The origins of citizenship in Castile.: Political identity of the vecino (citizen) during the XVIth and XVII centuries

Political identity in the Old Regime shares certain characteristics with social identity; it is not individual but corporate, and endowed with specific particular privileges. Vecindad is at once concrete and territorial and as such it escapes perfect generalization. But its exercise allows a certain level of political participation that, in a manner befitting an organic society with a classificatory structure and a hierarchical conception, tends to promote the consolidation of groups along lines of wealth and power. These groups enjoyed special privileges that as a whole guarantee them juridical control of the municipalities, through mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion that define the vecino and <<outsider>>. Vecindad also allows, at the microcosmic level of the village, the reproduction of the same principles and criteria that characterize the citizenship at the macro-political national level, and place this status in opposition to that of the foreigner.