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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
ON 29 DECEMBER 1463, Lope de la Flor, a citizen of Cuenca, appearedbefore the city council. Since royal tax farmers of the alcabalasales-tax for the province of Cuenca had not appeared yet in the city, and, in order to prevent any mismanagement of the alcabala, the city, with the full approval of Pedro de Salcedo, corregidor or Keeper of the City, resorted to an unusual expedient: on its own authority, the city opened up the farming process for each type of alcabala. Accordingly, Lope de la Flor made a bid of twenty-four thousand maravedíes on the alcabala, chargeable on the sale of clothes,and another sixteen thousand maravedíes on the alcabalaon old clothes (both of which bids included rights and taxes). He considered it necessary to justify or frame his conduct thus: “given that his will always was to serve our lord the king, and to take care that their taxes increase and do not decrease.” He was not the only citizen to act this way. The day before, Lope's brother, Ferrand Sánchez de la Flor, presented a written bid of thirtythree thousand maravedíes (also including rights and taxes) on the alcabala on bread, likewise stating he did it “to serve our Lord the King.” Then, on 29 December 1467, Martín López de Huete, also from Cuenca, appeared not before the city council, but the tax farmers’ lieutenants of the alcabalas and tercias of 1468 for the province of Cuenca, Juan de Valladolid and Alonso de Vozmediano, and bid to take on the alcabala on domes-tic animals and lands “to serve our Lord the King, so that his rents be worth more.”
As in other ways power was exercised, taxation is a material and ideological field where different interests, and sometimes even contradictory ones, converge. A field where private aims (i.e., personal gain) merge with public ones, the latter minimizing the negative image implicit in dealing in taxes. It is here where the notion of service (to the king) provides a legitimation. This not only sanctions the legitimacy of the action required, but functions as a legitimating umbrella elsewhere, even if they are against the interests of the king, or the community, all theoretically being served through the thread king—crown—kingdom.
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