Mesta
The Mesta was a powerful association protecting livestock owners and their animals in the Crown of Castile that was incorporated in the 13th century and was dissolved in 1836. Although best known for its organisation of the annual migration of transhumant sheep, particularly those of the Merino breed, the flocks and herds of all species of livestock in Castile and their owners were under the oversight of the Mesta, including both the transhumant and the sedentary ones. The transhumant sheep were generally owned in Old Castile and León, where they had their summer pastures, and they migrated to and from winter pastures of Extremadura and Andalusia according to the season.
The royal protection for the Mesta's flocks and herds was signified by the term Cabaña Real were legally protected in perpetuity from being built on, cultivated or blocked, and they still are protected public domain in our days. The most important cañadas were called, because they were established by royal decrees.
The origin of the Mesta is related to the growth of transhumance after the Castilian conquest of the Taifa of Toledo. Three groups were granted royal charters including the rights to winter pasturage in the Tagus valley. The first were monasteries that owned summer pastures in the Sierra de Guadarrama, followed by the religious military orders which had acquired lands after the conquest of Toledo, in the area renamed New Castile. Later, the urban elites of Old Castile and León, who used urban grazing in the city's término (, including its pasturage on nearby sierras, were granted similar rights. None of these groups, nor the few lay members of the nobility that also received such grants, could base their wealth on crop-growing in the dry and underpopulated lands of New Castile, so relied on raising livestock.
Initially, the Mesta included both large and small livestock owners and was controlled by them, however, from the time of Charles V, the organisation ceased to be controlled exclusively by such owners, as royal officials, who were leading nobles and ecclesiastics and not necessarily stock-owners, were appointed to its governing body. Although wool exports began in the 14th century, it was only when the export of high-quality merino wool was stimulated in the late 15th century by a sales tax exemption for Mesta members that this trade significantly enriched the members of the Mesta. These were increasingly members of the higher nobility, who owned flocks in excess of 20,000 merino sheep, and smaller owners ceased to be involved in transhumance. The most important wool markets were held in Burgos, Medina del Campo and Segovia, but particularly Burgos.
Some Madrid streets are still part of the cañada system, and there are groups of people who occasionally drive sheep across the modern city as a reminder of their ancient rights and cultures, although these days sheep are generally transported by rail.
Foundation
Although the earliest surviving charter granting royal protection and grazing and other privileges to the Mesta was issued by Alfonso X of Castile in 1273, it claimed to replace four separate older documents, and it did not so much create the Mesta as assume its existence when granting it royal protection from the local taxes and restrictions it was encountering. The charters and privileges of the Mesta resemble those of mediaeval merchant guild, but it was actually a protective association, facilitating the business of the sheep and other livestock owners without engaging directly in their business. It did not own any sheep or pastures, buy and sell wool or control markets, and its close association with the Spanish government gave it a status and extensive presence unmatched by any guild.Sheep numbers in Castile and León had increased greatly in the 12th and early 13th centuries, outgrowing the available local grazing and encouraging transhumance to more distant pastures. This transhumance was a frequent cause of dispute between the shepherds and local inhabitants, and the Cortes of 1252 enacted laws regulating the number and amounts of tolls that could be levied upon the flocks moving through a district. It also allowed them to use streams and customary sheepwalks and prevented the enclosure of previously open pasturage, foreshadowing the privileges granted to the Mesta. During the Cortes of Burgos in 1269, the king imposed the servicio de los ganados, a tax on migratory flocks and herds, and the recognition of the Mesta in 1273 allowed Alfonso to derive a greater portion of the resources of the sheep-herding industry more efficiently.
Klein noted three possible origins for the word mesta. Firstly, it might be related to annual assemblies to dispose of strays that were called mezclados, as they were mixed with a strange flock or herd, the name ultimately deriving from the Latin, the explanation he preferred. An alternative, also based on the Latin mixta is that it refers to the common ownership of the Mesta's animals by multiple parties. However, the animals were individually owned, not common property, and generally different owners' flocks were kept separate.
