Quinto Real: the arguments that show that the Spanish Empire did not steal 20% of American gold

The expert insists that a mountain of fallacies has been generated around this concept. And all, because of the perpetual fight between legendary black and legendary pink. The first, for exaggerating the figures and talking about massive theft from the natives; the latter, for maintaining that only that 20% reached the peninsula, and not all the gold and silver extracted from the New World. «That’s not true either! The Quinto Real was a tax and, as such, the obligations of the State were maintained with it: missions, prisons…», he says. Because it was used, it was even used to give gifts to the natives who constantly attacked the merchandise caravans. A practice known as ‘paid peace’.

«What was sent to the peninsula was what was left over after paying for all that, and it was very little. There is no specific figure, but it was negligible. The rest are nothing more than crude lies,” he says. Today, after being one of the first expert voices that cried out against the absurdity of the king Philip VI apologize to Mexico for the conquest, he undertakes to put an end to this recurring myth once and for all. Here we go…

The origin

The origin of the Quinto Real must be sought in the early stages of the 16th century. As explained by Doctor of History Jaime J. Lacueva in his dossier ‘From Seville to the New World (1492-1521): the Royal Treasury and the precious metals business‘, this tax was established in 1504 and reduced those that already existed on the extraction of minerals from the subsoil.

«That year, all Spaniards residing in Hispaniola were authorized to extract gold, imposing the condition of formal registration of the exploited deposit before the competent authority. Likewise, the tax rate on the profit from gold was lowered, from the third that had been required the previous year to the fifth, that is, from 33% to 25%,” says the expert.

Originally, the ID issued by the Catholic Kings On February 5, 1504 in Medina del Campo it influenced gold, but also many other minerals such as silver, lead and other metals. «We order that all neighbors and inhabitants of our Indies who buy or take gold, silver, lead, tin, quicksilver, iron or other metal from any province, pay us one fifth of what they take or take net; “that our will is to give them mercy from the other four parties in consideration of the costs and expenses they incur,” the text explained. Essence that remained until the 18th century… Or so we have been told.

The lies of Quinto Real

There are many lies that have been spread about the Quinto Real, but the most recurrent is to assume that it was an immovable tax. According to García, in practice it varied according to the territories: “In some areas it was a tenth, in others a twentieth… The Monarchy sought to populate a specific territory, and it achieved it with these economic deductions.” This maxim is maintained by many experts in the history of the New World such as Efraín González Tejera. The late doctor and professor at the School of Law of the University of Puerto Rico maintained in his essay ‘Inheritance law: Intestate succession’ that “the collection of the Quinto Real in America was not uniform” due to an infinite number of factors, from “the lack of performance” in some areas, to “the difficulty of the work” in others.

This maxim has even been upheld by Latin American economists such as Senator Juan Camilo Restrepo. In ‘Public Finance’, this politician stressed that, “as the productivity of the mines was not the same in the different regions of America”, and as they sought to “stimulate the production” of some specific deposits, “the Quinto Real was not unchangeable. The examples are counted in dozens. Between 1552 and 1558, the Hispanic monarchy reduced taxes to the Antilles to one-twelfth. And, in the end, he did the same with Puerto Rico. «From 1566 to 1574, one twelfth of what was melted was collected; From then on, until 1588, one-twentieth of the part held by the Crown remained. According to tax sources, that was the last year that it was melted,” adds, in this case, González.

The 17th century was one of the most striking in terms of deductions. In 1654, for example, it was established that the right of the fifth was reduced to the tenth on the gold of Neiva; to the fifteenth on that of Los Remedios, Antioquía, Cáceres, Anserma and Pamplona, ​​and to the twentieth on that of Popayán, Mariquita, Zaragoza and Mompox.

The second great fallacy, affirms García Ruiz, is the one that affirms that Crown He became rich by extracting gold and silver firsthand from the other side of the Atlantic. «Let’s focus on mining, although the main wealth of territories like New Spain were agricultural assets, which is something that is usually ignored. The Monarchy gave a concession to an exploiter in exchange for that Quinto Real. It is logical: she could not extract it herself because she was not a natural person, but an institution,” she explains. That businessman, the expert adds to this newspaper, was the one who obtained the bulk of the benefits. And, of them, he delivered 20%.

So, if anyone got rich from that income, García insists, it was the dealers. «Today, those mine operators have become the great fortunes of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia… Now they are families from there. That money has not reached Spain, it has stayed in America,” he completes.

Although what bothers him the most is that fallacious idea that the entire Quinto Real reached Spain. Not much less. «That money corresponded to tax collection. With them the obligations of the State in the New World were maintained: missions, prisons…”, he explains. Only what was left over was sent, and our expert does not believe it was much. And with that anemic amount, a network of “hospitals, churches and universities” had to be built and maintained and the soldiers’ food and salaries paid for. All that money, subscribes the author of ‘Presidio’, “has therefore stayed in America” ​​to forge an entire fabric of physical infrastructures still present on the continent.

In his extensive essay, García exposes countless examples in which these taxes were spent. A good part of them on the northern border, their research area. “There was an economic problem there: that entire area was in the red,” he says. In his words, there was no money to maintain large patrols of presidential soldierswhich forced the governors to pay the Indians to prevent their attacks: «They were given an enormous amount of gifts, which were added to what they stole from the mule trains. In practice, peace was bought to prevent them from leaving a trail of dead. Although, in many cases, not even that was worth it. «The tobosos were irreducible for a century and a half. When they attacked they did real atrocities, and no solution was found,” says the expert.

If the Quinto Real was not even enough to maintain the northern border, who can believe that it would reach Spain in its entirety? One more myth of the Black Legend.