El control silenciado: el papel de la población en los juicios de residencia

Abstract

The juicio de residencia, similar to the sindacato procedure, attributed a proactive and crucial role to the population in the process of holding officers accountable. However, this popular control has been twice silenced: firstly in the very sources produced by the Crown and secondly by the predominant historiographic interpretations of the residencias as either ineffective, or subjected entirely to the purposes of the royal apparatus. The present article claims both the existence of a certain control of the population over the accountability procedures and its ability to shape these mechanisms in practice and even in the legislation. It addresses the perspective of the urban population on the functionality of the residencias, as well as the modifications introduced in the procedure that strengthened the position of the people as accusers, witnesses and even the symbolical judges, since the end of the 15th to the 17th century in the Hispanic Monarchy.

Accountable to the community? Medieval officials in Castile: the perspective from below

“…84 That data are consistent with the use that underprivileged inhabitants of early modern Castilian cities made of this procedure, from collective claims to individual attempts to use the procedure as a sort of appeal court to overturn an unsatisfactory judgement made by the official. 85 Although it can be assumed that elites would be better equipped with resources and the requisite knowledge to participate in the residencias and, more importantly, they would be less likely to be intimidated by the potential for retaliation at the hands of the official, there is no reason to believe that common people in medieval Castile did not respond to the town crier's public call to present their claims. At El Puerto, when Lady María Alfonso Coronel offered to make amends for her bailiff's misdeeds, everyone replied that they had no complaintexcept one individual.…”