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"History tends to demystify.
The risk would be that scientific progress,
as is often the case,
might contribute to fossilize the past and strip it of its emotional weight."
They say that in the field
If you lie down, you can still feel The rumbling of horses
The shepherds say the herds stop When they reach its shore
They raise their eyes And mutter a bellow unlike any other
They also say That the kites surround it as they hover
They don't cross it
As if there were a wall
A temple built of light And hidden from human sight
They swear the fog's silence is strange
For it has fermented Over ancient cries, bellows and chants
About rumors that still flutter
Among the cornfields And the dead dovecotes
They say all this and much more
Shepherds and who's ever set foot there And closed their eyes for a moment
But I haven't seen any of that
I can't say for sure
What I have seen with my own eyes
Is a flower
A strange flower that is born in April
With purple eyelids and a copper sigh
A blood flower That grows fragile and powerful
And tames the wind when it sprouts
At the beginning of the 16th century,
the Crown of Castile was one of the most powerful in Europe.
During the first years of his reign,
Charles I had to face an uprising known as the War of the Communities.
Padilla, Bravo and Maldonado led a resistance movement
that ended in the fields at Villalar.
This is the Revolt of the Comuneros.
THINGS AGREED UPON AT THE TIME OF CASTILE'S COMMUNITIES
Spanish history could have been different.
The Austrias led us to Absolutism,
the Borbones led us to the centralized State.
If the kingdom had succeeded against the king,
perhaps our history would have evolved differently,
and therefore our present would be different as well.
Padilla, Bravo and Maldonado were executed
after Villalar's defeat.
Who was Padilla?
We know very little about who he really was.
Padilla was who he was because he belonged to a lineage,
one of Castile's ancient and most influential lineages,
he had great ascendancy over the Castilians
who acclaimed him wherever he went.
And he becomes a national hero.
Storytellers refer to him
as the homeland's freedom fighter or Castile's redeemer.
Padilla was elevated in such a way that he became,
more than a historical character, a true myth.
Juan Bravo is Segovia's great leader in the War of the Communities.
In the year 1499 he is named continuator.
He arrives in Segovia around 1503.
He won't take on such an important role as Padilla,
but we know he's very close to him.
The statue of Juan Bravo is a unifying element
of something that makes us feel Segovian,
it makes us value our history and what it means.
The Casa de las Conchas was the home of the Maldonadesque power.
Don Pedro is the representative for Salamanca
at the Cortes of Santiago and La Coruña,
but he gradually cedes the role to his cousin Francisco.
Francisco was the most popular man, the one in the battlefield,
but in fact, they both were.
And I think they combined so well
that history speaks of Bravo, Padilla and Maldonado,
when in fact they were actually two.
The story we're about to tell should be set about four years earlier.
In 1516,
a young man who had already turned 16, because he was born in the year 1500,
had received a very large inheritance through his two family lines,
the Habsburgs and the Trastámara.
It stretched over territories in several continents.
And the sole heir to all those territories was Charles of Ghent,
who would become Charles I of Spain,
and later crowned as V of Germany.
He arrives here and he is proclaimed king.
Saint Paul's bells Have stopped ringing
The representatives stand up To look at the king
Down on his knees To the left of the altar
You are mercenaries of the kingdom You shall never forget it
If you serve the people The people will repay you
He's European, born in Flanders.
He doesn't know Castile's nor Spain's idiosyncrasy.
Castile falls into his inheritance.
A person who was destined to rule in Castile
is a person who doesn't know his territory.
This announcement has generated controversy
among the Castilians and a rejection of his person.
First, because there's a queen
who is the owner of Castile, Juana I, his mother.
Therefore, it's a bit strange that there are two kings.
And both, let's say, legally established.
It's also related to the level of corruption in Castile
between the arrival of Charles in 1517 and 1520.
We're talking about the sale and illegitimate attribution of positions,
the sale and attribution of slave trade contracts,
of territories in the Indies…
And this man is also eager to make money.
His grandfather dies soon after
and he wants to be emperor. Imperial election must be bought,
imperial electors must be paid.
Of course, he needs money, and Castile was a rich territory then.
That trip was not only not cheap,
but he also had to pay for the imperial election.
King Charles is going to compromise Castilian finances
in his nomination as emperor for the Holy Roman-Germanic Empire.
There were three contenders for the imperial crown:
Charles, Francis I King of France and Henry VIII.
This gives us an idea of the magnitude of the cost for imperial election.
"Castile's integration into the empire was seen as a national catastrophe.
The kingdom's interests had to be protected,
even against the king if necessary."
History is vast and there are very few simple things,
everything has multiple causes.
But basically it was a revolt with two coordinated aspects:
first, to demonstrate
against the increase in royal power towards absolutism,
and to this end the Cortes' assembly would be essential,
since what was being decided
was the cities' ability
to limit the royal power
tending towards absolutism. That's the first aspect.
The second aspect is an unrest within the cities
that seeks to broaden political representation.
Broadening political representation
of the common people, hence the term "comuneros".
The community.
Community refers to the unprivileged.
MARCH 1520
In 1520 another Cortes were convened,
in Santiago,
a strange,
remote place where it was difficult to get to at that time.
That was a strategy to try to prevent the representatives
from being influenced by the cities they represented
and to isolate them.
The representatives became hostile
and, faced with this situation, they decided to adjourn
and convene on 22nd April in La Coruña.
It's very significant for the Cortes to move from Santiago to La Coruña
because time was running out for them to set sail
for Germany to receive the imperial dignity.
This is when the first insurrection arose,
the first uprising in Toledo.
That's when the first problems begin, the first Community.
MAY 1520
I believe it was the fifth ballot, and with great opposition,
the service necessary to be crowned emperor is obtained.
On 20th May 1520, Charles sets sail.
What does he leave behind?
