope de Vega, folk-heroic dramas (“Peribanes and Commander Ocanyi”, “The Best Alcalde is the King”, “Fu-ente Ovejuna”), depicting the relationship of three social forces - peasants, feudal lords and royal power, are of particular importance. Showing the conflict between the peasant and the feudal lord, Lope de Vega stands entirely on the side of the peasant.
The best of these plays is Fuente Ovejuna, one of the greatest dramas not only in Spain, but also in world theater. Here Lone de Vega, to a certain extent, defeats his monarchical illusions. The play takes place in the second half of the 15th century. The commander of the Order of Calatrava is rampaging in his village of Fuente Ovehuna (Sheep Spring), infringing on the honor of peasant girls. One of them - Laurencia - passionately raises the peasants to revolt, and they kill the offender. Despite the fact that the peasants were obedient subjects of the king, and the commander participated in the struggle against the throne, the king ordered the peasants to be tortured, demanding that they betray the murderer. Only the steadfastness of the peasants, who answered all questions with the words: “Fkhonte Ovehuna did it,” made the king reluctantly let them go. Following Cervantes, the author of the Numancia tragedy, Lope de Vega created a drama about national heroism, its moral strength and stamina.
In a number of his works, Lope depicts the despotism of royal power. Among them, the excellent drama Star of Seville stands out. The tyrant king is faced with the inhabitants of the city of Seville, who are defending their honor and ancient liberties. The king must step back before these people, recognize their moral greatness. But the social and psychological strength of the "Star of Seville" comes close to the tragedies of Shakespeare.
The duality of Lope de Vega was most evident in dramas dedicated to the family life of the Spanish nobility, the so-called "dramas of honor" ("Dangers of Absence", "Victory of Honor", etc.). For Lopo de Vega, marriage must be based on mutual love. But after the marriage took place, its foundations are unshakable. Suspecting his wife of treason, the husband has the right to kill her.
The so-called comedies of the cloak and sword depict the struggle of young Spanish nobles - people of a new type - for freedom of feeling, for their happiness, against the despotic power of their fathers and guardians. Lope de Vega builds a comedy on a dizzying intrigue, on coincidences and accidents. In these comedies, glorifying the love and free will of man, Lope de Vega's connection with the humanistic literary movement of the Renaissance was most manifest. But in Lope de Vega, the young man of the Renaissance does not have that inner freedom that delights us in Shakespeare's comedies. The heroines of Lope de Vega are faithful to the noble ideal of honor. In their appearance there are cruel, unattractive features associated with the fact that they share the prejudices of their class.
Dramatists of the Lope School
Lope de Vega does not perform alone, but is accompanied by a whole galaxy of playwrights. One of Lope's direct students and successors was the monk Gabriel Telles (1571-1648), known as Tirso de Molina. The place that Tirso occupies in world literature is determined primarily by his comedy The Seville Mischievous Man, or the Stone Guest, in which he created the image of the famous seducer of women, Don Juan. The hero of the play, Tirso, does not yet have that charm that captivates us in the image of Don Juan in writers of later eras. Don Juan is a depraved nobleman, mindful of the feudal right of the first night, a seducer who strives for pleasure and does not disdain any means to achieve his own. This is a representative of the court camarilla, insulting women of all classes.
Pedro Calderon
Spanish drama once again rose to great heights in the work of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681). The figure of Calderon is deeply controversial. Coming from a noble aristocratic family, Caldera was a knight of the Order of Sant'Iago. priest and honorary chaplain to King Philip IV. He wrote not only for the folk, but also for the court theater.
The secular plays of Calderon are directly adjacent to the dramaturgy of Lope. He wrote "cloak and sword comedies", but Caldera achieved special realistic power in his "dramas of honor". Thus, in the drama Doctor of His Honor, Calderon painted an expressive portrait of a 17th-century Spanish nobleman. Fanatical religiosity and equally fanatical devotion to one's honor coexist in this dgoryanin with ruthless sobriety, Jesuit cunning and cold calculation.
Drama Calderon "Salamei alcalde" is a reworking of the play of the same name by Lope de Vega. The village judge Pedro Crespo, who has a developed sense of dignity and is proud of his peasant origin, condemned and executed a noble officer who dishonored his daughter. The struggle of a simple village judge against a rapist nobleman is depicted with great artistic power.