Secondly, it might be related to the amistad or amity, which Klein regarded as unconvincing.
Finally, Klein mentions the name mechta, used by Algerian nomads for their winter sheep encampments, as a possibility. There were very few references to Castilian mestas in the second half of the 13th and early 14th centuries, and these may apply to the guardian escorts of the transhumant sheep rather than any assembly of sheep owners. The Arabic meshta for a winter gathering of sheep may have been transferred to the meetings of animal owners held at that time, and later, to local sheep-owners' associations in Andalucía and to the national body, both composed of such owners.
The word mestengo, referred to animals of uncertain ownership, literally belonging to the mesta, deriving from the name of that body. In New Spain in colonial North America, feral horses came to be known as mesteños, from which is derived the English word mustang, used for the free-roaming horses of the modern Western United States.
Transhumance before the Mesta
Environmental context
The north coast, northwest and, to a lesser extent, the southwest of Spain enjoy abundant rainfall, but the central Meseta has low rainfall, and many areas could hardly support dry arable farming in mediaeval times. Dependence solely on cereal cultivation risked periodic starvation, and livestock rearing was important in the mediaeval agricultural economy of Spain's Christian kingdoms. Old Castile was the main cereal growing area, and it supplied its own grain needs in most years, but other parts of the Kingdom of Castile relied on Old Castile in years of shortage. The archaeological record shows that keeping pigs, sheep and goats was widespread, but numbers were limited by the lack of food in the dry summers and cold winters, and cattle were only kept in better watered areas. Small flocks of sheep and goats could be moved to summer hill pastures near settlements, but large numbers of all animals were slaughtered in late autumn. There is no clear evidence for large scale sheep transhumance of sheep flocks before the late mediaeval period.In the early mediaeval period, as the Christian Kingdom of Castile and León expanded from their original northern territories, relatively well-watered and with good soils, to the interior plains of the Meseta Central, where scarce rainfall and poor soils made cereal agriculture difficult. In the Muslim-controlled areas, water management, irrigation, and the introduction of drought resistant and more productive crop varieties overcame the water shortages, but these techniques were not adopted in the Christian territories until they had conquered areas where they were used.
Before 1085
It has been claimed that, during the medieval Reconquest, the frontier lands between Christian and Muslim areas were sparsely populated, largely uncultivated and used mainly for animal grazing, and that the periodic movement of this frontier zone encouraged transhumance. However, the Christian advance into the Duero valley was undertaken by peasant mixed-farmers, who densely settled it, combining cereal crops with small livestock holdings. Only when the Reconquest progressed beyond Old Castile and entered areas of poor soils where it was difficult to grow cereals or to maintain high livestock densities did the poor quality of the land and the limited availability of grazing favour sheep transhumance over sedentary mixed farming. Transhumance existed in other Mediterranean countries with climates and grazing that favoured transhumance which were similar to central Spain, but which were not unsettled as Spain was during the Reconquest.In the Christian lands north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, the usual livestock until the end of eleventh century were plough oxen, milk cows and pigs as well as sheep There is no evidence for large flocks of sheep before the early 1100s, and no clear evidence for any large scale transhumance of sheep flocks before the late Mediaeval period. The long-distance transhumance described from southern France, Italy and Spain was connected with the commercial exploitation of sheep, mainly for wool, and its taxation by the local states, and was not connected with subsistence farming.
Sheep were relatively unimportant in the Islamic Caliphate of Córdoba and there is no known record of long-distance transhumance before its fall in the 1030s. The Marinids, a Zenata Berber group which held extensive sheep flocks in Morocco, intervened in Andalusia several times in the late 13th and early 14th centuries in support of the Emirate of Granada, and they may have brought new breeds of sheep and the practice of long-distance transhumance, including the use of Berber and Arabic terms, into Spain. However, there is no definite evidence that the Marinids did bring their flocks to Spain and they arrived as a fighting force, conducting frequent raids against the Castilians, and were hardly in a position to protect any flocks they might have brought. It is more probable that Moroccan rams were imported, to crossbreed with the native stock.