Urban Society, Power and Political Participation. The Cities and Towns in the Eastern Transierra and the Region of Castilla-La Mancha in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

Political participation in the medieval urban world has been limited to the analysis of the group controlling the decision-making process. It is a partially correct approach that considers the role played in these processes by the lineages controlling the core of domination. But it is limited since it tends to focalize its analysis on actors that are aprioristically defined as privileged and to examine on a descriptive basis the multiplicity of formal and informal areas around that dominant center, not giving due consideration to these areas’ meaning in the process of sociopolitical and economic promotion of the actors present in these spaces. In this state-of-the-art summary, I will examine the various areas opened to the political participation of a group different to the central one controlling domination; and I will also consider the connecting links between the means open to their socioeconomic and political promotion.