A large place in the heritage of Calderon is occupied by religious dramas - dramatized "lives of the saints", etc. The main idea of \u200b\u200bthese plays is purely Catholic. But Calderon usually brings out a jester who soberly laughs at religious miracles.
The wonderful drama "The Miraculous Magician" is close to religious plays. Marx called this work "Catholic Faust". The hero of the play is a searching and daring person. In his soul there is a struggle between a sensual attraction to a woman and a Christian idea. Calderon's play ends with the triumph of the Christian-ascetic beginning, but the great artist portrays the earthly, sensual elements as something powerful and beautiful. There are two jesters in this play. They ridicule miracles with their crude distrust of religious fiction.
With particular force, the philosophical concept of Calderon was reflected in his drama Life is a Dream. The events taking place in the play are not only real, but also symbolic. King of Poland Basilio, an astrologer and magician, learns that his newborn son will be a scoundrel and a murderer. He imprisons his son Sehismundo in a tower located in a desert area, and keeps him chained and dressed in an animal skin. Thus, Sehismundo is a prisoner from birth. This image of a young man chained in chains is a symbolic image of humanity, which is in slavish dependence on social conditions. Wanting to check the words of the oracle, the king orders the sleeping Sehismundo to be transferred to the palace. Waking up and learning that he is the ruler, Sehismundo immediately shows the features of a despot and a villain: he threatens the courtiers with death, raises his hand against his own father. Man is a prisoner, a slave bound in chains, or a despot and tyrant - such is the thought of Calderon.
The conclusions to which Calderón arrives are of a fantastic and reactionary nature. Returned back to the tower, Sehismundo wakes up and decides that everything that happened to him in the palace was a dream. He now believes that life is a dream. Sleep - wealth and poverty, power and submission, right and injustice. If this is so, then the person must give up his aspirations, suppress them and come to terms with the flow of life. The philosophical dramas of Calderón are a new type of dramatic work, unknown to Lope de Vega.
Calderoy combines deep realism with reactionary features in his work. He sees a way out of the tragic contradictions of reality in following the ideas of feudal Catholic reaction, in the cult of noble honor.
Despite all the contradictions inherent in Spanish literature of the 16th-17th centuries, the artistic values created by it, especially the Spanish novel and drama, are an outstanding contribution to world culture.
Architecture
The plastic arts also reached great heights in this era. After a long period of Gothic dominance and the heyday of Moorish architecture in Spain in the 16th century, interest in the architecture of the Italian Renaissance is awakening. But, following his patterns, the Spaniards originally transform the forms of Italian architecture.
The activity of the brilliant architect Juan de Herrera (1530-1597), the creator of a special style of "herreresque", dates back to the second half of the 16th century. This style takes the form of ancient architecture. But still greatest creation Herrera - the famous palace of Philip II Escorial bears little resemblance to traditional forms classical architecture.
The very idea of Escorial, which is at the same time a royal palace, a monastery and a tomb, is very characteristic of the era of the counter-reformation. In my own way appearance Escorial resembles a medieval fortress. It is a square building with towers at the corners. A square divided into a series of squares is the plan of the Escorial, reminiscent of a lattice (the lattice is a symbol of St. Lawrence, to whom this building is dedicated). The gloomy, but majestic bulk of Escorial, as it were, symbolizes the harsh spirit of the Spanish monarchy.
Renaissance motifs in architecture already in the second half of the 17th century. degenerate into something pretentious and cutesy, and the risky boldness of forms hides only the inner emptiness and lack of content.
Painting
Painting was the second area after literature in which Spain created values of world-historical significance. True, Spanish art does not know harmonic works in the spirit of Italian painting of the 15th-16th centuries. Already in the second half of the XVI century. Spanish culture brought forth an artist of striking originality. This is Domeviko Theotokopuli, a native of Crete, known as El Greco (1542-1614). El Greco lived for a long time in Italy, where he learned a lot from the famous masters of the Venetian school, Titian and Tintoretto. His art is one of the offshoots of Italian mannerism, originally developed on Spanish soil. Greco's paintings were not successful at court; he lived in Toledo, where he found many admirers of his talent.
