Fuero
Fuero, Fur, Foro, Foru or Fueru is a Spanish legal term and concept. The word comes from Latin Forum, an open space used as a market, tribunal and meeting place. The same Latin root is the origin of the French terms for and foire, and the Portuguese terms foro and foral; all of these words have related, but somewhat different meanings.
The Spanish term fuero has a wide range of meanings, depending upon its context. It has meant a compilation of laws, especially a local or regional one; a set of laws specific to an identified class or estate. In many of these senses, its equivalent in medieval England would be the custumal.
In the 20th century, Francisco Franco's regime used the term fueros for several of the fundamental laws. The term implied these were not constitutions subject to debate and change by a sovereign people, but orders from the only legitimate source of authority, as in feudal times.
Characteristics
Fuero dates back to the medieval period: the lord could concede or acknowledge a fuero to certain groups or communities, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, the military, and certain regions that fell under the same monarchy as Castile or, later, Spain, but were not fully integrated into those countries.The relations among fueros, other bodies of law, and sovereignty is a contentious one that influences government and law in the present day. The king of León, Alfonso V, decreed the Fuero de León, considered the earliest laws governing territorial and local life, as it applied to the entire kingdom, with certain provisions for the city of León. The various Basque provinces also generally regarded their fueros as tantamount to a municipal constitution. This view was accepted by some others, including President of the United States John Adams. He cited the Biscayan fueros as a precedent for the United States Constitution. This view regards fueros as granting or acknowledging rights. In the contrasting view, fueros were privileges granted by a monarch. In the letter Adams also commented on the substantial independence of the hereditary Basque Jauntxo families as the origin for their privileges.
In practice, distinct fueros for specific classes, estates, towns, or regions usually arose out of feudal power politics. Some historians believe monarchs were forced to concede some traditions in exchange for the general acknowledgment of his or her authority, that monarchs granted fueros to reward loyal subjection, or the monarch simply acknowledged distinct legal traditions.
In medieval Castilian law, the king could assign privileges to certain groups. The classic example of such a privileged group was the Roman Catholic Church: the clergy did not pay taxes to the state, enjoyed the income via tithes of local landholding, and were not subject to the civil courts. Church-operated ecclesiastical courts tried churchmen for criminal offenses. Another example was the powerful Mesta organization, composed of wealthy sheepherders, who were granted vast grazing rights in Andalusia after that land was reconquered by Spanish Christians from the Muslims. Lyle N. McAlister writes in Spain and Portugal in the New World that the Mesta's fuero helped impede the economic development of southern Spain. This resulted in a lack of opportunity, and Spaniards emigrated to the New World to escape these constraints.
Aristocratic ''fueros''
During the Reconquista, the feudal lords granted fueros to some villas and cities, to encourage the colonization of the frontier and of commercial routes. These laws regulated the governance and the penal, process and civil aspects of the places. Often the fueros already codified for one place were granted to another, with small changes, instead of crafting a new redaction from scratch.Date1125
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Grantor
Gutierre Fernández de Castro and Toda Díaz
Pedro González de Lara and Eva
Estefanía Sánchez
Alfonso VII
Íñigo Jiménez
Osorio Martínez and Teresa Fernández
María Fernández
Manrique Pérez de Lara
Martín and Elvira Pérez
Sancha Ponce
Ponce de Minerva
Gonzalo, Constanza and Jimena Osorio
Pedro Pérez and Fernando Cídez
Ermengol VII of Urgell
Gutierre Díaz
Froila Ramírez and Sancha
Grantee
San Cebrián de Campos
Tardajos
Villarmildo
Guadalajara
Yanguas
Villalonso and Benafarces
Castrocalbón
Molina
Pozuelo de la Orden
Villarratel
Azaña
Villalobos
Almaraz de Duero
Barruecopardo
Villavaruz de Ríoseco
Cifuentes de Rueda
Basque and Pyrenean ''fueros''
Approach
In contemporary Spanish usage, the word fueros most often refers to the historic and contemporary fueros or charters of certain regions, especially of the Basque regions. The equivalent for Occitan usage is fòr, applying to the northern regions of the Pyrenees.The whole central and western Pyrenean region was inhabited by the Basques in the early Middle Ages within the Duchy of Vasconia. The Basques and the Pyrenean peoples—as Romance language replaced Basque in many areas by the turn of the first millennium—governed themselves by a native set of rules, different from Roman and Gothic law but with an ever-increasing imprint of them. Typically their laws, arising from regional traditions and practices, were kept and transmitted orally. Because of this oral tradition, the Basque-language regions preserved their specific laws longer than did those Pyrenean regions that adopted Romance languages. For example, Navarrese law developed along less feudal lines than those of surrounding realms. The Fors de Bearn are another example of Pyrenean law.
Two sayings address this legal idiosyncrasy: "en Navarra hubo antes leyes que reyes," and "en Aragón antes que rey hubo ley," both meaning that law developed and existed before the kings. The force of these principles required monarchs to accommodate to the laws. This situation sometimes strained relations between the monarch and the kingdom, especially if the monarchs were alien to native laws.
