Associationism, guilds and corporate restrictions in medieval Spain (13th-15th centuries)

Abstract

This article asserts that the Spanish associations banned in the Low Middle Ages were not trade corporations and that those restrictions were both Spanish and European monarchs response to nobility and urban oligarchy's attempts to gain power, above all in politics, through different organizations. Guilds were indeed affected only when they took part of those political leagues or when craftsmen tried to control the market in their own benefit. And even in thoses cases the restrictions entailed just specific or temporal limitations. This assessment is based on a comprenhensive author's review of the extensive non-corporate laws developed in medieval Spain and of the explanations provided by literature in the last decades. A new possible explanation is proposed: the impact of the Roman law from the 12th century onwards.