Venality and representation. Concession of vote in Cortes to Palencia in the seventeenth century

Abstract

This paper studies the process which concluded at the beginning of the reign of Carlos II with the purchase of the voting privilege in Cortes by Palencia. Beyond, however, the particular references to a specific city, its interest lies in the fact that it allows us to situate ourselves in a double scenario: that of the venality practiced by the Crown to meet its financial needs, which in the seventeenth century even reached the right to representation in the Castilian Cortes, converted into salable merchandise, and that of the final phase of this institution, an event whose interpretation continues to be the subject of an interesting historiographical debate.