This tradition of "laws before kings" was enshrined in the legendary Fueros de Sobrarbe, claimed to have been enacted by king Iñigo Arista in the 850s in the pyrenean valley of Sobrarbe. Although a 13th-century fabrication, the Fueros de Sobrarbe were subsequently used as the legal foundation for most Navarrese and Aragonese Fueros from the 13th century onwards. They enshrined the traditional principle "laws before kings" both in Aragonese and Navarrese law, justified the right to rebel against illegal royal decisions, and legitimised the existence of specific institutions such as the Justicia de Aragón.
''Fueros'' in the High and Late Middle Ages
The Fueros de Sobrarbe first appear mentioned in the context of the ascension of the House of Champagne to the Navarrese throne. In 1234, when Theobald I of Champagne inherited the Navarrese throne from his uncle Sancho VII of Navarre, he was pressured by burgers and nobility alike to swear he would abide his decisions by customary law and honour their customary rights and privileges. As a result, Theobald I appointed a commission to codify said laws; this resulted in the first written general fuero, the Fuero General de Navarra, enacted in 1238 and which drew its legal foundation from the fabled Fueros of Sobrarbe to justify the king's authority being subjected to the Fuero.The accession of French lineages to the throne of Navarre brought a relationship between the king and the kingdom that was alien to the Basques. The resulting disagreements were a major factor in the 13th-century uprisings and clashes between different factions and communities, e.g. the borough wars of Pamplona. The loyalty of the Basques to the king was conditioned on his upholding the traditions and customs of the kingdom, which were based on oral laws.
Relations with the crown and rise of absolutism
between 1512 and 1528. In order to gain Navarrese loyalty, the Spanish Crown represented by the Aragonese Fernando upheld the kingdom's specific laws allowing the region to continue to function under its historic laws, while Lower Navarre remained independent, but increasingly tied to France, a process completed after King Henry III of Navarre and IV of France died. Louis XIII failed to respect his father's will to keep Navarre and France separate. All specific relevant legal provisions and institutions were devalued in 1620–1624, and critical powers transferred to the French Crown.Since the high Middle Ages, many Basques had been born into the hidalgo nobility. The Basques had no uniform legal corpus of laws, which varied between valleys and seigneuries. Early on all Gipuzkoans were granted noble status, several Navarrese valleys followed suit, and Biscaynes saw their universal nobility confirmed in 1525. Álava's distribution of nobility was patchy but less widespread, since the Basque specific nobility only took hold in northern areas. Biscaynes, as nobles, were theoretically excluded from torture and from the need to serve in the Spanish army, unless called for the defence of their own territory. Other Basque regions had similar provisions.
The reach of the fuero was not limited by the territory.
Biscayans in other parts of the Crown of Castile had extraterritoriality.
They could take the appellations in cases involving them to the Sala de Vizcaya at the top court of Castile, the Chancillería de Valladolid.
The Castilian kings took an oath to comply with the Basque laws in the different provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. These provinces and Navarre kept their self-governing bodies and their own parliaments, i.e. the diputaciones and the territorial councils/Parliament of Navarre. However, the prevailing Castilian rule prioritized the king's will. In addition, the ever more centralizing absolutism, especially after the accession to the throne of the Bourbons, increasingly devalued the laws specific to regions and realms—Basque provinces and the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon—sparking uprisings and mounting tensions between the territorial governments and the Spanish central government of Charles III and Charles IV, to the point of considering the Parliament of Navarre dangerous to the royal authority and condemning "its spirit of independence and liberties."
Despite vowing loyalty to the crown, the Pyrenean Aragonese and Catalans kept their separate specific laws too, the "King of the Spains" represented a crown tying together different realms and peoples, as claimed by the Navarrese diputación, as well as the Parliament of Navarre's last trustee. The Aragonese fueros were an obstacle for Philip II when his former secretary Antonio Pérez escaped the death penalty by fleeing to Aragon. The king's only means to enforce the sentence was the Spanish Inquisition, the only cross-kingdom tribunal of his domains. There were frequent conflicts of jurisdiction between the Spanish Inquisition and regional civil authorities and bishops. Pérez escaped to France, but Philip's army invaded Aragon and executed its authorities.
In 1714 the Catalan and Aragonese specific laws and self-government were violently suppressed. The Aragonese count of Robres, one strongly opposing the abolition, put it down to Castilian centralism, stating that the royal prime minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, had at last a free rein "for the kings of Spain to be independent of all laws save those of their own conscience."
The Basques managed to retain their specific status for a few years after 1714, as they had supported the claimant who became Philip V of Spain, a king hailing from the lineage of Henry III of Navarre. However, they could not escape the king's attempts at centralization. In the run-up to the Napoleonic Wars, the relations between the absolutist Spanish Crown and the Basque governing institutions were at breaking point. By the beginning of the War of the Pyrenees, Manuel Godoy took office as Prime Minister in Spain, and went on to take a tough approach on the Basque self-government and specific laws. Both fear and anger spread among the Basques at his uncompromising stance.