Castilla y León is a Spanish autonomous community located in the
northern sub-plateau . Due to its extension (it is one of the
largest regions in Europe), this community presents a great
geographical and cultural diversity: the community contains from
remote places in the cereal-colored plains to high peaks such as the
"Picos de Europa", passing through large cities such as Valladolid,
which sits in an area with a lot of water in relation to the rest
(in Valladolid we find the Duero River , the Esgueva and the
Pisuerga , as well as the Castilla Canal and the Duero Canal ). It
limits to the north with the Principality of Asturias, Cantabria and
the Basque Country , to the east with La Rioja and Aragón , to the
south with the Community of Madrid , Castilla La Mancha and
Extremadura , and to the west with Galicia and Portugal .
Regions
The Autonomous Community of Castilla y León originally
unites Old Castile (provinces of Ávila, Burgos, Palencia, Segovia,
Soria and Valladolid) and the former Kingdom of León (provinces of
Salamanca, Zamora and León) as an administrative entity.
It
is formed, therefore, by nine provinces:
Avila
Burgos
Lion
Palencia
Salamanca
segovia
Soria
Valladolid
Zamora
Avila
Burgos
Lion
Palencia
Salamanca
Segovia
Soria
Valladolid
Zamora
The autonomous community of Castilla y León is the
result of the union in 1983 of nine provinces: the three that, after
the territorial division of 1833, by which the current provinces
were created, were attached to the Region of León (Salamanca ,
Zamora and León) and six attached to Castilla la Vieja (Burgos,
Soria, Segovia, Ávila, Valladolid and Palencia), except in the
latter case the provinces of Santander (current community of
Cantabria) and Logroño (current La Rioja).
In the case of
Cantabria, the creation of an autonomous community was defended for
historical, cultural and geographical reasons, while in La Rioja the
process was more complex due to the existence of three paths, all of
them based on both historical and socio-economic reasons. : union
with Castilla y León ( Union of the Democratic Center ), union with
a Basque-Navarra community ( Socialist Party and Communist Party )
or creation of a single-provincial autonomy, option taken before the
majority support of its population.
There are several
archaeological findings that show that in prehistoric times these
lands were already inhabited. In the Sierra de Atapuerca, a large
number of bones of the ancestors of Homo sapiens have been found ,
making these findings one of the most important for determining the
history of human evolution. The most important discovery that
catapulted the site to international fame was that of the remains of
Homo heidelbergensis .
During the Neolithic, it is known that
the northern sub-plateau was inhabited and diverse material culture
of the time has been found. This material culture is known by the
name of Las Cogotas .
Before the arrival of the Romans, it is
known that the territories that make up Castilla y León today were
occupied by various Celtic peoples , such as the Vacceos , the
Autrigones , the Turmogos , the Vetones , Astures or Celtiberians .
With the arrival of the Roman troops, there were clashes between
the pre-Roman peoples and these. In history there remains the
resistance of Numancia , near the current Soria.
Romanization
was unstoppable, and great Roman works of art have remained to this
day, mainly the Aqueduct of Segovia as well as many archaeological
remains such as those of the old Clunia , the Salinas de Poza de la
Sal and the Vía de la Plata , originating in Astorga ( Asturica
Augusta ) and which crosses the west of the community to the capital
of Extremadura , Mérida ( Augusta Emerita ).
With the fall of
Rome, the lands were occupied militarily by the Visigothic peoples.
The subsequent arrival of the Muslims and the subsequent reconquest
have a lot to do with the current ethnic composition of the Iberian
Peninsula. In the mountainous area of present-day Asturias , a
small Christian kingdom was formed that opposed the Islamic presence
in the Peninsula. They proclaimed themselves heirs of the last
Visigothic kings, who in turn had been deeply Romanized. This
resistance, of Visigothic-Roman heritage and supported by
Christianity, grew stronger and expanded to the south, moving its
capital to the city of León and thus creating the Kingdom of León .
To favor the repopulation of the new reconquered lands, they were
granted by the monarchsfueros or letters of repopulation. The
foramontanos would be those people who settled in the northern
sub-plateau from the mountains of Asturias and Cantabria. The first
jurisdiction that is known and that confirms this process is the
jurisdiction of Brañosera .
In the Middle Ages, the
pilgrimage by Christianity to Santiago de Compostela became popular
. The Camino de Santiago runs throughout the region, which
contributed to the European culture traveling and expanding through
the peninsula. Today said Camino continues to be a tourist and
cultural claim of the first order.
In 1188 the Basilica of
San Isidoro de León had been the seat of the first Cortes in the
history of Europe with the participation of the Third Estate . The
king who summoned them was Alfonso IX .
The legal basis was
Roman law , due to which kings increasingly wanted more power,
similar to the Roman emperors. This fact is seen very clearly in
Alfonso X the Wise 's Siete Partidas , which makes clear the
imperial monism that he sought. The king did not want to be a primus
inter pares , the king was the source of law.
