(), (), (), () or () is a Spanish legal term and concept. The word comes from Latin , an open space used as a market, tribunal and meeting place. The same Latin root is the origin of the French terms and , and the Portuguese terms and ; all of these words have related, but somewhat different meanings.
The Spanish term has a wide range of meanings, depending upon its context. It has meant a compilation of laws, especially a local or regional one; a set of laws specific to an identified class or estate (for example , comparable to a military code of justice, or , specific to the Roman Catholic Church).
In the 20th century, Francisco Franco's regime used the term for several of the fundamental laws. The term implied these were not constitutions subject to debate and change by a sovereign people, but orders from the only legitimate source of authority, as in feudal times.
Characteristics
Fuero dates back to the medieval period: the lord could concede or acknowledge a fuero to certain groups or communities, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, the military, and certain regions that fell under the same monarchy as Castile or, later, Spain, but were not fully integrated into those countries.
The relations among fueros, other bodies of law (including the role of precedent), and sovereignty is a contentious one that influences government and law in the present day. The king of León, Alfonso V, decreed the Fuero de León (1017), considered the earliest laws governing territorial and local life, as it applied to the entire kingdom, with certain provisions for the city of León. The most complete medieval fuero is that of the city of Cuenca.The various Basque provinces also generally regarded their fueros as tantamount to a municipal constitution. This view was accepted by some others, including President of the United States John Adams. He cited the Biscayan fueros as a precedent for the United States Constitution. (Adams, A defense…, 1786)Adams, John A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1786) The Biscayan Fueros are discussed in his letter IV. This view regards fueros as granting or acknowledging rights. In the contrasting view, fueros were privileges granted by a monarch. In the letter Adams also commented on the substantial independence of the hereditary Basque Jauntxo families as the origin for their privileges.
In practice, distinct fueros for specific classes, estates, towns, or regions usually arose out of feudal power politics. Some historians believe monarchs were forced to concede some traditions in exchange for the general acknowledgment of his or her authority, that monarchs granted fueros to reward loyal subjection, or (especially in the case of towns or regions) the monarch simply acknowledged distinct legal traditions.
In medieval Castilian law, the king could assign privileges to certain groups. The classic example of such a privileged group was the Roman Catholic Church: the clergy did not pay taxes to the state, enjoyed the income via tithes of local landholding, and were not subject to the civil courts. Church-operated ecclesiastical courts tried churchmen for criminal offenses. Another example was the powerful Mesta organization, composed of wealthy sheepherders, who were granted vast grazing rights in Andalusia after that land was reconquered by Spanish Christians from the Muslims (see Reconquista). Lyle N. McAlister writes in Spain and Portugal in the New World that the Mesta's fuero helped impede the economic development of southern Spain. This resulted in a lack of opportunity, and Spaniards emigrated to the New World to escape these constraints.McAlister, Lyle N., Spain and Portugal in the New World. 1984, Univ of Minnesota Press, .
Aristocratic fueros During the Reconquista, the feudal lords granted fueros to some villas and cities, to encourage the colonization of the frontier and of commercial routes. These laws regulated the governance and the penal, process and civil aspects of the places. Often the fueros already codified for one place were granted to another, with small changes, instead of crafting a new redaction from scratch.
Date 1125 1127–47 1129 1133 1145 1147 1152 c. 1154 1157 1169 1173 1173 1175 1181 1198 1198
Grantor(s) Gutierre Fernández de Castro and Toda Díaz Pedro González de Lara and Eva Estefanía Sánchez Alfonso VII Íñigo Jiménez Osorio Martínez and Teresa Fernández María Fernández Manrique Pérez de Lara Martín and Elvira Pérez Sancha Ponce Ponce de Minerva Gonzalo, Constanza and Jimena Osorio Pedro Pérez and Fernando Cídez Ermengol VII of Urgell Gutierre Díaz Froila Ramírez and Sancha
Grantee(s) San Cebrián de Campos Tardajos Villarmildo Guadalajara Yanguas Villalonso and Benafarces Castrocalbón Molina Pozuelo de la Orden Villarratel Azaña Villalobos Almaraz de Duero Barruecopardo Villavaruz de Ríoseco Cifuentes de Rueda
Basque and Pyrenean fueros
Approach In contemporary Spanish usage, the word fueros most often refers to the historic and contemporary fueros or charters of certain regions, especially of the Basque regions. The equivalent for Occitan usage is fòr, applying to the northern regions of the Pyrenees.
