Evictions of Tenants (1770-1833)

FEATURES OF A MODEL OF SOCIAL CONFLICT IN THE AGRARIAN WORLD OF TENERIFE UNDER THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AN APPROACH TO THE EVICTIONS OF TENANTS AND TENANTS (1770-1833) The difficult economic situation that Tenerife society was going through in the transition from the Old to the New Regime, meant the development of a variety of strategies by the propertied class in order to keep their income level intact. Strategies that would lead to an increase in agricultural rents, which will have an unfavorable impact both on the large tenants socially located among the well-to-do peasantry, and on the middle tenants, in general, at lower socioeconomic levels than the group of large landowners. These changes generated a whole process of conflict, especially detectable by their frequency from the second half of the seventeenth century, conflicts that were characterized by the struggles between the large landowners and the well-to-do peasantry who worked as tenants, the latter being the main leaders of the disputes, sometimes forming a common front with the dividers. An important source for studying this dynamic of confrontation are the lawsuits over land evictions, the study of which allows us to trace the main features of a model of social conflict that develops intensely in the transition from the Old to the New Regime. For several decades, conflicts between landlords and tenants have been described by some historians as the most important and long-lasting social conflict in eighteenth-century Spain. 23 Although the length required for this article prevents us from carrying out an exhaustive study; however, it is one of our objectives to try to unravel the general features of this model of conflict.24 Certainly, in the agrarian world of Tenerife there is a wide range of conflicts that developed mainly from the second half of the eighteenth century, and that, far from diminishing, increased throughout the first third of the nineteenth century. Thus, in 1798, D. Antonio Ponte y Mesa, a large landowner and prominent member of the social elite of Tenerife, undertook an eviction order against Mª. of the Encarnación Montañés, widow of Pedro Manuel Machado, neighbor of Realejo de Arriba and socially we can place her within the group of well-to-do peasants who are part of the agrarian bourgeoisie of the aforementioned town. Ponte y Mesa urged María Montañés to vacate some land she owned, which she had leased to her late husband in a place called La Gañanía, corresponding to the town of Realejo de Arriba.25 Despite the owner's insinuations, María Montañés continued to use the property leased by her late husband. And therefore, by not disturbing the tenant with his proposals, the owner of the land deployed a subtle argument, the analysis of which sheds some light on this type of conflict. In fact, Mr. Antonio Ponte, with the aim of influencing the legal institutions – read: Real Audiencia – before which a sentence had to be handed down, and also well aware of the dominant mentality in such bodies and in the society of the Ancien Régime, as well as making use of his social relations, typical of a prominent member of the island's social elite. He began his petition for eviction, stating that the "new" tenant did not give him confidence, nor was it a safe bulwark for an optimal exploitation of his property, since: "(....) Because of his sex, he could not perform the terms of the contract, nor work the land like a zealous man and a good husbandman, as my share has fallen to my side with experience." To this circumstance alluding to the inequality between the sexes intrinsic to the dominant mentality in the Ancien Régime, the alluded to, Mesa y Ponte, developed more palpable and objective arguments when it came to favoring the eviction, it was the accusation of not paying satisfactorily the stipulated rent, and of having sublet some plots to his sons-in-law. which was in breach of the terms of the lease. Faced with such a cascade of arguments, the tenant Mª. Montañés resorted to its defense, inspired by the philosophy that emerged from the agrarian reform projects, which since the reign of Charles III had been disseminated in order to attract the well-to-do peasants, who would play a vital role, at least in theory, for the achievement of a necessary agrarian reform; Above all, in the sense that the tenants were called upon to swell the ranks of a new propertied class, which would be the engine of a possible capitalization of the agrarian world. From the ranks of the Enlightenment, a position of disagreement towards the eviction proceedings is perceived, and the sensitivity that the Enlightenment show as a priority towards agriculture as a vital sector in the economic development of the country, is subtly used by the tenant in its defense, stating that: (....) when it is a question in the Royal and Supreme Council of Castile to form an Agrarian Law that looks to the benefit of the farmers, One of his ministers has written that the practice of obliging the tenant to fortuitous events should be entirely abolished; because such an obligation unequalizes the contract, causing the lessee to bear the unfortunate consequences of subcessions that he cannot prevent and are not in his power. On the other hand, the fact that the amount of the rent is mainly demanded in kind is judged to be a factor which in no way facilitates the punctual payment of the rent, for: in those provinces where it is necessary to contribute a certain number of bushels of wheat, whether or not there is a good harvest, It turns out that the poor settler is not only left without wheat to eat, but not even to sow the following year, and nothing could be more unjust and injurious to the progress of agriculture, because the farmer is exposed to the use of all the fruit of his sweat, and fills many remaining families with terror and dejection. at times, poorer and without the arvitrio of having a crust of bread to put in their mouths after the harvest.26 Not only the direct and indirect references to the frustrated agrarian bill, sponsored by enlightened circles, were the star argument deployed by the well-to-do peasants to emerge victorious