Reasonsforfailure
The lingering medieval mentality in Spain hindered any greater awareness. This insurmountable cultural barrier can be seen in the extreme caution of the innovators. Even Pérez de Herrera puts on a show of adhering to the principles of the Council of Trent and to tradition. He had to rebut to objections to his project, which were incredibly petty and trivial.68 But this stubborn resistance was caused not only by the theological tradition. There was another reason — the interests of the great landowners. These two types of opposition to the new were two sides of the same coin. First of all, as we understand from an episode reported by Giginta, the landowners — who dominated the economy and therefore the culture of the time — did not want to lose the extremely cheap workforce of free beggars.69 But above all, they wanted to prevent the poor from being used in agriculture and in wool processing (which was a natural outlet for forced labour), since their profits came from the free grazing of sheep, without the constraints imposed by farmed land, and from the export of raw wool. It was in fact this 'economic policy' that ruined the country (see chapter 8).
Thus the aristocracy could not accept a treatment of the poor that might transform the latter into human capital, in other words into a workforce available for modern production. In this sense landowners were simply opposing the transformation of a feudal society into a capitalist society. The only classes that could benefit from the labour of the poor were entre preneurs, merchants and master-tradesmen. But we have already seen that these classes were now severely weakened, both economically and politically, and were not able to influence decisions affecting society.
Besides these issues, the Spanish State was obsessed with the need for men for its interminable wars and with the need for money to pay these men. Therefore, instead of using the poor for a policy of economic growth, it preferred to force them into galleys. There is a letter of 1607 from the king to his regent in Córdoba which says that, considering the lack of sailors for the royal armada, it is opportune to use 'poor boys from 12 to 15 years of age at present in the Casas de la Doctrina (houses of education) in the cities and the country . . . likewise the tramps who are in these houses'. Another letter to the Duke of Medina-Sidonia issues this order to subordinates. Campomanes tells us (in an approving tone) that Philip II had done the same thing; and that a law of 1667 set up a house for boys in Cádiz precisely for this purpose.70
Finally. there was also a socio-cultural problem. For a society dominated by the aristocracy, the figure of the free beggar who relied on the freely given charity of the rich man was culturally indispensable; every attempt to change the beggar into a person merely assisted by public poor relief would have actually destabilized the social balance. Public reorganization of alms-giving would have deprived the rich man of the aura of a benefactor who voluntarily offers help; not only the poor but also the public institutions looking after the poor would have ceased to be dependent on the rich landowners. In short, public poor relief would have de-legitimized the aristocracy and its parasitic rents.
Ultimately, what blocked public assistance to the poor were the same factors that condemned the entire Spanish economy to centuries of paralysis. We can only acknowledge with astonishment that two and a half centuries later, Campomanes (in 1775) and Sempere y Guarinos (in 1801) were still calling for the same measures for the poor that had been put forward in vain by Medina and Pérez de Herrera.
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