In Greco's art, the painful contradictions of his time were reflected with great dramatic force. This art is clothed in a religious form. But the unofficial interpretation of church subjects distances El Greco's painting from the state-owned templates of church art. His Christ and the saints appear before us in a state of religious ecstasy. Their ascetic-emaciated, elongated figures bend like flames and seem to reach for the sky. This passion and deep psychologism of Greco's art bring him closer to the heretical movements of the era.
Spanish painting experienced its real flourishing in the 17th century. Among the Spanish artists of the XVII century. should be mentioned first of all José Ribeiro (1591-1652). Adhering to the traditions of the Italian Caravaggio, he develops them in a completely original way and is one of the brightest national artists of Spain. The main place in his legacy is occupied by paintings depicting the executions of Christian ascetics and saints. The artist skillfully sculpts human bodies protruding from the darkness. Characteristically, Ribeira gives his martyrs the features of people from the people. Francisco Zurbaran (1598-1664) was the master of large compositions on religious themes, combining prayerful ecstasy and rather cold realism into one whole.
Diego Velazquez
The greatest Spanish artist Diego de Silva Velasquez (1599-1960) remained the court painter of Philip IV until the end of his life. Unlike other Spanish artists, Velasquez was far from religious painting, he painted genre paintings and portraits. His early works are scenes from folk life. The mythological scenes of Velazquez's Bacchus (1628) and Vulcan's Forge (1630) are connected in a certain respect with this genre. In the painting "Bacchus" (otherwise - "Drunkards"), the god of wine and grapes looks like a peasant guy and is surrounded by rude peasants, one of whom he crowns with flowers. In The Forge of Vulcan, Apollo appears among half-naked blacksmiths who have quit their work and look at him in amazement. Velazquez achieved amazing naturalness in the image folk types and scenes.
Evidence of the artist's full maturity was his famous painting "The Capture of Breda" (1634-1635) - a festive military scene with a deeply thought-out composition and a subtle psychological interpretation of faces. Velázquez is one of the greatest portrait painters in the world. His work is marked by truthful psychological analysis, often merciless. Among his best works is a portrait of the famous favorite of the Spanish king - the Duke of Olivares (1638-1641), Pope Innocent X (1650), etc. In the portraits of Velazquez, members of the royal house are presented in poses full of importance, solemnity and grandeur. But ostentatious grandeur cannot hide the fact that these people are marked with the stamp of degeneration.
A special group of portraits of Velazquez are images of jesters and freaks. Interest in such characters is typical for Spanish artists of this era. But Velasquez knows how to show that ugliness belongs to humanity as well as beauty. Sorrow and deep humanity often shine in the eyes of his dwarfs and jesters.
A special place in the work of Velasquez is occupied by the painting "Spinners" (1657), depicting the royal manufactory for the manufacture of tapestries. In the foreground are women workers; they spin wool, spin, carry baskets. Their poses are distinguished by free ease, movements are strong and beautiful. This group is contrasted with elegant ladies who are examining the manufactory, very similar to those woven on tapestries. sunlight, penetrating into the working room, leaves its cheerful imprint on everything, brings poetry to this picture of everyday life.
Velasquez's painting conveys the movement of form, light and transparency of the air with free colorful strokes.
The most prominent of Velázquez's students was Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). His early works depict scenes with street boys who freely and naturally settled down on a dirty street of the city, feeling like real gentlemen in their rags. The religious painting of Murillo is marked by features of sentimentality and testifies to the beginning decline of the great Spanish school.
The national liberation war of Spain against the Moors - the reconquista - ends by the end of the 15th century. In the 16th century, Spain became one of the most powerful countries in feudal Europe, the largest colonial power. The 16th century was marked in Spain by the development of cities, guild craft, and the emergence of capitalist manufactory production. Spain by the beginning of the 17th century was on the verge of an economic and political disaster. This was due to the reactionary nature of Spanish absolutism, which was not interested in strengthening the Spanish economy and had a narrowly aristocratic character. The reactionary foreign policy of the Spanish kings completed the ruin of the country.
Both in agriculture, and in industry, and in trade, the germs of progressive economic relations met with a cruel rebuff from the reactionary forces of feudal society.
The Spanish people by the end of the 16th century was brought to complete poverty. Numerous popular uprisings that broke out in the 16th and 17th centuries shook the Spanish state from within. The spirit of gain has destroyed the illusion of a patriarchal and earthly order.