in their confrontations with the large landowners before the local institutions, but also the most important arguments of the peasants. largely dominated by local elites. Closer examples are also used to give greater consistency to their defense, in the latter case it is a matter of equating the situation of tenants of private land with the reality of tenants of council land, especially in those aspects that were most favorable to them, the extension of the payment of rent, alluding to the frequent crop failures.27 The proposals put forward by María Encarnación Montañés are logically assumed in their entirety by other tenants of Realejo de Arriba integrated among the group of well-to-do farmers of this place, it was a matter of developing all the tricks and legal twists and turns at their disposal to avoid eviction at all costs. and in the possibilities of success of these varied strategies, it is necessary to take into account the access to local power of some of the most prominent members of this nucleus of well-to-do peasants, fundamentally as a result of the implementation of the reforms of Charles III in the local administration with the creation of the jobs of deputies and representatives of the Commons, that in some places, such as Realejo de Arriba, powerful locals will be in the hands of these people, 28 in addition to the family relations between them. Thus, Domingo Yanes Nuño, kidnapper of the assets seized from María Montañés, shows his protest in the Royal Audience, in the face of the numerous problems that had arisen as a result of being named the sequestrator of said assets, stating that: (...) he has found the nobity that the subsoda and her son-in-law Matías Regalado, resist the delivery of the fruits and do not allow even my part to enter the seized goods, and although I did present it to the Royal Mayor with a statement of the attestation that proved the seizure, so that he would render aid and help to put into effect the mandate of this court; he could not obtain it and he escaped because he is a compadre of the defendants and their favorer.29 The response of the owner, Mesa y Ponte, to the arguments of the tenants, is one of absolute rejection of all their postulates, from the outset he denies the Agrarian Law File any hint of legal validity, since it is only a project without being consolidated in law. as it happened in reality. In the second place, any possibility of delaying the payment of rent is also categorically rejected, considering the benefits applied to the tenants of the lands of Propios, as a measure in no way extendable to the tenants of private properties, since it is argued that this measure was suggested by the Regent of the Royal Audience in his exclusive capacity as Judge privative of Proprieties and Arbitrations. Finally, the Royal Audience, through a Royal Provision dated 1791, decreed that the tenants would leave the lands they enjoyed free, once the harvest had been harvested. In reality, the Enlightenment projects move in ambiguity, without carrying out the necessary transformations for the modernization and development of the country – following for example the approaches of Pablo de Olavide. 30 The strategy of the tenants linked to the nucleus of the well-to-do peasants was almost exclusively to delay the writs as long as possible; 31 In fact, once the Provision of the Court had been issued, there was a refusal to seize the property, arguing that the improvements or goods made on the leased land should be valued. Once again, the support of the local authorities and the most influential figures of the local agrarian bourgeoisie was resorted to in order to circumvent the orders issued by the public authorities.32 Certainly, the confrontations over evictions between well-to-do peasants or the agrarian bourgeoisie and large landowners constitute one of the most frequent models of confrontation in the agriculture of Tenerife at the end of the Ancien Régime. What brought together the tenant farmers to sue before the local courts of justice, their demands seek more a reduction in the stipulated rent than an extension in the payment of it, since the continuous rise in rents, together with the scarcity of rain and bad harvests, constitute a serious problem when it comes to materializing the payment of the same.33 As we have seen, from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards it was one of the most widespread types of contracts among the island's wine estates, this type of exploitation constituting a system of land transfer, possibly the most used by the propertied class – large landowners, well-to-do farmers, etc. The eviction model applied to the dividing wall follows the guidelines of the processes we have already studied for the lease; That is to say, the owners or, as the case may be, the administrators of the large landowners, used the eviction mechanisms to expel those tenants who were not to their liking, but above all, the eviction is a legal mechanism that conveniently used by the owners of the land has the purpose of guaranteeing the contractual relationship in favor of the owner and increasing the degree of dependence of the party owner with respect to the owner of the land to the extent that it is increasingly common among mediating contracts to request rent in advance to guarantee the conclusion of the contract; On the other hand, and unlike the lease, the medianería contract is annual, and even this clause tends to become more rigid since the first decades of the nineteenth century, in fact one of the aspects that is constantly reflected in the medianería contracts is expressed under these terms: this contract will only be valid for the time of the will of its owner, according to their particular agreement, and that both the owner and the others are at complete liberty or to leave the property at the moment of the owner's saying so, as the latter does to throw him out of the hacienda.34 Evidently, the enormous demand for land that existed in Tenerife society during this stage acted as a powerful incentive in favor of the propertied class. The protagonist of the conflicts that revolve around the contracts of medianería is the small peasantry proprietors, who solve their