Poor, marginalized and adulterers: the hidden history of Spain in the notarial records

«If all these personal documents had not been preserved, how could we know today what a 17th -century watering fountain thought in the source of Recoletos in Madrid? How would we know the money that owed or the fact that he had had an extramarital relationship with a maiden? ”Plácido Barrios asks. This 62 -year -old notary, passionate about his work and the history of Spain, has been diving in all these notarial protocols, and in those of many other provincial archives with their thousands of more documents, obsessed with telling their own version of what the Spaniards were current and suffered the Spaniards Corrientes from the early days of the Modern Age to the Spanish Civil War. «I am passionate, I could be talking about it. If you roll me up, huh? ”He warns several times during the interview with ABC.

The result of all that investigation was ‘From writing us to notaries. Notes from a Spanish notary story ‘ (Basconfer), an essay that he published in 2021 and that, to his surprise, in the case of “an apparently pharragoso theme,” he has just released his fifth edition. In the work, yes, Kings, Dukes, neither counts nor emperors nor other powerful in which historians put the magnifying glass, but slaves, poor, marginalized, members of religious minorities, unknown to death, unknown, orphaned without home or prostitutes. “We often forget that, throughout history, the Escribes were at the service of the whole society, not only of the rich,” says Barrios, qualified as “the notary archaeologist.”

There is talk, in fact, that the origins of the notarial institution could be in the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, in which there is already proof of contractual relations, of an economic nature, among individuals. However, the origin of the Spanish notary, which neighborhoods deals, dates back to the first centuries of the Middle Ages, when the figure of the notary appears as an expert in writing documents. It was with the ‘seven games’ of Alfonso X the wise, in the thirteenth century, when some legal uniformity was established in the kingdom of Castile and the exact way of writing the minutes.

Catholic Monarchs

Later, the Catholic Monarchs promulgated, finally, the law that forced to preserve all the protocols that were already drafted in them the full text of what was certified or authorized. This pragmatic of June 7, 1503 represented the birth of the notarial protocol as we know it today and is also that they begin to keep many of the documents that have reached to this day, including those of the most unknown people and the lowest social extracts. That is the cause that the first minutes of the Historical Protocols Archive of Madrid daten 1504.

«I am not interested in the history of the great characters, of the aristocracy or of the great fortunes, but the citizen on foot, the ordinary people, who also went to the notaries. The notaries and notaries were at all service, as today. There is an extended erroneous idea that only attended the great lords, but that is not true. In the documentation that I have consulted there are citizens of all kinds and condition. The irrefutable evidence is the statements of poor, ”says the expert.

These documents were the equivalent of the will, but in them the person declared poor and lacking goods, such as the one that appears in these pages. An orphan named María Isabel Pérez accredits that “it has been helpless and submerged in the greatest misery, without any resource to take a state.” The objective of this statement, dated in 1833, was to record his destitution to be able to participate in the draw of a dowry, mandatory at that time to be able to marry, offered by a wealthy lady to the most disadvantaged.

Some fraud

Sometimes specific, these poverty statements, of which hundreds are found in the archives, were used fraudulently by certain individuals who wanted to avoid the payment of certain taxes. A singular example is that of Luis Paret, one of the most relevant artists in Spain in the 18th century, contemporary of Goya, who served as a camera painter of the infant Don Luis de Borbón. He wrote an act before a notary in February 1799, two days before he died, in which this “professor in the noble art of painting, declares that he is not with real estate, jewelry, flows or other competent ones to be able to test.” It is known, however, that he enjoyed a good economic situation thanks to his father -in -law, Roberto Fourdinier, a successful merchant from the town and cutting of that time.

In this sense, for the author the role of notaries as a historical source has been undervalued and has long been determined to “reverse that idea.” “The minutes,” insists – are fundamental to knowing the history of Spain, because our task has always been to attest to what happens impartially for centuries, without making the slightest case case to the particular interests of the people involved. Notarial records never collect value judgments, so I do not understand that they have not been valued before ».

Barrios shows us all kinds of minutes, such as those that describe the characteristics of the slaves that were for sale, so that it is official record of it. The pimps are also in the protocols, as one of 1442 called Sancho de Orús and is denounced for its activities. For his defense, the cool appears before a notary of Zaragoza offering “to get a prostitute called Catalina out of sin, which vehemently refuses the offer. In other notarial documents, homosexuals are described, which used to be convicted of death in the bonfire, such as “fucking or sodometics.” In one of 1625, specifically, his “detestable and shameful crime against nature is spoken.”

“Horn forgiveness letters”

The so -called “letters of horn forgiveness” also attract attention, since adultery is equally pursued by law. He established that the affected person did with his wife and the lover what he wanted, even kill them. With this unique notarial act what the ‘victim’ was doing was renouncing legal actions. In a protocol dated in 1489, for example, a husband said: «In the name of God, Juan de Palma, neighbor of Seville, says that his wife, Isabel Martín, has made adultery with people, neighbors and residents of this city and another. But for the Holy Lent in which we find ourselves, forgive her forever, so that she can live honestly among the good people from now on. ” If it was the woman who was cheated, node of this happened.

Barrios highlights the act of a 27 -year -old death sentenced who was going to be shot the next day in Valencia and left his last wills writing. «Despite the cold language with which the notary written it, he wins in humanity by hiding a tragedy. It doesn’t matter if it is a stranger or does not specify the reasons why it was convicted, because for me it has a very large value. That is why I focus on the documentation related to the plain people. If a notary had not been there, those episodes starring ordinary people would have lost. Protocols are known as ‘The barn of history’, ”he explains.