The peasants and the counts:
The count Ramón Berenger IV was interested in great conquests,
that is why he needed credits and services. He also organised
the territorial administration. He counted on the faithful aristocracy
who lived in the castles and acted as liege lords who were in
charge of the order and justice in their domains (counties). But
the violent behaviour of these lords, together with the high taxes
that imposed on the rural communities were the origin of the crisis
of the primitive exemptions , putting an end to the last traditional
freedoms of Catalonia.
These loyal liege lords considered that the benefits that could
obtain from the rural communities that the count had put under
their jurisdiction were the reward for their military services
and the justice they exerted on the peasants. With the support
of the mayors, who surely felt their interests threatened by the
noblemen, the peasants of these villages made an official complaint
accusing these liege lords of destroying the peace . The peasants'
claim was the right to be administered, but not plundered. The
count didn´t pay attention to their complaints. This way
the king Alfonso I the Chaste promulgated a ban that protected
the free landowners from ill-treatments but accepted as licit
the ill-treatments exerted on the servants. In spite of some reform
measures which were adopted by the monarchy and were favourable
to the peasants, the social and political crisis was completely
unfavorable to the peasants who changed the count's capricious
and violent tyranny for some fixed and regular taxes that the
peasants should pay to the lords.
Exemptions and servitude:
The purpose of the authority was almost always the one of stimulating
the repopulation of the newly-conquered lands. A way to attract
the settlers to the new lands was the currency.
The liege lords divided the peasanst in 5 categories:
- Small propietors.
- Free landowners subjected to censuses
- Peasants subjected to personal dependence and forced to pay
censuses, to fulfil some services and to satisfy arbitray taxes.
- Peasants subjected to all these obligations and to the land.
- Peasanats like the previous ones and also subjected to ill-treatments.
There was a moment when the peasants began to emigrate to the
villages , which wasn´t tolerated by the liege lords. This
is the reason why they gave legal form to the servility process.
In the pre-feudal time the exemptions had had a more general
character and they had been granted by the public authority with
the objective of exempting to the beneficiaries of certain rents
or public services. From the XIIth. century on the exemptions
were granted by the count-kings and by noblemen and clergymen
indistinctly, having as objective the exemption of loads and typical
servility of the regime and they were dedicated to concrete communities.
The reasons for which these exemptions were granted could be diverse,
but actually, there was always a correlation of forces. The main
addresses were the strongest and dynamic men in the manor houses
had the help of the ecclesiastical authorities protectors of sanctuaries.
Finally we can affirm that the concession of exemptions was the
result of a fight of classes. The exemptions could create internal
divisions among the peasant making advance the local solidarity
in front of the class solidarity and contributing this way to
create economic inequalities and functional differences within
the rural community between men of the villages and peasants from
the manor houses.