subsistence by alternating the cultivation of their small holdings with the exercise of the medianería, and who in turn maintain various struggles against the landowners and the well-to-do peasants whose economic and social power is superior to this peasantry. constantly threatened with the possibility of swelling the ranks of landless day laborers.35 One of the most representative conflicts is located in the heart of one of the great wine-growing properties of the Orotava Valley, the Hacienda de los Príncipes,36 located in the Realejo Bajo. The litigation took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century – 1801 – and had its origin when Felipe López Díaz, steward and party owner of the aforementioned Hacienda, was stripped of both activities by the powerful administrator of said property, Mr. Miguel Grijalva, therefore representative of the interests of the large landowners and Royal Mayor of Realejo Bajo at that time. López Díaz, in disagreement with his eviction, appealed to the Mayor of the island requesting that he be remunerated for the improvements and goodies that he had made in the properties subject to medianería. The administrator of the Hacienda de los Príncipes denies López Díaz's request, because for him, the plaintiff had not entered said Hacienda as a party owner but as a majordomo with an annual income of 30 pesos and 12 bushels of wheat, and only once he entered the stewardship was he granted a piece of vineyard where they call, Reveller, of which he was stripped by him: "(...) This was the backwardness of the vineyard, since the occupations of stewardship did not make the necessary factories. He left him without resistance, because he knew that the office of majordomo was incompatible with the exercise of colonist".37 In addition to this accusation, there were other matters of a predominantly personal nature – insulting one of the administrator's sons, theft, etc. In short, the disputes between one opponent and the other allow us to analyze the dialectic that large landowners use to evict tenants and tenants, and on the other hand, it shows us the argumentation and strategies of the peasantry that suffers the expulsion from the land. Felipe Díaz did not hesitate to take advantage of the Royal Decree of May 26, 1770, which ruled on evictions,38 however, Grijalva found the legal support of his opponent absurd; From their point of view, this law is applicable exclusively to tenants and under no circumstances can it be extended to party owners, since: in the aforementioned article of the Royal Decree, this voice is contracted only to tenants, and it is not understood to be of any use to party owners, because different reasons are used with respect to each class. And when the law wishes to favor the one in this way, it is because no harm follows to the other private owners of the land. And if the concept were to extend in favor of the dividers, would the masters be exposed to irreparable damage? In fact, for the propertied class, the contractual relations between landlord and tenant, and between landowner and party owner, are totally different and do not have to conform to the current rules on leases. Evidently, the landowners were aware that in the land transfer regime the dividing line occupied a prominent place, and if the same clauses were applied to tenants and party owners, the dividing line being the most widespread contractual relationship, it could significantly harm the interests of the owners in their eagerness to increase rents and increase their level of profits. and, above all, its policy of expulsion and eviction would be much more difficult. From this perspective, the words expressed by Mr. Miguel Grijalva are enlightening: (...) The tenant knows precisely what he must pay in each year, whether the estate produces fruit or not; Therefore, in order not to labor in vain, and to have the reward of his sweat and fatigue left to him later, he will always take good care to do the work and benefits in time and season, so as not to be obliged to take the amount of the rent out of his own pocket. But not so the mediator, because if he is only a mere clerk or servant subject to obeying the master's precepts, he is warned that for the following year he will have to be dismissed from the stockings, either because he observes that he is letting him lose his property, or because of some other bad service. Which are the reasons why such farewells usually take place, making an announcement to him that after a year he will finish harming the master, defrauding him at will as much as he pleases. And we cannot believe that the law wanted to leave this path open, and for this reason the practice that is generally observed on the island and throughout the province is to dismiss the medianeros when there is cause for it when the harvest has been raised, without first making a slight insinuation to prevent the frauds from being greater.40 This approach of the propertied class shows that according to its conception, The medianería cannot even be elevated to the category of agrarian contract, the medianeros are only dependents in the service of the owner of the land and can be expelled from the properties when the owner deems it appropriate. Obviously, the peasantry differs absolutely from this position, so Felipe Díaz points out that the interpretation made by D. Miguel Grijalva on the scope of the Royal Decree of 1770 is not at all correct and is analyzed in a partial and interested way, since for the peasantry and its representatives there is a whole series of factors common to tenants and dividers. This makes it easier for party owners to take advantage of the law on evictions; since it is interpreted that the Royal Decree of 1770 not only benefits the farmers, but by extension all farming activities, since what is intended with this regulation is that the farmers who are going to be dispossessed of their lands are notified with sufficient time so that they can find other lands and not find themselves suddenly plunged into destitution. On the other hand, they add that: the lands are regularly prepared from the year before with the corresponding crops for the corresponding sowing and harvest, and if, after having