In the second half of the 17th century, the last of the Habsburgs - the feeble-minded Charles II - was a plaything in the hands of the court camarilla, whose outrages served as a pretext for outbreaks of popular uprisings. After his death in 1700 The European countries began the War of the Spanish Succession.
Church and people
The Catholic Church acquires exceptional influence in Spain, having strengthened its position even during the reconquista. Thanks to the Inquisition, the church became the most indestructible instrument of absolutism.
Nowhere in Europe at that time was there such a sharp opposition as in Spain between the two poles - the ruling elite in the person of the large feudal nobility and the oppressed broad peasant and plebeian masses. This was manifested in the conservative stability of the reactionary class-noble and religious prejudices and ideas. Immediately, the latent influence of democratic tendencies was so great that the folk principle was expressed in the Spanish culture of the 17th century. clearer than in the culture of other countries.
Part 6. Spain in the XVI-XVII centuries: part 2. Links to other parts - see at the end of the article.
In the 17th century A distinctive feature of Islam was the special role of royal favorites (validos), to whom the monarchs transferred the most important levers of domestic and foreign policy. The most influential of them - the duke under Philip III and the count-duke under Philip IV - actually had the powers of the prime minister, and their power was based solely on the trust of the king and involved the delegation of part of the functions to assistants and the transfer of key positions to the clientele of friends and relatives.
From 1621 to 1643, the Count-Duke of Olivares, a talented and energetic politician, was in power, putting forward a program of reforms aimed at restoring the power of Spain in Europe, strengthening the power of the king, improving the economy and government, streamlining taxes, overcoming the isolation of the Spanish provinces, unifying government , legislation and tax system in I. according to the Castilian model.
In the struggle for dominance in Europe in the framework of the Thirty Years' War, India clashed with France. For a long time, hostilities took place with varying success, and both powers easily entered into alliances with the Protestants for political purposes (for example, I. supported the Huguenots in La Rochelle). Under the conditions of the war, reforms in India were postponed, and the inevitable increase in taxes and attempts to unify administration and taxation in the country along the Castilian model aroused fierce resistance. Uprisings broke out in Portugal (the uprising in Evora in 1637 was especially large, and in 1640 Portugal seceded from the Spanish monarchy), in Catalonia (1640-1652), which was held only by armed force, in Sicily (1646-1647), in Naples ( 1647). By (1648) Ireland recognized the independence of the Republic of the United Provinces and the transfer to it of a number of territories in the Netherlands and the colonies previously captured by the Dutch. Freed from the need to fight in Germany and the United Provinces, I. tried to return Portugal and continue the war with France, but in both cases was defeated. Under the terms of the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), Italy ceded Luxembourg, Artois, Roussillon, and Cerdan to France, and in 1668 she had to recognize the independence of Portugal.
In the conditions of almost continuous wars, the government tried to find new sources of replenishment of the treasury (new taxes, sale of posts, rents, systematic non-payments on government interest-bearing papers), resorted to defacement of the coin, which had the consequences of inflation, a crisis of public confidence in the government and an increase in tension. The state could not cope with financial difficulties, periodically declaring bankruptcy. In remote regions that were part of the Spanish monarchy and did not receive assistance from the center, separatist sentiments were growing; unrest and conspiracies of the nobility almost led to the collapse of the monarchy in 1640. At the same time, the desire of the lords in the conditions of the price revolution to ensure the growth of land profitability by any means caused in the 16th-17th centuries. the so-called seigneurial reaction - an attack on the rights of the peasants. Together with the growing tax burden and crop failures, this led to the decline of the peasant economy. indicator social tension there were uprisings in villages and cities (in 1631 in Bilbao, in 1693 in Valencia, etc.), directed against the growth of taxes and food prices, the abuses of seniors, and robbery.
Church in I. in the 17th century. retained and even strengthened its influence. The heightened intensity of religious life was manifested in numerous religious holidays and processions, in sermons at which crowds of people gathered, in the extraordinary popularity of the theatrical genre “auto sacramental”, when the most complex theological problems were touched upon in performances (for example, free will). The Council of Trent contributed to the development of the cult of saints, which influenced Spanish painting. The largest religious figures of the previous century were canonized - Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier and Teresa of Avila.
