La comercialización de las rentas agrarias en la Galicia del Antiguo Régimen

Abstract

In the Galicia of the Old Regime, the ecclesiastical institutions, the titled nobility and the inferior nobility received important amounts of cereals and wine rents for foros, leasings and tithes. These excesses could supply a city of 200.000 inhabitants, but in Galicia the population that lived in localities of more than 1000 inhabitants did not surpassed 60.000 people in 1750. If the urban markets could not absorb the rents, which was its destiny? The accounts books of monasteries and hidalgos families show that a thing was the theory and another one the practica, since many loads fixed to species were satisfied in money. This means that the farmers bought a part of their own harvest for which they had to participate in the market of products or manual labor.