Simultaneously,
a county of this Christian kingdom of León began to acquire autonomy
and expand. This is the original County of Castilla , which will
grow to become a real kingdom of great strength among the Christian
kingdoms of the peninsula. The first Castilian count was Fernán
González .
León and Castilla continued to expand to the
south, even beyond the Duero with their aim of fighting and
reconquering against Islam. We are in the middle of the Middle Ages
and the epic songs narrate the great deeds of the Christian nobles
who fought against the Muslim enemy. Despite this, the Christian and
Muslim kings maintained diplomatic relations. A clear example is
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid , the paradigm of the medieval
Christian knight, who fought both hand in hand with Christian and
Muslim kings.
The foundations for the dynastic unification of
the kingdoms of Castilla y León, separated by only seven decades,
had been laid in 1194. Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso IX of
León signed the treaty in Tordehumos that pacified the area of
Tierra de Campos and laid the foundations for a future
reunification of the kingdoms, consolidated in 1230 with Fernando
III the Saint . This agreement has gone down in history as the
Treaty of Tordehumos. With Ferdinand III, Castilla y León was united
under the same king definitively and up to the present day, and
before him the kingdoms had already remained under the same command
for some seasons. The Cortes of Castilla and León were unified after
a period in which they had remained separate, thus confirming
territorial unity.
During the Late Middle Ages there was an
economic and political crisis produced by a series of bad harvests
and by disputes between nobles and the Crown for power, as well as
between different contenders for the throne. In the Courts of
Valladolid in 1295 , Fernando IV is recognized as king. The work
María de Molina presents her son Fernando IV in the Cortes of
Valladolid in 1295, today presiding over the Congress of Deputies
together with a picture of the Cortes of Cádiz, emphasizing the
parliamentary importance of the entire development of Cortes in
Castilla y León despite its subsequent decline. The Crown became
more authoritarian and the nobility more dependent on it.
The
reconquest continued to advance in this thriving Crown of Castile ,
culminating in the surrender of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada , the
last Muslim stronghold on the Peninsula. At this time, the kings had
already acquired great power, thus establishing the era of
authoritarian monarchies .
The Catholic Monarchs divided up
the maritime routes and the New World with the Portuguese crown in
the Treaty of Tordesillas .
Already in the Modern Age with
the arrival of a new dynasty, the Habsburgs, Castile fell into a
civil war, the Comunidades de Castilla . The Austro-Burgundian
monarchs brought an imperial vision that in view of the Castilians
did not benefit this land. The new monarchs, moreover, yearned not
for an authoritarian monarchy, but for an absolute one, and the
medieval Courts represented by the three estates only hindered those
ambitions. Finally the commoners were defeated and the Habsburgs
strengthened their power.
The northern sub-plateau had a peak
economic moment at the beginning of the Modern Age, with Valladolid
as the capital of the kingdom and wool production going to Flanders.
However, after the definitive passage of the capital to Madrid
and due to the indebtedness of the kingdom in various European wars,
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were one of decline for the
territory. Said process began to mitigate slightly with the first
Societies of Friends of the Country, the first industrialization
around the flour factories and enlightened projects such as the
Canal de Castilla .
However, this process was relegated by
the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon's France. The
battle of Arapiles was an important moment of said war, as well as
there were important guerrilla leaders such as El Empecinado .
The 19th century saw the formation of Spain as a constitutional
nation. Evaristo Pérez de Castro was president of the Council of
Ministers of Spain during the reign of Isabel II. A second
industrialization took place around the railway and mining in the
northern areas of León and Palencia (see Cuenca minera palencia ).
In 1836 the Council of the Mesta was suppressed . In general terms,
we find ourselves with an eminently agricultural and rural region,
where most of the most important population centers are in decline
and industrialization has largely passed by.
Manuel Ruiz
Zorrilla was president of the Council of Ministers and had an
important role in Spanish politics during the Democratic Six-year
term . It is at this time that the first attempts at
decentralization took place in Spain, also emerging regionalist and
federalist tendencies that resulted in the Castilian Federal Pact
promoted by the Federal Republican Party and the Castilian
Commonwealth project already in times of the Bourbon Restoration.
Already in the 20th century we found ourselves with a trend of
rural abandonment that had begun at the end of the 19th century
towards Madrid and the industrial poles of Spain, such as the Basque
Country or Catalonia. The depopulation process has had lasting
effects on the community, with consequences that continue to this
day.
This trend was slightly mitigated around the
Burgos-Palencia-Valladolid industrial pole and thanks to the
automobile industry, which allowed Valladolid to gain population
unlike the rest of the community during the second half of the 20th
century .
The economic crisis of the beginning of the 21st
century and the aging of the population, as well as the low
industrial weight in the community and the process of
metropolization of Spain in Madrid , continue to cause the loss of
the generalized population of the community. However, human
development indices are above the Spanish average.