The new towns in the north of the Kingdom of Castille (12th-14th centuries)

For 250 years, from the mid-twelfth to the late 14(th) centuries, the northern periphery of the kingdom of Castille Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa was the scene of a royal city-building strategy. This paper aims to describe the process's development and its legal basis; some cases are studied as a reflection upon the most relevant characteristics of these new towns. At the end of the process, by the late fourteenth century, beside the old Episcopal sees, we find a dense web of large, mid-sized, and small new towns, concentrated on the coast and with a vibrant economic life.