He leaves behind a divided, unsettled and unruly kingdom.
He promises to appoint a Castilian regent,
and as soon as he leaves, out of anger at the vote,
he appoints Adrian of Utrecht.
Meanwhile in Castile The hillsides turned green
The poplars trembled The beehives swarmed
The representatives regretfully Returned to their land
And some feared the people Would hold them accountable
For before leaving they swore Never to give the king service
Aristotle said that when there is no justice,
society is in a legitimate position to rise up,
revolt and stage a revolution.
Forced, they're not only entitled but obliged to rise up.
They see themselves legitimized.
If a ruler doesn't rule for the good of all, for the common good,
his subjects, or in this case the citizens would be legitimized to rise up.
The paths are the world's throats
This path that comes from Santiago
This stone boat that rocks in the rain
Carries a dryness that was not there
The path lengthens Like the shadow of the evening songs
The throat cracks and becomes enraptured
Betrayal fertilizes the purple sun
And the violet legions Now rot in the sunset
After the Cortes of La Coruña, the representatives returned.
Many of them were met with discontent for approving the service.
Segovia is where some of the most dramatic events
of the beginning of the War of the Communities took place.
One of the representatives who had gone to La Coruña
went to the city to explain his actions
and why he had approved the service.
The people surrounded him and dragged him off to prison.
Along the way, amidst beatings and insults, they strangled him.
The governor sent Mayor Ronquillo
to punish the crime committed by the Segovians,
and then Toledo sides with the city of Segovia
and sent militias led by Juan de Padilla himself.
They justify the attacks on the representatives
by saying that they had betrayed the will of the city.
This idea of the city's will is very powerful
because it enunciates a politically binding principle.
The government should be for the common good of the city,
good governance.
And this involves not taxing to death the people who live there.
It's exactly what the cities, as a whole, are telling Charles V,
"Okay, you rule, but there are limits to the exercise of your power."
JUNE 1520
After Toledo's uprising and with Segovia also in arms,
there were 18 cities and towns with seats in the Cortes.
A meeting was held in Ávila, which was attended by four of them:
Toledo, Segovia, Salamanca and Toro.
They met in the cathedral sacristy, in Ávila,
and the Holy Comunero Council was formed there.
Toledo sends letters to various Castilian cities
asking them to meet in Ávila.
At first very few reply.
The main problem was, some thought
the requests to the king were just, but they had to be pleaded to the king,
not imposed.
They always talked about returning to order, that is, restoring order.
In no way did they think they were doing anything wrong,
so to speak.
So, to declare oneself a comunero was like being part of a community.
An initial meaning of community
refers to the whole political body of the city,
implying the idea of citizenship,
the inhabitants, those who make up the political body of the city.
There is a second meaning which is more restricted,
which refers to a certain part of this political body:
the so-called "commons".
The non-privileged social groups.
The third meaning: community,
and this has a very old tradition,
is a term used to define a revolt.
And this goes hand in hand with the birth of expressions
in the context of the comunero conflict
saying the source of its legitimacy is the people's collective agreement.
In the language of the time concordia means: agreement,
harmony, hearts together.
The flame dances
Raising her arms Like a dancer from the East
She shows her long legs
Red-hot tongues of saliva
The medina and the patience ignite
The tongue and the ember dance
Whistle, scorch, raze
The dance has no harp or hurdy-gurdy
But it doesn't stop
It chews up the houses
Already ashes and smoke It swirls them up
Into the moorland blue sky
And these shreds of white soot Grow bigger and bigger
Until fully transformed
Into a flag
A banner of ash and rage
That can now be seen From the other side of the earth
Medina del Campo is undoubtedly the most important economic hub,
with Seville, in the whole Crown.
Medina del Campo is the great market town,
the place where an international exchange of goods takes place
and which was promoted by the Catholic Kings, by Isabel.
There are two main products,
wool on the one hand and money on the other.
It's a major financial center.
This explains why
an artillery park
was eventually established in Medina del Campo.
Following the uprising in Segovia, Mayor Rodrigo Ronquillo laid siege on it,
and Adrian of Utrecht decides that Antonio de Fonseca
should obtain artillery to reinforce the siege on Segovia.
AUGUST 1520
Segovia was one of the towns that produced the most wool,
taken to the markets in Medina.
The relationship and ties between Medina del Campo
and Segovia were very close.
Therefore, on 21st August 1520,
knowing that their artillery would be used to take Segovia,
they refused to hand it over.
Medina had received a letter from Segovia four days earlier,
so they resist.
Fonseca decides to go in, and they do so by force.
And to make their entry easier, they use fire as a weapon,
thinking the Medinese will run to put out the fire,
and leave the artillery undefended,
and thus they'll be able to take the royal artillery.
The Medinese had moved all their artillery to the market square
and they remained guarding the artillery.
The flames spread, the main building material was wood,
the Royalist troops plundered,
and Fonseca and Ronquillo were forced to retreat.
It spiraled out of control and it was a huge disaster for Medina.
Two days later, on the 23rd, when the Comunero troops arrived,
they handed over the artillery to the Comuneros.
The flames that set fire to Medina
and caused all that destruction and loss, lit the Comuneros' fuse.
It spread to many other towns, cities and villages that joined in.
The comunero rebellion Is already spreading throughout Castile
The sun and the wind belong to all The land must belong to all
Let what has come from the people Return to the people
In the absence of understanding, what we have is violence.
So when there is war, it is the end of dialogue
and also the end of reason.
So I don't think either side
wanted to reach an agreement.
"If the political system, identified as the defender of the status quo,
has lost its ability to mobilize the people's support,
then revolution is at hand."
There are three words:
revolt, revolution and rebellion,
and they are spelled differently.
Revolution: profound, usually violent, change
in the political and socio-economic structures of a national community.
