The Hermandad of the Cuatro Villas de la Costa de la Mar ('Brotherhood of the Four Cities'), also cited under the name Cuatro Villas de la Costa de Cantabria, was a medieval and modern administrative entity that grouped the coastal cities of the north of the kingdom of Castile, all of them part of present-day Cantabria; namely, from west to east: San Vicente de la Barquera, Santander, Laredo, and Castro-Urdiales. At the end of the 15th century, it became part of the corregimiento of the Cuatro Villas along with other territories in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. In 1514 the province was renamed the corregimiento de las Tres Villas de la Costa, by separation from the town of San Vicente, which rejoined in 1521. Towns twinned since the 13th century, its foundation as a corregimiento dates back to the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, around 1496, surviving until its inclusion in the province of Cantabria in 1778.
They formed a naval and commercial power of the first order at the service of the kingdom of Castile and their economic importance was such that together with the brotherhood of the Marismas (of which the Basque seafaring towns also formed part) they stopped the expansion of the Hanseatic League towards the south of the Atlantic Arc. As a corregimiento, they constituted the largest and most important historical administrative entity of those that preceded the current autonomous community of Cantabria and as a brotherhood, from the mid-15th century to the mid-16th century, they absorbed 40% of all commercial activity generated in the Iberian Cantabrian Sea. The Cuatro Villas was also, together with the town of Santillana del Mar, the only urban fabric of the region in the Middle Ages, whose structure was eminently rural until the 19th century.
Extension
The Hermandad de las Cuatro Villas included the towns of Castro-Urdiales, Laredo, Santander, and San Vicente de la Barquera, as well as a territory around them that included several villages and fields. The brotherhood, from the end of the 15th century, was registered in the corregimiento de las Cuatro Villas de la Costa del Mar, with headquarters first in each of the towns and later centralized in Laredo. The corregimiento included most of present-day Cantabria and small parts of what are now the provinces of Burgos and Asturias. Specifically, the corregimiento included, in addition to the four towns and their municipalities, the valleys of Peñamellera and Rivadedeva (present-day Asturias), the valleys of Tudela, Mena, and nearby towns (Burgos), the merindad of Trasmiera and its twin towns of Santoña, Argoños, and Escalante, the royal valleys of Liendo, Guriezo, the councils of the board of Parayas, and the royal valleys of the Asturias de Santillana, separated from the duchy of Infantado after the lawsuit of the Nine Valleys.
In 1511, San Vicente de la Barquera and Peñamellera formed their corregimiento, although in 1521 they were once again included in that of the Cuatro Villas. Previously, the town had asked the king, in 1517, not to appoint any more corregidores, after the economic difficulties it experienced after suffering several fires. Castro-Urdiales separated from the corregimiento between 1739 and 1763, being part of the lordship of Vizcaya for several of those years. The Asturias de Santillana separated from the Cuatro Villas in 1674 when Carlos II created the corregimiento of the same name to avoid dissensions between the valleys. The Asturias de Santillana was reintegrated into the Cuatro Villas in 1678 because of the economic cost of maintaining the new corregidor.
History
The new coastal urban structure (1163–1296)
At the end of the 12th century, the seafaring towns of what is now Cantabria were the only ports available to the Kingdom of Castile. At that time, the Castilian King Alfonso VIII (1158–1214), who was traveling through these lands, granted several charters that gave commercial advantages, among other freedoms, to Castro-Urdiales in 1163, Santander in 1187, Laredo in 1200 and San Vicente de la Barquera in 1210, to project Castilian trade towards the maritime trade routes. The four towns thus obtained the status of cities and began to take off in terms of population and economy. With the foundation of these cities, the only ones in the Kingdom of Castile from its separation from León in 1157 until the annexation of Guipúzcoa and Duranguesado around 1200, the royalty secured control of a coastline adjacent to lands closely controlled by nobles and abbots. As direct effects, the new cities created the first urban structure of Cantabria since the fall of the Roman Empire and the Castilian kings shifted part of their attention to La Montaña and not only to the borders of the Reconquest. Between the 9th and 11th centuries, the coastline was not safe due to Viking and Muslim incursions.
The privileges they received were similar to those of Sahagún and Logroño. All the towns were founded on pre-existing populations, and inhabited as urban centers until the 6th century. Santander has proven Roman remains and Castro-Urdiales, Roman, and even pre-Roman. Documentarily and archaeologically, the populations vanished between the 6th and 11th centuries, when the villages linked to the monasteries that Alfonso VIII found in the following century appeared.
The four cities became famous in 1248 because their ships were the majority in the fleet with which Ferdinand III of Castile conquered Seville. Santander deserved special congratulations, one of whose ships destroyed the chains of the Triana bridge. The king gave the town its coat of arms, obliged Seville to pay it a periodic amount of maravedis, and rebuilt its collegiate church, now a cathedral. This feat has been recorded in the heraldry of both the city and the coat of arms of Cantabria.