Under Charles II, the foreign policy of India changed. In an effort to maintain possessions in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa, India, in search of allies against France, draws closer to England and Holland. However, each war led Israel, as a weaker partner, to new territorial losses: in 1668, according to the Peace of Aachen, Ireland lost a number of fortresses in Yuzhn. Netherlands, in 1678 according to the Treaty of Niemwegen - Franche-Comté. Outside of Europe, India lost the Lesser Antilles, Jamaica, and territories at the mouth of the river. Orinoco.
Under Charles II, direct diplomatic relations with Russia were first established. In 1667-1668 I. visited the embassy of P. I., followed by the embassies of A. A. Vinius (1673), again P. I. Potemkin (1681), Ya. F. (1687-1688). However, due to the remoteness and lack of serious common interests at that time, as well as the difficult state of I., there was no response from the Spanish embassy to Russia, full-fledged bilateral ties were established only in the 18th century.
Charles II, a physically and mentally weak man (which is traditionally associated with closely related marriages between his ancestors), was seriously ill all his life; among contemporaries, the opinion was established that a spell was cast on the king, he went down in history with the nickname "Bewitched". The king could not manage, the policy of the country was determined by the most influential courtiers, grouped around the Queen Mother Mariana of Austria and her favorites (first the Austrian Jesuit Nitard, and later the courtier Fernando Valenzuela). The opposition was led illegitimate son Philip IV Don Juan José of Austria(1629-1679), talented military leader and statesman. After a series of conflicts with the Queen Mother and her ministers, he came to power in 1677, but died soon after, having just begun his reform program.
Charles II could not have children, and already during his lifetime, applicants for the “Spanish inheritance” appeared, including Philip of Anjou, grandson of King Louis XIV of France, and Archduke Charles, son of Emperor Leopold I. As a result of the war for ( 1700-1714), the Bourbon dynasty established itself on the Spanish throne.
The culture of Spain throughout almost the entire XVII century. experienced a period of prosperity, called the Golden Age (approximately 1580-1680). Never before has history exerted such an important and multifaceted influence on pan-European cultural processes. At the same time, various spheres of culture developed extremely unevenly. If literature, theater, painting were a model for other European countries, then in the field of philosophy and especially science, I.'s contribution was much more modest at that time.
At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. the Renaissance in India was replaced by the baroque style. It is with him that the brilliant flowering of the Spanish theater is associated, when Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina (c. 1581-1648) worked, who World culture owes the immortal image of Don Juan, Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681). The largest representatives of the Baroque in literature were Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627), Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658); the genre of the picaresque novel was very popular, which originated and flourished precisely in India. The flowering of painting is associated with such names as El Greco (1541-1614), Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), Francisco Zurbaran (1598-1664), Diego Velasquez (1599-1660), Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682).
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Following the discovery and conquest of America, Spain experienced an economic upheaval. It would seem that this revolution should be the start for the transition to early capitalism. But this did not happen. The economic upswing of the first half of the 16th century gave way to stagnation and decline in the 17th century.
It should be noted that the economic development of Spain during this period was extremely heterogeneous, and this heterogeneity was both in time and spatial-territorial dimensions. What does it mean?
1). The 16th century, especially its first half, is the time of economic recovery, the development of market relations, new forms of organization of industry and trade, the time of urban growth.
2). Second half of the 16th and early 17th centuries. - the decline of the economy, the reduction of foreign and domestic trade, the naturalization of economic life.
These are changes over time. And in space? Various regions of Spain were unevenly developed. In particular, Castile was more developed than Valencia and other areas. And even in Castile itself, the North lagged behind the South.
It should be noted that Spain had the most favorable starting conditions.
1. As a result of geographical discoveries, she owned vast colonies. The country was the monopoly owner and distributor of American treasures. According to the American historian Hamilton, for 1503-1660. Spain received 191333 kg of gold, 16886815 kg of silver. Moreover, at first only gold was exported. This is only official data. Obviously, there was also smuggling.
2. In the first half of the XVI century there is a continuous growth of the population. By the end of the century, it had reached 8 million people.
But these material wealth did not contribute to the development of the national economy, but rather, on the contrary, intensified the economic crisis.
General causes of the crisis.