Revolution has always been understood as a movement that changes history.
Revolt: uproar, disturbance, sedition.
Revolt does not bring about historical change.
Rebellion: offense against public order, punishable by law,
consists of public uprising against the State powers,
aiming to overthrow them.
And rebellion, any kind of rebellion, any kind of revolt.
If we follow this outline, it wasn't a revolution
because it didn't change history.
But it's also been called a revolution
for its political implications,
the intellectual implications it had.
It all starts with a revolt,
hardly ever do a few people sit around a table,
sometimes it has happened but very rarely,
and say, "We're starting a revolution tomorrow." No,
things start with a demonstration against a specific abuse.
But this demonstration grows
and becomes louder and louder,
and the very concept
of the legitimacy of authority is called into question.
This is what happened with the comuneros. They protested against specific abuses,
and they began to limit the king's power
and to draw up a constitutional outlook for the future.
There are a number of issues that were discussed back then
and which, in perspective,
seem to have been ahead of their time, such as sovereignty,
representation, things we tend to relate to our political systems,
but which were being discussed at that time.
The key issue was the relationship between king and kingdom.
Who is the kingdom? The king?
Or is the kingdom the community?
Charles had a concept of a patrimonial king,
but Castilians had a concept of patrimony
as belonging to Castile.
The name given to the executive institution of the Comuneros
is the Holy Council. What does Holy mean? Universal.
It doesn't just mean sacred, but above all universal.
In other words, it embraces the common people, everyone.
A Council that meets without the king's approval,
which was already a breach of Castile's current legal system.
It's a revolt. Why?
Because there aren't any radical proposals
suggesting the system should change.
Because there's nothing new,
what the Comuneros are doing has been done before,
it's being done elsewhere,
there's nothing truly revolutionary here.
I believe the Comuneros brought about this revolution
because they changed the basis
for people's participation in political decision-making.
They were no longer people totally subject to the will of a king,
but people with a will who could express it to the King
through the institution of the General Council.
This attempt at proto-parliamentarianism seems to me to be radical enough,
appealing to the roots.
I do think it can be understood as a revolution.
I understand it to be a revolution
because first of all, there are well-known,
very distinct and respected leaders.
They have an institution that constitutes a political body,
which is the Comunero Council.
Their aim is to subject the King to the Cortes,
and therefore it's a revolutionary principle,
to subvert the established order in Castile.
That is, that whatever was approved at the Cortes,
the King could not revoke it without the Cortes' agreement.
And then they have a political agenda,
so they know what they want,
they state it politically
in what they call the Perpetual Law,
precisely because the King couldn't remove it whenever he wanted,
but rather, he would have to have the support of the Cortes,
because it's a law intended for continuity.
The relationship's troubled history between king and kingdom isn't new,
nor an invention of the comuneros.
What's new and relevant is that they put it down in writing,
and that they point out "this is the silent contract.
The king's power isn't absolute, it has limits,
this is the bond you have with us."
This will be the king's Perpetual Law.
Until then, there was no such rule,
approved by an assembly of the cities' representatives
outside the king's authority,
and it was intended to be permanent,
which can neither be modified by the king nor by ordinary Cortes,
it would have to be reconvened in a meeting,
an extraordinary assembly, in order to modify it.
This is the closest thing to the exercise of constituent power.
What concerns everyone must be decided by everyone.
To guarantee the common good, all representatives
of the different social orders
must be present in local government bodies.
This theory, which is in the making since those late medieval centuries,
was practiced by the Comuneros during the War of the Communities,
this government for all, in which all would be represented.
The Comunero side gathered
the will and interests of very diverse social classes.
The core is the townspeople who revolt,
and then, when it becomes anti-lordly, it expands.
But alongside them are members of the local oligarchy.
There were also noblemen: Pedro Girón, for example.
Let us not forget that the communities were led
by knights of the kingdom, noblemen like Padilla, Bravo, Maldonado…
all very committed to their cities.
Until then, Castilian cities,
with a few exceptions, had had a very oligarchical regime.
The Holy Comunero Council is a novelty,
there's an important representation
of university graduates among the comuneros.
We find them among the seculars and among the clerics.
Churchmen were very important in the communities.
They even provided a political ideology,
often based on religious assumptions,
to their demands,
and this often stirred up the masses.
The comunero conflict, I insist, is a multifaceted conflict,
and this means that sometimes we see very strange alliances
between social groups that could be considered antagonistic
and yet, at a given moment, join forces.
"When power wanted to understand, and knowledge was able to get through."
How, in the end, they all sat down
and understood that we had to fight for the common good.
Given current events, how could it not be a revolution?
That is, everyone wants the common good of all.
"I fight for mine, but I also fight for everyone else's."
It's a great revolution,
and it's also a modern revolution, as several authors say,
many years ahead of the French revolution.
We tend to think that ordinary people
rebelled only when they had no choice,
when they were desperate, or couldn't take it anymore.
But this isn't really the case:
you only risk so much if you have some sort of expectation of success.
The Comuneros tried to reach a pact with the king, not to leave him aside,
but in which the kingdom would be above him,
and not subject to the will, whim and interests of the king.
There are uprisings in almost every part of Spain:
Plasencia, Soria, Murcia, both Castillas, of course…
Navarra.
Practically the whole of Spain is up in arms.
Like old adobe
Like mud and straw We will build this new world
With the weight of the earth And the maddening breeze of dead leaves
With the humble water That sweeps away fortresses
With the gentle lordship of the sun
We'll build it as if it were a dovecote
Round and full of wings inside
A swarm of wills That take flight at the same time
And turn and change direction As one single body
Even if it carries A thousand different sighs
A thousand anguishes And a thousand dreams
SEPTEMBER 1520
Padilla managed to free Segovia from all the threats that hung over it,
he went into Medina del Campo,
still traumatized by the fire it had suffered
at the hands of the royalist armies,
and he obtained the benevolence, at least,
of Queen Juana, who was in Tordesillas.