The whole central and western Pyrenean region was inhabited by the Basques in the early Middle Ages within the Duchy of Vasconia. The Basques and the Pyrenean peoples—as Romance language replaced Basque in many areas by the turn of the first millennium—governed themselves by a native set of rules, different from Roman and Gothic law but with an ever-increasing imprint of them. Typically their laws, arising from regional traditions and practices, were kept and transmitted orally. Because of this oral tradition, the Basque-language regions preserved their specific laws longer than did those Pyrenean regions that adopted Romance languages. For example, Navarrese law developed along less feudal lines than those of surrounding realms. The Fors de Bearn are another example of Pyrenean law.
Two sayings address this legal idiosyncrasy: "en Navarra hubo antes leyes que reyes," and "en Aragón antes que rey hubo ley," both meaning that law developed and existed before the kings. The force of these principles required monarchs to accommodate to the laws. This situation sometimes strained relations between the monarch and the kingdom, especially if the monarchs were alien to native laws.
This tradition of "laws before kings" was enshrined in the legendary Fueros de Sobrarbe, claimed to have been enacted by king Iñigo Arista in the 850s in the pyrenean valley of Sobrarbe. Although a 13th-century fabrication, the Fueros de Sobrarbe were subsequently used as the legal foundation for most Navarrese and Aragonese Fueros from the 13th century onwards. They enshrined the traditional principle "laws before kings" both in Aragonese and Navarrese law, justified the right to rebel against illegal royal decisions, and legitimised the existence of specific institutions such as the Justicia de Aragón.
Fueros in the High and Late Middle Ages The Fueros de Sobrarbe first appear mentioned in the context of the ascension of the House of Champagne to the Navarrese throne. In 1234, when Theobald I of Champagne inherited the Navarrese throne from his uncle Sancho VII of Navarre, he was pressured by burgers and nobility alike to swear he would abide his decisions by customary law and honour their customary rights and privileges. As a result, Theobald I appointed a commission to codify said laws; this resulted in the first written general fuero, the Fuero General de Navarra, enacted in 1238 and which drew its legal foundation from the fabled Fueros of Sobrarbe to justify the king's authority being subjected to the Fuero.
The accession of French lineages to the throne of Navarre brought a relationship between the king and the kingdom that was alien to the Basques. The resulting disagreements were a major factor in the 13th-century uprisings and clashes between different factions and communities, e.g. the borough wars of Pamplona. The loyalty of the Basques (the Navarri) to the king was conditioned on his upholding the traditions and customs of the kingdom, which were based on oral laws.
Relations with the crown and rise of absolutism
Ferdinand II of Aragon conquered and annexed Navarre between 1512 and 1528 (up to the Pyrenees). In order to gain Navarrese loyalty, the Spanish Crown represented by the Aragonese Fernando upheld the kingdom's specific laws (fueros) allowing the region to continue to function under its historic laws, while Lower Navarre remained independent, but increasingly tied to France, a process completed after King Henry III of Navarre and IV of France died. Louis XIII failed to respect his father's will to keep Navarre and France separate. All specific relevant legal provisions and institutions (Parliament, Courts of Justice, etc.) were devalued in 1620–1624, and critical powers transferred to the French Crown.
Since the high Middle Ages, many Basques had been born into the hidalgo nobility. The Basques had no uniform legal corpus of laws, which varied between valleys and seigneuries. Early on (14th century) all Gipuzkoans were granted noble status, several Navarrese valleys (Salazar, Roncal, Baztan, etc.) followed suit, and Biscaynes saw their universal nobility confirmed in 1525. Álava's distribution of nobility was patchy but less widespread, since the Basque specific nobility only took hold in northern areas (Ayala, etc.). Biscaynes,Note that Biscayne during this period holds an ambiguous meaning, it often refers to the Basques in general. as nobles, were theoretically excluded from torture and from the need to serve in the Spanish army, unless called for the defence of their own territory (Don Quixote's character, Sancho Panza, remarked humorously that writing and reading and being Biscayne was enough to be secretary to the emperor). Other Basque regions had similar provisions. The reach of the was not limited by the territory. Biscayans in other parts of the Crown of Castile had extraterritoriality. They could take the appellations in cases involving them to the ("Biscay Hall") at the top court of Castile, the Chancillería de Valladolid ("Court of last resort () of Valladolid").
The Castilian kings took an oath to comply with the Basque laws in the different provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. These provinces and Navarre kept their self-governing bodies and their own parliaments, i.e. the diputaciones and the territorial councils/Parliament of Navarre. However, the prevailing Castilian rule prioritized the king's will. In addition, the ever more centralizing absolutism, especially after the accession to the throne of the Bourbons, increasingly devalued the laws specific to regions and realms—Basque provinces and the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon—sparking uprisings (Matalaz's uprising in Soule 1660, regular Matxinada revolts in the 17-18th centuries) and mounting tensions between the territorial governments and the Spanish central government of Charles III and Charles IV, to the point of considering the Parliament of Navarre dangerous to the royal authority and condemning "its spirit of independence and liberties."