This article aims to analyse the finances of the Coimbra city council from 1557 to 1836. Our objective is to examine the causes of long-term changes in municipal revenue and expenditure, particularly during the extended period of decline that occurred between the mid-17th century and the late 18th century. This study will focus on the composition of revenue and expenditure, as well as on revenue collection mechanisms. We aim to present the empirical data on the revenue and expenditure components that allow us to understand the changes that took place. Finally, we hope to be able to explain the causes that led to significant variations in revenue and expenditure in a dialogue with existing literature. The primary sources used correspond to municipal revenue and expenditure books, supplemented by other sources such as legislation, correspondence and auction books.

In this article I present new calculations for the evolution of prices and standards of living in Seville from 1521 to 1603. Using new data on prices and new research on changes in nutrition and consumption, I improve the consumer price index. Two major improvements can be highlighted: the inclusion of rented housing prices and the use of three baskets of goods, according to the transformations identified in the consumption patterns. As a result of these improvements, the new data show that prices increase more (336%) than previously estimated by Hamilton (155%) and when using the Allen method (234%). Consequently, real wages decrease more with the new index (32%).

This paper attempts to establish a debate between alternative views of living standards in Spanish America during the viceregal period. Since 2009, a growing literature has shared a «common language» based on a similar, though not identical, methodology. As never before, this «new generation» of studies is built upon long series of quantitative data and international comparisons of nominal wages and prices which, in some cases, cover the whole Early Modern Era. Part of this literature also complements the examination of economic welfare using height as an indicator of biological welfare. Inequality is also quantitatively approached in one of the works discussed. In spite of significant similarities, some methodological differences lead to contrasting results. For the sake of simplicity, the relevant literature is divided into two views: «pessimism» and «optimism». It is my contention that the latter is more consistent with the available evidence.

This article examines a case study of profound agricultural transformations along the Early Modern Age. Around the protoindustrial town of Alcoi there was an intense process of substitution of cultivations that altered the physiognomy of the rural activities of an area traditionally considered as poor from the agrarian point of view. The catalogue of these changes is substantial: the substitution of wheat for barley, the early introduction of corn and its strong spread, the advance of the cultivation of vine, and, finally, the adoption of crop rotations in the irrigable area that was part of a limited extension of land, though significant for a mountainous area. Throughout the text these changes are described and explained, keeping in mind the proto-industrial framework in which they appear, as well as their context in the Valencián and Spanish environment.

In early modern Castile the Crown authority was played within the political arena having as a mirror the so-called economica (the art of the good government of the household). The king, a prudent father of his subjects, should punish and sometimes pardon the criminals in order to keep the political body balanced. The criminal punishment or pardon should be the end of every lawsuit. Seville in the times of Cervantes offered lots of occasions to develop judicial practices. This article explains how justice was developed within this framework and gives a picture of Ancient Régime justice quite different to the repressive justice depicted by Foucault in his Surveiller et punir.