1). One of the reasons was the so-called. price revolution. It swept through all countries, but nowhere were its consequences more disastrous than in Spain. The rise in prices began in the third decade of the 16th century and continued with sharp fluctuations throughout the century. In the first half of the 16th century, prices increased by 107.6%, in the second half - another sharp jump. The "Golden Age" in Spain resulted in a 4.5-fold increase in prices. Wheat has been the hardest hit by the rise in prices (for 100 years, wheat prices in England have increased by 155%, in Spain by 556%). Which segments of the population benefit from price increases? For grain producers to the market! But those in the Spanish countryside were not peasants, but nobles, it was they who created large latifundia in the south, where hired labor was even used. Vedyushkin V.A. wrote about this in his articles. The purchasing power of the peasants, artisans and proletarians was reduced by 1/3. Of course, the price revolution was not the only, and perhaps not the main, cause of Spain's economic decline.
a) the severity of taxes, primarily alcabals - 10% tax on each trade transaction;
b) the existence of a system of taxes - artificial restraint by the state of the price of bread. What is it and what did it lead to? In 1503, the government set a maximum price for bread for the first time. You can't go higher! In 1539 the tax system was finally approved. Since there was a fixed feudal rent in the country, those who sold grain lost. Moreover, it was especially difficult for ordinary peasants, while wholesalers circumvented official bans. The Cortes of Castile, in one of the petitions, demanded the abolition of taxes, “... for many people are leaving the lands, and more and more fields are left without crops ... many of those who lived by agriculture have turned into vagabonds and beggars ...”;
c) the crisis in agriculture was also connected with the activities of the Mesta. Mesta is a privileged organization of sheep breeders that arose in the 13th century. For three hundred years, it has greatly expanded its privileges. It included about 3,000 people: nobles, clergy, wealthy citizens. Every autumn, Mesta's herds followed three main routes - kanyads from North to South, in spring - back to the North. The place was beneficial to the state, as it exported raw wool to France, the Netherlands, and Italy. The king received stable income from export duties. Therefore, Mesta had many privileges: sheep breeders were exempted from paying many duties; they seized communal lands for pasture almost without hindrance; the canadas were so narrow that during the haul the sheep caused damage to peasant fields and vineyards. All together led to the decline of agriculture. The peasants left their lands, therefore, there was a concentration of land ownership in the hands of the largest feudal lords. Along with peasant farms, petty-noble farms are also ruined.
3). Already at the beginning of the 16th century, complaints were heard in Spain about the ruin of crafts. Although the real crisis in this industry came at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. The reasons for it were laid down earlier.
The crisis in industry was due to the anti-mercantilism of Spanish absolutism. Spanish products were very expensive, even in the domestic market they cost more than imported ones, that is, Dutch, French, English. When the demand for wool and fabrics in the colonies increased, Spain exported to America not their own, but foreign fabrics, primarily Dutch. Why?
The Spanish manufactory could not stand the competition with the Dutch. The fact is that the Spanish government considered the Netherlands as part of its state, so the duties on wool imported there were low, and the import of Flemish cloth into Spain was carried out on preferential terms. And this happened precisely when the fledgling Spanish manufactory had to be supported. TO XVII century not a trace remains of the once prosperous cities and crafts. turned around with amazing speed. In one of the quarters of Toledo in 1665, only 10 artisans out of 608 remained. In the former capital of Castile, 50 thousand people were previously employed in the woolen and silk weaving industries, in 1665 only ... 16 looms remained.
In connection with the decline of crafts, the population of cities and towns decreased. In Medina del Campo in the 16th century there were 5 thousand householders, at the beginning of the 17th century - 500 remained. In Madrid in the middle of the 16th century - 400 thousand people, in the middle of the 17th century - 150 thousand.
In 1604, the Cortes complained: "Castile is so depopulated, there are not enough people for agricultural work, in many villages the number of houses has been preserved from 100 to 10, or even none at all." Where did the numerous beggars and vagabonds go? Some of them were sent to the colonies, some of the destitute died in wars. Manufactories and the decaying urban craft could not absorb them all.
4). These phenomena led to the creation in the country of a special social psychological climate, which often made contemporaries - foreigners believe that the Spaniards are not inclined to economic activity. One Venetian ambassador wrote: “Economy is a word from a language unknown to the Spaniards; disorder becomes a matter of prestige and honor."
Against the background of the decline of agriculture and industry, colonial trade still flourished for a long time. Its highest rise occurred at the end of the 16th-beginning of the 17th centuries. However, this trade did not bring wealth to Spain, because in the colonies she sold foreign-made goods, for which she paid in American gold.