The Comunero Council, which begun in Ávila, will be established here.
Tordesillas was thus to be the communities' second capital.
From that point onwards, the Holy Council of Ávila
could now be constituted as a representative body
and as the Kingdom's Corte General,
since it is presided over,
not by that foreign king who had come to power before his time,
being a minor, but by the true Queen,
whom many Castilians considered to be Doña Juana.
We can't subject Juana to a modern-day psychiatric evaluation,
for neither the sources
nor the reality of her historical moment would allow us to do so.
Now, what we can assure from the historical sources
is that she is the legitimate Queen.
The locals welcome them with great joy
The streets are crowded The porches are full
They even brought out Old purple banners to the square
The young women Have pinned the Comunero purple
On their white shawls On their new corsages
Watch the bells fly As the comuneros walk in!
It was unthinkable then to go against monarchy as an institution.
They have something against Charles, but quickly go looking for Juana.
But they get disappointed
because the Queen's whole game is to talk,
and they want specific support.
What they want specifically is her royal signature
to authorize their documents.
It becomes an obsession for the Comuneros,
and not only for them, but also for the regent Adrian of Utrecht,
Charles' former preceptor and future Pope.
He wrote to Charles on four or five occasions:
if the Queen were to sign one single document for the Comuneros,
Charles would undoubtedly lose all the realms
until the death of his mother.
This was her power legitimacy.
That's what the comuneros wanted,
for three months, the matter was in her hands.
She had the power.
If Juana doesn't sign the Perpetual Law
it's mainly because she realizes that if she sides with the comuneros
she harms her son, her dynastic line.
She's defending her son's inheritance, her own dynasty.
NOVEMBER 1520
Throughout the comunero conflict there are several turning points:
one is the burning of Medina del Campo,
which led other towns to join the movement,
but another turning point
is Tordesillas General Council's order to suppress the Royal Council.
Not only this,
but to transfer its functions to the Kingdom's General Council.
That's one of the most radical aspects of the comunero movement
and it also greatly frightens
those towns that had joined the movement
but didn't want its radicalization, such as Burgos.
And in fact, the Royal Council's suppression
is the last straw for Burgos
and will finally push them to abandon the movement.
Burgos was part of the comuneros. What happened?
The commander managed to bring the royalist forces back to Burgos.
How?
Precisely with those promises,
with the king's concessions,
after all, it's a commercial city,
it's essential for its commerce to be able to trade with the Netherlands.
Burgos had more options, undoubtedly,
with the royalist side than with the comunero side.
The fact is, Burgos's desertion was one of the first steps
that led to the decay of the communities
as the moderates gained strength in the Council,
and Padilla was left somewhat out of the picture.
He was in favor of the struggle
and was considered, even in the city of Toledo itself,
as a radical, and he was removed from power.
DECEMBER 1520
We are at the end of the year 1520.
The comuneros led at that time by Pedro Girón
have established their headquarters in Villabrágima and in Tordesillas,
and are trying by all means to convince Queen Juana
to take the reins of the Kingdom against her son.
The imperial forces are really desperate,
in fact Cardinal Adrian prioritizes the takeover of Tordesillas,
precisely to stop them from pressuring the Queen.
We know that Pedro Girón was besieging Medina de Rioseco,
the royalist capital
and had his army around Villabrágima,
and at one point decides to go and occupy Villalpando,
a town that belongs to the Constable of Castile.
This move left the road
between Medina de Rioseco and Tordesillas free,
and so the royalists took advantage of it.
On 4th December 1520, the royalist troops set out for Tordesillas
and on the night of 5th December,
they managed to take Tordesillas and the royal palace.
The comuneros lost Tordesillas, which was their capital,
the comunero's headquarters,
they were losing Queen Juana, who was one of their greatest assets
in their attempt to take the reins of power and government,
and to a degree they were in a state of disarray.
The battle of Tordesillas must also be linked
to an earlier event,
the so-called Concordia de Villabrágima,
or the attempt by imperialists and comuneros
to reach an agreement at Villabrágima.
This is where some people place
Pedro Girón's supposed betrayal of the comunero forces.
With Girón The Junta lost the general it appointed
Yet if Girón betrayed Another will give battle
The fall of Tordesillas into imperial hands
is what triggers the flight of Girón on the one hand,
and Juan de Padilla's reinstatement as captain of the comunero troops.
They're going to move the Comunero Council to Valladolid.
Therefore, Valladolid is going to become the third capital of this whole uprising.
Eagles don't catch flies
Whispers a peasant With tender eyes and leathery hands
Eagles don't catch flies
He says again, looking up at the sky
And the muttering of shepherds And horsemen stops
Suddenly, silence
A thick silence has sprung up A silence of flint and iron
And now you can hear The hearts like beating drums
Pumping the blood That will water the soil
When the field rises The sleeping furrows tremble
The backs of the oaks And the trembling itself trembles
Eagles don't catch flies Sings the peasant voice
The eagles are getting weary The spark has already been lit
Tired of the abuse of their lords, they revolt against their masters.
The communities were a political movement,
but they were also a social movement.
The chroniclers mention two sides:
the nobility and the comuneros.
In the Perpetual Law or other chapters,
there's without doubt the clear desire to subject the nobility to the law,
they should return jurisdictions, income, etc., that had been misappropriated,
or that had been granted through influence peddling.
What we see are very important changes in the cities
that are driven by a sort of democratic impulse.
They are trying to transform the political order.
Representatives of the city's social classes
were given access to local government bodies,
which in some cases
gave a radical bias to the decisions that were taken.
This was very unpleasant for the nobility.
Castilian nobility were always more driven by their own interests
than by their loyalty to the emperor.
