Conversos, Power and the Intermediate Groups in Golden Age Spain

Most recent studies have revealed the existence of a huge social mobility in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, despite what had been believed according to the previous historiographical consensus. The archive research carried out by various specialists -and above all by Dr. Enrique Soria Mesa and his team- has been decisive in this discovery. Therefore, since the last two decades, the existence of a system based on great mobility has been established as a new historiographical paradigma. The newly discovered system, however, kept intact the appearance of eternity and statism that the current ideological order required to perpetuate itself. However, not all this social progression was aimed directly and quickly towards the achievement of the integration within the nobility. Quite often, under the mask of the aristocratic or noble appearances, impressive artisanal and mercantile activities were developed along extensive periods. Those activities were in fact closely related with the economic boost that for more than a century converted a large part of Spain -Andalusia among them- into a first-rate economic power. This book aims to rescue the history of a powerful intermediate category -formerly referred to as bourgeoisie-, that we have been detecting in our research in national and local archives for more than twenty years. Based on that evidence, we prefer to use here the term mesocracy since all these groups occupied intermediate spaces of power while they slowly tried to move upwards in the social ladder.