employed their labor and money in these anticipated and precise expenses, they were expelled, it would be a prejudice and a grievance that equity does not allow. (...) And the same reasons concur in the lands that are given in halfhearts, because they are also prepared and cultivated in advance, and it is expedient to the public cause that the tenants who are settlers and tenants should have equal protection.41 With regard to the payment of rent, it is manifested, that although tenants are always obliged to pay equal rent, whether the harvest is scarce or abundant; It should also be borne in mind that the farmers always have to pay for the same factories, and if there are barren years they may not even harvest the seed and are heavily burdened with the costs. By the way, if the owners took little from the harvest, they have not had to pay anything for it; from which it can be deduced that some deserve the same concept as the others and therefore the law of eviction is also observed for the settlers of the dividing land.42 Once the two parties have been heard and the corresponding inquiries have been made by the Mayor of La Laguna, Mr. Matías López Lago, he rules in favor of the dividing land, ordering that he be kept on the lands that he had halfway until the harvest is harvested. However, D. Miguel Grijalva does not give up, ignoring the commands of the Mayor and harassing and harassing Felipe Díaz to abandon the lands. The tricks used by Mr. Miguel Grijalva show us the power and socio-political role played by the large landowners or the representatives of their interests in this historical period; In fact, it must be borne in mind that the aforementioned Mr. Miguel Grijalva was an individual who, located in the ranks of the local elite, stood out not only for his economic power and the social prestige that came from the position of Administrator of the Treasury of Los Príncipes, but also for the fact that at the time of the initiation of this litigation – in 1801 – he held the position of Royal Mayor of the Realejo Bajo; On the other hand, Grijalva had the support of many of the most powerful people in the town, such as: Captain D. Domingo Molina, Governor of Arms of Los Realejos, D. Alonso de Llarena y Ponte and the Beneficiary D. Sebastián de Orta y Adueza. Certainly, the power and support of these powerful locals made it mission impossible to accept the demands of the peasantry, because in one way or another the peasantry was intimidated and subjected to the will of these rural landowners. Hence, despite the insistence of the Mayor of La Laguna that his sentence be carried out, even under the threat of fining the aforementioned Grijalva 20 ducats, he not only did not comply with the sentence but also made use of a whole series of devices that ended with the imprisonment of the mediator.43 The bewilderment and impotence to which the prosecutor and defender of Felipe Díaz is plunged are revealing the power of the local elites and their caciquil attitudes, hence he points out: (...) This event is very extraordinary, for the irregular arbitrariness of Don Miguel is in plain sight; for not only are the decrees of this court in which my part was permitted, and permitted to continue in the use of the property, in the meantime the suit is pending as is his right; but he has been imprisoned and his peons, having been detained for a few hours in manifest contradiction to what has been determined by this court, have particularly committed a manifest contempt. For, answering the decrees of this court with which they were notified to them, they took care that they should not be complied with, and that my part and their peons should be molested; availing myself of the strange means of happening to the Governor of Arms, as if it had been a new thing to use my share of those lands, and the suit had not been filed and pending in this court. (...) You must bear in mind that the lawsuit is with Mr. Miguel Grijalva, to whom it now seems that he wants to show himself as not a party under the pretext of the lease made to Mr. Agustín Díaz Estrada, of which he has not spoken until now, a management that he has used to leave the provisions of yours illusory.44 In short, we see how the agrarian elites of Tenerife practice eviction, giving rise to labor instability among the middle-class peasantry and also Tensions arise between large tenants and landowners, due to the constant rise in agricultural rents and the increasingly demanding conditions when it comes to land management. Undoubtedly, these are strictly economic demands and at no time are land ownership rights called into question; On the other hand, there is no homogeneity when it comes to bringing disputes before the relevant judicial bodies, given the socioeconomic differences between large tenants and between medium-sized and small tenants; In any case, and in general terms, both tenants and tenants are often unable to make the payment of such high rents effective and hence the most common requests are those for the payment of the same to be extended, the refusals of the owning class or their administrators to such concessions lead to lawsuits that can only be sustained by that sector of the agrarian world that has of greater economic possibilities to deal with lengthy and costly litigation that often has an uncertain outcome. Certainly, the frequency of evictions in the transition to the Old New Regime, and the expenses incurred by the owners in initiating litigation to defend their interests, as well as the uncertainty of the sentences, made the landowners reconsider when it came to setting the contractual conditions of the lease and dividing contracts. modifying its strategy to avoid constant litigation. In fact, during the first half of the nineteenth century, lease contracts, and especially those of the medianería, were more frequently recorded in notarial protocols,45 and they reflected a clause that clearly stated the impossibility of resorting to eviction.46 Although we need a more in-depth analysis of these struggles between owners, Tenants and dividers throughout the nineteenth century, we can hypothesize that conflict, far from decreasing, remained at the same rate and even increased.