Economic History of Spain - Middle Ages

Middle Ages

While most of western Europe fell into a Dark Age after the decline of the Roman Empire, those kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula that today are known as Spain maintained their economy. First, the Visigoths took over in the absence of Roman administrators and established themselves as nobility with some degree of centralized power at their capital, which was finally moved to Toledo. Though it suffered some decline, most Roman law and much physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, aqueducts and irrigation systems, was maintained to varying degrees unlike the complete disintegration that occurred in most other former parts of the western empire. Later, when the Moors occupied large parts of the Iberian Peninsula alongside the Catholic kingdoms, they also maintained much of this Roman legacy; in fact as time went on they had Roman infrastructure repaired and extended. Meanwhile, in the countryside, where most people had always lived, life went on much as it had in Roman times, but with improvements due to the repair and extension of irrigation systems, and the introduction of novel crops and agricultural practices from the Islamic world. While trade dwindled in most of the former Roman lands in Europe, trade survived to some degree in Visigothic Spain, and flourished under the Moors through the integration of Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) with the Mediterranean trade of the Islamic world. After 800 years of warring, the Catholic kingdoms gradually became more powerful and sophisticated and eventually expelled all the Moors and any converted Muslims from the peninsula. The taking back of land and expulsion of the Moors is known as the Reconquista.

The Kingdom of Castile, united with the Kingdom of Aragon, had merchant navies that rivaled that of the Hanseatic League and Venice. The reasons for this situation appear to have been rooted both in the structure of the economy and in the attitude of the Castilians and Aragonese. Like the rest of late medieval Europe, restrictive corporations closely regulated all aspects of the economy-production, trade, and even transport. The most powerful of these corporations, the mesta, controlled the production of wool, Castile's chief export.