The appointment of two governors from the high nobility,
the anti-nobility uprisings, the dismissal of the royal council,
all of this upset them and they began
to turn in favor of Charles V.
They were never against, they were waiting.
Waiting and watching.
It'll be very important for Charles V.
THE END OF 1520
Some of these uprisings begin to take place
on the estates of the great lords,
and at first the General Council isn't going to condemn them,
and this is precisely what frightens Castile's great lords enormously
and makes them join the royalist side.
People on the lower rungs of the ladder
felt like the main characters and took the initiative.
"The Revolution, which had originally been purely political,
now led to social demands
that challenged the inherited structures of the past."
On 31st January 1521
a letter arrived at the government
in Valladolid from the Admiral of Castile and other noblemen
encouraging them to abandon the comunero movement.
Valladolid replies to the Admiral of Castile:
you are the ones who have occupied Castile,
who have undermined the authority and power of the King,
not the people.
It's the noblemen who attacked and undermined the power of the King.
The nobility's support for the imperial side
came about as a result of a fierce defense of their interests
and a fear of the anti-kingly revolt
the comuneros were carrying out as a result of their actions.
The idea behind it is as follows:
cities guarantee the freedom of the kingdom,
but also the king's own freedom.
So, we have to go to war,
the rest would be to go back to what was before:
to be in dependence and servitude to these great ones
who try to impose their will on the King.
It leads to something like a war between the community,
that is, the rebels, and the knights.
The areas surrounding Valladolid and Palencia
were controlled by these powerful people of Castile,
who also had fortresses threatening the comunero movement itself
because from those fortresses they could carry out attacks
against the comuneros stationed in Valladolid.
Bishop Acuña goes to these regions
and from there stirs up the people encouraging them to take the fortresses.
The royalist army conquers Ampudia, this is on 16th January.
Upon learning of this, from Valladolid, Padilla's army
meets with Bishop Acuña's troops.
They reconquer Ampudia.
The royalist side takes refuge in the neighboring town of Torremormojón.
Padilla and Acuña put siege to Torremormojón's castle
and finally on 18th January
achieve the surrender of Torremormojón's castle itself.
Bishop Acuña, at the end of 1520, early 1521,
at the age of 60 or more, carried out a radicalization campaign.
Acuña is undoubtedly an interesting character.
He has a very singular personality
that, given his own origins and his own condition,
will become a legendary figure.
He had the ability to summon through the pulpit,
and he also had the ability to call the troops.
And he succeeded in organizing and leading armies,
including clerical armies, which proved to be very effective.
This also makes the war of the communities become a war
of the subjects against the lords,
meaning an anti-lordly revolt that will scandalize
and frighten the lords even more.
JANUARY 1521
After losing Tordesillas, the Comunero Council was already in Valladolid.
There began to be internal debates about what the strategy should be.
On the one hand Pedro Laso,
proposed a moderate approach.
On the other hand is the other leader, Juan de Padilla.
His approach was far more radical, he wanted to defeat the royalist side,
the comuneros' triumph.
For this he proposed the takeover of Burgos.
Along with Bishop Acuña, he headed for Burgos,
but the Constable of Castile ruined these plans,
and it was then that the idea of taking Torrelobatón came up.
FEBRUARY 1521
Early in the morning On 22nd February
Padilla arrives at Torrelobatón With his army
He has 7,000 soldiers Followed by 500 lances
Padilla begins the takeover of Torrelobatón.
It was walled, they begin an attempt with their artillery to open a breach.
It took them four days to overcome the wall.
February goes by, March goes by…
The comuneros' inaction, mostly due to internal disagreements,
finally turned it into a mousetrap.
It was threatened by Medina de Rioseco to the north,
in the southeast by Simancas and to the south by Tordesillas.
Padilla realized he had to run.
Simancas prevented him from going to Valladolid,
and the only way left
was to go west, trying to take refuge in Toro, a friendly city.
And that's what he did on 23rd April.
APRIL 1521
Leaning out of a battlement He sees the cliffs whiten
And in the hollows The ditches with greater depth
A tree in the ravine Has grown horizontally
On its bare branches the rooks are still
Who could see the comuneros Go down the gullies…
On the horizon, Villalar now appears
The next move on the part of the royalists
will be to gather their troops in Peñaflor de Hornija,
about 9 km away from the comunero hub
which Torrelobatón had become.
The armies see each other, they feel each other.
They have no choice but to get out of there.
That's the decision Padilla takes,
and at dawn of Tuesday, 23rd April,
they quickly leave Torrelobatón along the Hornija valley.
Then the Constable said, "Get all the cavalry out quickly,
send them after, have them take some field artillery with them."
The imperial army, which had meanwhile recovered
thanks to support from the high nobility,
surprised them in their retreat on a rainy day.
It's rained a lot, they're wet, the ground is muddy, the gunpowder is wet,
the order of marching is somewhat scattered,
and the comunero army keeps moving forward…
Near the Fierro bridge, after crossing the Molinos stream,
they come across a tremendous field, a great stretch of land.
The royalist cavalry with the Count of Haro in the center,
to the left the Count of Benavente,
to the right the Constable and the Admiral of Castile,
begin their cavalry charges
which, more than a battle, will turn it into a hunt.
The comunero commander Is left bleeding all over
His hot blood Drinks in the cold Villalar
Night falls in the fields
Only wounded comuneros' cries are heard After receiving their deathblow
The imperial army managed to completely disrupt the comunero army
and imprison its leaders, among them Juan de Padilla himself.
In the space of only 24 hours, the trial, conviction
and execution of the comuneros took place,
because their crimes were considered notorious crimes,
serious crimes against the crown.
Thus, on 24th April 1521,
in Villalar de los Comuneros, the scaffold is set up,
the stands are installed
so that royal representatives can attend the event
and the comunero leaders are brought to justice.