They also participated in other conflicts of the time, such as the conquest of Tarifa (1339) and the battle of Rochela (1372).
It is difficult to know the power of the four cities around the 13th century, although the data available today suggest that it was great. For example, the fiscal documents of 1293 show that the four cities had collected more than twice as much money as the Guipuzcoan ports, Santander being the one that had collected the most, with 46% of the total. At the end of the 13th century, Alfonso X the Wise practiced a policy of commercial exemptions in the urban centers to generate wealth in them. The Cuatro Villas was the most benefited of the whole kingdom, thanks to the protectionist measures on its star products: wine, salt, and iron. However, this type of measure caused the king an aristocratic revolt in 1272. These measures exempted Santander from the portage tax in 1253 in a certain locality and from 1255, throughout the kingdom except Seville and Murcia, which San Vicente de la Barquera had already had since 1241, except for the portage of Toledo. That same year Laredo and Castro-Urdiales obtained privileges of exemption in Medina de Pomar, through which most of the goods of the time passed between the sea and the interior; in addition, Laredo obtained the same exemption as Santander and the right of fishing and salting at any point in the kingdoms of Galicia, León, and Castile. Santander was exempted in 1263 from taxes in the fairs of Valladolid, in 1276 from the royal tithes on salt, and in 1281 from those of its wine harvest. As proof of its importance, three of the four towns (except San Vicente) are mentioned in 1268 among the eighteen most important merchandise ports of the kingdom in a document of the Cortes de Jerez.In current terms, two Basque (San Sebastián and Fuenterrabía), three Cantabrian (Castro-Urdiales, Laredo, and Santander), one Asturian (Avilés), and twelve Galician (La Coruña, Ribadeo, Vivero, Betanzos, Ortigueira, Cedeira, Ferrol, Bayona, La Guardia, Pontevedra, Padrón and Noya).
No less important than the land jurisdiction and privileges was the concession that the Castilian kings made to the cities. They gave them common jurisdiction over the sea from the Tina Mayor estuary to Ontón, as well as over the rivers that flowed between these points and their banks. The influence over this territory, which caused the growth of the villas at the same time as the anger of the medieval lords who previously controlled it, must have caused between the reigns of Alfonso VIII and Alfonso X the walling of the towns and the development of urban models planned for their expansion.
Hermandad de las Marismas (1296–1490)
The four cities joined Vitoria and several Basque ports on May 4, 1296, forming the Brotherhood of the Marshes, a dynamic institution that maintained commercial relations with some of the most important port cities throughout Europe and survived the other brotherhoods of the same territorial scope, which emerged from 1295 onwards. Although it was constituted in Castro-Urdiales, the town that became its capital, in 1296, its de facto brotherhood is earlier. This brotherhood, diluted in 1490, followed the example of the Hanseatic League and, according to historians such as Fernando García de Cortázar, was an international power. It included the ports of San Vicente de la Barquera, Santander, Laredo, Castro-Urdiales, Guetaria, Bermeo, Fuenterrabía, San Sebastián, and the town of Vitoria. By 1342 the brotherhood had expanded to include eighteen towns.A nombre de Dios e de Santa María. Sepan cuantos esta carta vieren como nos, los concejos de Santander, e de Laredo, e de Castro dordiales, e de Vitoria, e de Bermeo, e de Guetaria, e de Sant Sebastián, e de Fuent arrabia, a servicio de Dios, e de nuestro senor don Ferrando, facemos hermandat e uno, e la hermandat es esta (...) The brotherhood had sufficient power to legislate itself, sign treaties with cities all over Europe and even with the king of England without the intercession of the kings of Castile, although it was subordinate to the kingdom and, in the case of the treaty with the king of England, Alfonso XI gladly supported the proposal. This freedom allowed the port towns to make peace with ports belonging to states at war with Spain, so that trade was not interrupted. The presence of the town of Vitoria - a former seat - in the brotherhood ensured the control of a trade route that, thanks to the creation of a series of towns in the mid-13th century, linked the plateau with the Basque Coast, passing through Vitoria. The coastal towns used this route to export wool from Castile and import manufactured goods from France and Flanders.
Thus, the Hundred Years' War benefited trade between the towns and several other European ports, especially with Bruges, which imported wool from Castile for the development of a powerful textile industry. Dieppe, Harfleur, and Rouen also stood out, although at a different level. The trade of the Cantabrian and Basque towns with the Netherlands and France rivaled that of the English and Hanseatic ships.
During this period, the commercial power of the towns grew, and wealthy oligarchies began to emerge, representing the people before the king and obtaining royal recognition. The antecedents of this class are present in the middle of the 13th century.
Corregimiento de las Cuatro Villas de la Mar de Cantabria (1494–1778)