Mercado, trabajo y conflicto en una comunidad urbana: Otxandio, siglos XVII y XVIII

Martínez Rueda, Fernando

Publication year:

1991

Publication place:

Donostia-San Sebastián

ISBN:

84-87471-25-0

ISSN:

0212-6397

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Summary

The goal of the foundation in the Thirteenth Century of the small town -villa- of Otxandio was to create a comercial center so as to develop trading bussiness between Castilla and the northern coast. It was all troughout the Ancien Regime and in the light of this trading route that Otxandio elaborated an economic standard based upon iron manufacture and tradinng relationships. Therefore dependency on market and social relationships based on wage-earning work play a fundamental role in the life of Otxandio. Moreover, they generated a very specific social struggle we´ll be dealing with below. Tensions and disputes on trading and marketing reflect the struggle of the community in defending their traditional rights as consumers. Resistence of the people against innovations regarding market economy was relevant, in spite of the progresive strengthening of the bussiness capital. In the other hand, wage-earning workers faced up to the working discipline that property owning class and local power atempted to impose. Their resistence is based upon the implicit challenge of their daily behaviour. The defense of the sociocultural life so characteristic of the wage-earnind craftsmen will be their aim. It is under these two signs of conflict that there undergo the different forces of solidarity -class and community ones- and the social struggles which worked upon the human communal action of Otxandio during the Ancien Regime