Pedro Maldonado is fortunate to have influence on the royalist side,
the Count of Benavente for instance,
and this is what saves him from being executed right then
in Villalar de los Comuneros.
Francisco Maldonado will be executed.
Pedro Maldonado, however, will also be executed the following year.
They were going to have their throats slit the next day.
Someone was shouting, "Here come the traitors,"
Juan Bravo turned and said, "You lie and the one who told you to say it too."
The council judge gave Juan Bravo a blow on the back
and he revolted
and Padilla said something like,
"Yesterday we fought like knights and today we die like Christians."
"In Villalar on the 24th day of the month of April 1521:
this day the mayors Cornejo, Salmerón and Alcalá
stated and declared
Juan de Padilla and Juan Bravo and Francisco Maldonado guilty
of having been traitors to the Royal Crown of these Kingdoms
in punishment for their evil deed, they stated
and condemned them to the penalty of natural death."
I have summoned The four horizons of Castile
The violet flowers That rot in the sunset
The swifts that drank The blood off the ground
Without stopping their flight
The sweat of the horses
Let no men or women come
They could not bear on their bones What I've come to tell you
Hope is already mortally wounded
We'll have to wait again
As they wait, in silence,
But with fire in their eyelids The stars in the moors
In 1521, and in April To be more precise
Justice was served in Villalar
To those who called for justice
Cursed be those Who handed down the sentence
Villalar represents the great symbolic blow,
the great moral blow to the Castilian communities, but not the end,
because the flame is still burning in Toledo.
It was Juan de Padilla's wife, María de Pacheco,
who kept the flame burning in Toledo.
With the support of someone very important, bishop Acuña.
She grew up as a very educated, Renaissance woman.
She knew Latin, she read, it seems that she also wrote,
she was very good at maths and astronomy,
and she inherited all the symbolic legacy
that her husband had been creating
and which would turn her into the Comunero rebellion's icon
over the resistance that Toledo was the only one to maintain
after the defeat at Villalar.
All we know about her is in the third person,
what they said about her. And what did they say about her?
Very few admired her, and many considered her manly,
a rebellious woman who had overstepped the feminine role
entrusted to her and that led her husband to ruin.
They speak of her as a new Eve who seduces Adam and leads him to sin.
That was the image of Doña María Pacheco
until the end of the 18th century:
a traitor to her sex, her social class and her king.
If she wanted to resist, she had to rely on the support of the working classes,
who were on the other side, who had other demands.
Enjoying this symbolic inheritance from her husband,
she seized all the power, absolute power in the city,
and clashed with Bishop Acuña's aspirations,
who finally, realizing his cause was lost, left the city
and, as we know, was arrested when he tried to go to France.
In fact, the execution of Bishop Acuña
won't be a quiet one for the Emperor,
because the Pope will excommunicate, if only for a few months, Charles V.
OCTOBER 1521
That October, after a siege of the city that lasted all summer,
agreements were signed,
but they were aborted because they remained up in arms.
This led to the final battle between royalists and comuneros
in Toledo on 3rd February
of the following year, the famous day of San Blas,
which put an end to the movement
with the total collapse of the comuneros
and Doña María Pacheco's departure from Toledo,
who went into exile in Portugal because she was sentenced to death.
On Charles's return to Spain He signs the imperial sentence
Doña María is to be killed And her house razed to the ground
And having razed it to the ground The plough shall pass over it
And having passed over it They shall sow the land with salt
"If we consider the energy with which the repression was carried out,
we can understand that the people saw in these changes
something different, something more radically threatening."
Women are involved in the comunero movement.
The problem we have are the sources.
For a long time history has been written by men,
it's a masculine history.
Women don't participate in the governing bodies,
and women don't participate in leading the comunero troops.
It's in these lawsuits after the defeat of the comuneros
where we obtain much more on women's participation,
both from the point of view of the comunero women
and the women on the royal side who defended their families' patrimony.
In all these uprisings that culminate in repression,
women are the ones who manage everything, absolutely everything: the network,
the family, the money, the property…
and it's exactly the same here.
A great number of comuneros
Are being taken To have their throats slit
The prisons of the kingdom Can no longer hold any more
And those to be banished Are counted by the thousands
There was intense repressive activity with imprisonments
and executions,
until October 1522,
when the emperor issued what was called the General Pardon.
Many people took part in the revolt,
and you can't punish everyone.
So a general pardon is issued, from which 293 people are exempted.
Not only are there criminal consequences, there are also civil ones.
The main civil consequences are financial compensation,
confiscation of property,
money to be paid.
The houses, the manor houses,
suffered a lot from this repression,
they were forced to remove the towers and scrape the coats of arms.
In the case of Casa de las Conchas,
the coat of arms was saved because it meant touching high nobility,
the fleur de lis,
but the tower was removed to the extent that the documents describe
what Casa de las Conchas was like at that time,
how far it reached.
Padilla's houses were torn down and sown with salt,
which symbolically meant
that where such traitors of lèse-majesté had lived,
not even plants should ever grow.
After the war of the communities,
there was certainly a very strong anti-comunero sentiment,
and Philip II will take this into account, as it's one of his father's legacies.
The descendants of the comuneria should be kept in mind,
and they will continue to be regarded as outcasts for a long time to come.
There are examples that highlight
the viciousness and cruelty with which the emperor sometimes operated,
for example María Pacheco.
María Pacheco had to flee to Oporto,
and although she had a lot of influence at the Cortes,
she was never able to return.
Moreover, she always lived under the threat
that she could be executed if she returned to this kingdom.
When she expressed her wish for her remains to be laid
to rest in Toledo when she died,
Charles refused, even after death,
and so Maria Pacheco is buried in Portugal.
There's a repression that lasts beyond death.