In addition, the funds that Spain received from the robbery of the colonies went to the unproductive consumption of a clique of feudal lords. All this taken together allowed Karl Marx to say that Spain was one of the first countries to embark on the path of primitive capital accumulation. However, the specific features of socio-economic development, as mentioned above, prevented Spain from taking the path of progressive development.
Thus, the gold of America, pumped out by Spain, became the most important lever of the PNK in other countries and primarily in the Netherlands, significantly accelerating the development of capitalism there. In Spain, at the beginning of the century, capitalism develops, in the middle of the century its development stops, re-feudalization begins. That is, the decomposition of the old feudal system is not accompanied by a solid formation of a new progressive one - this is the main result of the economic state of the country. It should also be added that, due to the circumstances listed above, the Spanish bourgeoisie not only did not gain strength, but was completely ruined. The impoverishment of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by the enrichment of the higher nobility. It lived by robbing the people of its country and colonies. A group like the English "gentry" or the French "nobility of the mantle" did not form within it. It was extremely reactionary, and adapted the entire economy of Spain and the colonies to its own interests. This found expression in the peculiarities of Spanish absolutism, which will be discussed below.
Being integral part more extensive whole - the monarchy of Charles V, Spain became a source from which financial resources were drawn for waging wars and other purposes alien to the interests of Spanish society. In Spain, this was felt from the very first moment a new king appeared on its territory.
Golden Age for Spain
Remark 1
After the conquest of America, a golden age begins for Spain. The country has become the strongest maritime power in Europe. Under the rule of the Spanish monarch is the entire Iberian Peninsula, except for Portugal. The creation of the strongest army in the world allowed the country to continue increasing its territories on the European continent.
In 1504 Spain conquered Naples. The daughter and heiress of Ferdinand and Isabella, Juana, strengthened the position of the Spanish throne by intermarrying with the Austrian Habsburg dynasty. Her son Charles conquered Oran in 1509 and Navarre in 1512. In 1519, Charles was proclaimed emperor of the Holy Roman Empire under the name of Charles V. The Cortes supplied the emperor with money for waging war in Africa and Mexico, against France and Germany.
Dissatisfaction with Charles' policies led to his resignation in 1556. By this time, Spain retained power in Europe only over the Netherlands, Milan, Naples, Sardinia, Sicily and Franche-Comté. The country has become a reactionary center for the politics of the Catholic Church. The Inquisition was carried out, any desire for freedom was suppressed.
More and more arable land passed to the Church, being vacated or converted into pastures. Trade was in the hands of foreigners. The colonial possessions of the Spanish Empire reached their peak by 1580 after the enslavement of the South and Central America. Absolutism was established in the country.
Beginning of the decline of Spain
The income from the colonization of the American colonies did not bring the development of the economic life of the country. The flow of gold from the New World is directed to achieve political goals. The Spanish crown spares no expense to preserve the power of the Habsburg dynasty in European life and to restore the power of the Catholic Church. Spain begins to lag behind other European countries, especially from the Protestant states of the North-West region.
In the middle of the $XVI$ century, a decline in the country's economy was observed. Causes of economic regression:
- increase in the tax burden;
- waging constant wars;
- price revolution.
The heir of Charles Philip II transfers the capital of the state to Madrid (was in Toledo). Begins new period in the history of the country. Spanish absolutism turned out to be closely connected with the Catholic Inquisition. His actions led to the decline of the Spanish army and the state itself:
- in 1571 power over Tunisia was lost;
- the actions of the Duke of Alba in the Netherlands led to a revolution that the Spanish crown could not suppress;
- the war with England for her return from Protestantism to Catholicism ended in the death of the "invincible armada";
- intervention in the religious wars in France led to the strengthening of the French monarchy and the weakening of the Spanish.
17th century in the history of Spain
The death of Philip II brought various noble factions to power.
- The first of them was headed by the Duke of Lerma (practically ruled the country under Philip III). He turned the richest state in Europe (by 1607) into bankruptcy. Expenses for the army were huge, most of the treasury was plundered by senior officials and by Lerma himself. The eviction of the Moriscos caused a decline in trade and the desolation of cities.
- The second group was led by the Duke of Olivares (operated under Philip IV). Spanish intervention in religious
