El pósito de Santo Domingo (1579-1699)

Abstract

"Pósitos" were, during Modern Age, a key piece in municipal economic policy, not only in arder to warrant customers food-supply of a basic product, bread, but to serve as an instrument for local elites in their own interest. It was in economic control where the castillian villages and towns kept more autonomy in the "Century of Absolutism". According to such autonomy, public granaries showed a great capacity to fit the diferent caracterists of each population, depending of severa/ factors such as the importance of wheat production, the degree of specialization, the size of population or the concentration of power in a few hands, among others. In Santo Domingo de la Calzada can be seen how a management model not well adapted change in the last years of 16th Century, in the context of crisis produced by pest of 1599, to become a efficient tool in the second half of 17th Century.