"What disappeared at Villalar was not Castilian liberties,
but perhaps political freedom and the possibility of imagining
a destiny other than that of imperial Spain."
On the edge of the field Green waves of barley break
Opening the scar Through which time still bleeds
Thread of embroidered blood And chest of stars
Through which the past flows And dyes the threshing floors red
Fountain of burning furrows, oxen forged
With the blood and sweat Of a people, must not be bent
There are still rumors in the fields
You can still feel the footsteps
Centuries of silence
That speak, shout, sing and roar
17TH-18TH CENTURY
The idea of absolute monarchy as a form of government won out in the end,
but not only in Spain, throughout Europe.
And the Cortes, which will be the kingdom's representative body,
is something that bothers the monarch's government.
Obviously.
Absolutism took hold.
It did not originate with Charles V,
it had been there for a long time, and it took hold.
And it will continue.
Absolutism means the king has no limits set by law,
that is, a citizen is prevented by law from killing,
the king isn't responsible.
The king is not prevented at all, he can skip it or be excused.
This was the beginning of a political breakdown of the kingdom
that would continue in the reign of Philip II,
when the Cortes continued to be summoned,
but they were heavily intervened.
Fiscal pressure was much greater,
there was hardly any opposition from representatives, an urban oligarchy,
the role of the Cortes gradually declined…
This went even further in the 18th century,
the century of despotism as a form of government,
when the Cortes were not even convened.
Indeed, they were not abolished, but they were left there as…
they were convened to proclaim the new king…
as witnesses.
At the expense of that proto-parliamentarist theory
that could have emerged with the comunero's triumph.
"The 19th century militant liberalism rediscovered the comuneros,
turned their leaders into martyrs
and raised the banner of its name to fight against absolutism."
History is a weapon loaded with present and future.
One of the key elements for building freedom.
And then, when it is all over
When there are no longer Any flowers with purple eyelids
When spring is completely cut off
We will melt the stirrups and swords In a furnace made of earth
And forge a ploughshare
That will gleam brightly In memory's night
Those flowers will bloom And continue to grow
And we'll do it
All over again every spring
The legend of Villalar begins in that very place,
if it hadn't begun before.
The example of the comuneros as freedom fighters
will also be an example to be followed
by other politicians and citizens
who wanted to form a revolutionary movement against the monarchy.
"The Comuneros of Castile are an essential point of reference
for all the movements in contemporary Spain
whose primary purpose was the conquest of freedom."
The Comuneros are the central historical imaginary,
the main historical reference point for all democratic struggles
in modern and contemporary Spain.
It's in the interests of those in power to use history as a key instrument
to create an awareness of nationhood and national identity,
and to create national myths with it.
Historical episodes have two sides:
one, what they were,
and two, how they are interpreted afterwards
and how they're used.
On this second aspect, identity, the construction
of a collective identity, is of utmost importance.
In the modern world, national identity.
Myths usually serve to reinforce national identity,
in one sense or another.
They can be negative myths that recall disasters,
so what is that myth for? To encourage grief,
what a number of hardships, of disasters…
How should we rebel against that?
How should we build our identity?
How should we defend ourselves?
Yet, there are positive myths,
how good we are, how we ruled the world.
They serve their function as well.
"There's been no serious revolution in Spain
until the present century (19th century),
with the exception of the war of the Holy Council
in the time of Charles I, or Charles V,
as the Germans call him."
NINETEENTH CENTURY
Remember the liberals were acting at the beginning of the 19th century.
At that time they had lived through the French invasion,
Fernando VII's absolutism…
In this sense, the comunero movement became in the 19th century,
thanks to the liberals, a liberating movement.
Heroes of freedom in the face of tyranny.
Therefore, all its main characters
are surrounded by an aura of heroism and martyrdom at the same time.
So we look back.
The comunero movement is seen as an ideal movement
in which we find this urban uprising
against the idea of the tyrant king.
This was also the movement in which El Empecinado in 1821,
during the Liberal Triennium,
carried out this tribute to the comuneros at Villalar.
DEFENDERS OF CASTILE'S FREEDOMS
Streets dedicated to Padilla, Bravo, Maldonado, statues of the Comuneros,
poetic compositions emerged in every city…
Thus, the Comuneros began to enter a new territory.
It's not a historical one, but the mythical territory.
A myth is a narrative structure that has three phases,
very simple each time:
paradise, fall, redemption.
The comuneros become a reference for the departure from paradise,
the moment of the fall.
We Spaniards had been free and happy
until a certain point in time when a foreign cause, naturally,
a foreign dynasty, the Habsburgs, arrived and imposed absolutism on us.
And that's when disgrace began, and that's when decadence began.
"Tactically a revolutionary may have an interest,
not in hiding his intentions, but in presenting them
as the mere extension of the past."
Myth makes things much easier.
If I introduce you to an innovation:
"You're eating in a way that is contrary to your health,
and what you have to do is to stop taking such and such
and eat in a completely different way,"
I'm proposing something very difficult.
But if what I say is:
"What you have to do is to go back to your natural way of being,
to stop doing a series of absurd things
that are not like you, that a foreign friend has taught you."
I'm selling you the product in a much simpler way
rather than telling you,
"What you must do is have a revolution in your life."
And that's what the liberals in Spain do.
At the Cortes of Cadiz they draw up a completely modern,
totally revolutionary and innovative constitution,
and yet they present it as, "There's nothing new here,"
says Argüelles presenting the Constitution to the Cortes.
What we do is to bring back our old Spanish Constitution.
It's a way of presenting a revolution
as a return to our natural way of being.
TWENTIETH CENTURY
And not only the liberals.
If we read Azaña or the deputies of the II Republic at the Cortes,
we see they also perceived the comuneros as their forerunners,
and they saw themselves as the ones who were finally fulfilling
the dream that the comuneros had tried
but failed to fulfill.
