Quichottes, dons juans, picaros et arbitristas dans la Castille du dix-septième siècle

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One of the great issues of the economic, political and social history of Castile has been how to explain its economic backwardness during the Modern Age, something that was first revealed by the arbitristas, the economists of that period and pioneer researchers into the nature and causes of the wealth of European nations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article aims to compare, on the one hand, the analysis made by arbitristas of Castile’s economic problems and solutions put forward by them and, on the other, what the literature of the times portrayed. In the latter, though no attention was paid to economic subjects as such, writers of the period did notice the rise of a new character which they caricatured, the arbitrista. Their writings reflected how their characters behaved as economic agents. The arbitristas’ campaign in favour of work is a criticism of the way of life of the three characters immortalized by writers in their works: provincial gentlemen of leisure such as Don Quixote, courtly seducers such as Don Juan and rogues who wasted their productive capacity in areas which were of scarce benefit and which in many cases constituted criminal behavior.