Review essay crown and Cortes in early‐modern Spain

Abstract

Summary Spanish parliamentary history for the Habsburg era has undergone an historiographical revolution during the past decade. The revolution has centred primarily on the history of the Castilian Cortes. Traditionally considered to have been the least developed of the several Spanish Cortes, it is now being depicted as the most progressive and politically influential. The scope and significance of this historiographical revolution is highlighted by two recently published books: Jose Ignacio Fortea Perez, Monarquia y Cortes en la Corona de Castilla: Las Ciudades ante la Politica Fiscal de Felipe II (Salamanca, 1990) and Luis Gonzalez Anton, Las Cortes en la Espana del Antiguo Regimen (Madrid, 1989). When reviewed together, these two books underline the fact that early‐modern Spanish parliaments existed within a dynamic political context. To generalize about them as if they conformed to some particular variant of fixed parliamentary typology, as Gonzalez Anton does, is becoming less justifiable the more w...