"(The Comuneros) Yes, they wanted to be freedom fighters.
They wanted freedom from Caesars' despotism,
from rule by favorites, from the supremacy of one class."
Madrid's mayor, for example,
is the one who proposed adding purple to the republican flag,
claiming that purple was the color of Castile
and of the Castilian communards.
All evidence suggests the comunero color was not purple,
but Castile's crimson red.
This myth of the communards as freedom fighters
will be used by certain intellectuals and politicians of Franco's regime,
especially Falangists, to denigrate
the War of the Communities and the comunero movement.
Those intellectuals who were questioning Franco's regime
will once again find in the comuneros
a historical example of what they want Spain to be.
A modern Spain, a democratic Spain,
a Spain opposed to the prevailing dictatorship.
AFTER... CECILIA AND JOSÉ BARTOLOMÉ, 1983
Villalar, all political parties
celebrate a festival in honor of the comuneros
who revolted against Charles V 450 years ago.
People who at Villalar once again reclaimed
the comunero memory as a sign or as a symbolic place
to demand more autonomy, democracy and social justice.
They can simply be valid as a symbol,
without going into further content or depth.
There goes the police.
They're coming now, you can't get into the square now.
The myth of the comuneros was transformed
during the transition.
They introduced the idea of decentralization.
It was also given a regionalist, Castilianist component,
as it had a particular impact
on the territory that nowadays is
the Autonomous Community of Castile and León.
Do you know who the comuneros were?
Four men who fought for the autonomy of Castile.
Neither historians nor anyone else has yet agreed
on whether they were really people who opposed progress
or whether they were progressive people,
but what matters is that at Villalar an important symbol has emerged,
it's very interesting for it to continue
for the sake of boosting
Castile and Leon, a region that's really in trouble.
From some ideological positions,
some people today
feel that these comuneros are also their own predecessors.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Neither the silence was just nor the praise was appropriate.
What is true is to see them as people who fought
for modern ideas, ahead of their time,
political ideals that they wanted to translate
into concrete political and social projects.
When the current Constitution was adopted in 1978,
the four core values of the Constitution:
freedom, equality, justice and pluralism,
these four values were the pillars that upheld the comunero movement.
I honestly believe it has nothing to envy the French Revolution,
the thing is that France always builds extraordinary stories,
and I don't understand why we haven't done it
having the intellectuals we've had.
I think it's time to start writing
the true story of what happened,
and then we'll understand why we celebrate the 23rd.
The defeat is the excuse to celebrate the spirit that inspired that revolution,
which is a spirit of struggle for freedom.
Above all, it was a vindication of the political role of citizens
in their daily work.
Castile did not rise up again.
At least it didn't rise up again
with the strength with which the comunero movement had done.
What if it had triumphed?
Since then Castile has not risen again
In the hands of a bastard king Or a deceitful regent
Always longing for a Council Or waiting for a captain
History, historical knowledge,
is a complex way of thinking.
Being able to exercise that complex thinking
favors critical thinking,
and I believe critical thinking is crucial for any society.
Some try to denigrate or discredit the communities
by denying their revolutionary nature,
or stripping them of their political substance…
These are not new strategies.
The communities have been an ideological device
for interpreting not only the movement
but also Spain's entire history,
and continue to be so.
The comuneros argued for the kingdom over the king,
because the king passes and the kingdom remains.
That's a major political change.
We take off from a great lack of knowledge of our political history.
Antonio Machado said that when we think about the past
we find piles of hopes.
And those hopes may not have been achieved, but they aren't failed.
A history without a record of the vanquished hopes of our ancestors
is a history that will always be in favor of the victors,
and therefore of the current state of affairs
and therefore of the present dominations.
I have always been fascinated by the subversive power of history.
Things happened one way but could've happened differently,
there are always alternatives. Hence the present can also be changed.
It could be positive to use this myth
to reinforce Spanish nationalism in a liberal sense.
Whereas today, Spanish nationalism is a myth that belongs to the right,
counter-revolutionary.
It could also be a positive thing in the interest of freedom,
that is, Spain is a country made up of free individuals,
who don't want to live under an absolute monarchy,
who want to live in a regime of controlled power.
Divided powers with a parliament controlling the executive,
with citizens who have individual freedoms and respect each other.
It has incredibly revolutionary connotations
then and now.
"All men should eat, but all men should also know.
Otherwise they become machines at the service of the State,
they become slaves of a terrible social organization."
Five hundred years ago there were people
who developed ground-breaking projects for their time,
which centuries later came to prevail.
We can learn from the communities' war
that not only the great names in history are important,
that we as citizens, the working class,
also have a historical responsibility,
and our unity can achieve great things.
They may be achieved or not, but we can propose and fight for them.
Therefore, to speak of community
is to speak of the need to fight for a better social outlook.
That of the common creation of a better future
for all citizens,
even with greater control over power.
They tried to make a better world, if we understand a better world
as one in which individuals
are not subject to the arbitrary rule of the powerful.
They say if you lie down in the fields
You can still hear The rumbling of horses
They say that the fields Howl and blaspheme
That the sleeping gods Bleed in the ruins
A violet syrup that glistens
That shines along roads and paths
That blinds the eagles in the clouds
They say the frost glows tenderly
Because it still remembers The warm trembling of bodies
That the flint sings And recites a poem of flame and future
That the tinder smiles and muses
Its tune of freedom, of fire and smoke
The shepherds say that a storm of seeds
Can already be glimpsed in January
A storm of kisses and fists
A fraternal and communal thunder
Who knows if the storks Will return for San Blas
If the March frosts Will carry away the buds
If the comunero flames Will crackle again
The older the tinder The easier it will ignite
The older the tinder And the harder the flint
Even if the pine groves burned We'd still have the holm oak grove