Townsend wrote in 1787 “Royal manufactures and monopolies have a baneful influence on population: for, as no private adventurers can stand the competition with their sovereign, where he is the great monopolist, trade will never prosper. The Spanish monarch is a manufacturer of
Broad cloth, at Guadalajara and Brihuega;
China, at the palace of the Buen Retiro;
Cards, at Madrid and Málaga;
Glass, at San Ildefonso;
Paper, in Segovia;
Pottery, at Talavera;
Saltpetre, at Madrid and various other places;
Stockings, at Valdemoro;
Swords, at Toledo;
Tapestry, at Madrid;
Tissue, at Talavera.
He has the monopoly of brandy, cards, gunpowder, lead, quicksilver, sealing-wax, salts, sulphur, and tobacco.”—(Journey through Spain, Vol. II., p. 240.)
[33] “It is made from wools of Buenos Aires and Peru. The wool of the former of these regions is the longer, but the Peruvian is the more silky.”
[34] A report presented by the Council of Commerce to the Marquis of la Ensenada, put forward, in 1744, the absurd pretence that the king of Spain maintained his factories “not for any State convenience or ad lucrum captandum, but in order to augment our own products, and diminish those which are imported from abroad.”—Larruga's Memorias, Vol. XV., pp. 70 and 247. Also see the conference delivered by the Count of Torreánaz in 1886, in the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Science; p. 27, note.
Several of the Spanish Crown factories were finally taken over by the association—immensely wealthy at one period—known as the Five Chief Gremios of Madrid (Los Cinco Gremios Mayores de la Villa de Madrid), and it is clear that the investment of a large amount of capital, subscribed by many shareholders, would of itself be calculated to destroy the narrow ideals and what I may term the individually greedy spirit which hitherto had ruled within the craftsman's private family. Private interests, in short, were superseded by the larger interests of a powerful company. That which I have mentioned was composed of the five gremios of the capital of Spain which subscribed the largest sums in taxes to the national exchequer; namely, the drapers, haberdashers, spicers and druggists, jewellers, cloth-merchants, and linen-drapers. For many years this association administered, on government's behalf, the alcabalas, tercias, and cientos of the town and district of Madrid, and subsequently (a.d. 1745) the millones tax, together with other important dues, and ultimately, as I have stated, took over, on a liberal scale of purchase, the royal cloth and silk factories of Talavera de la Reina (a.d. 1785), San Fernando, Guadalajara, Brihuega, Ezcaray, and Cuenca. The decay and downfall of the company was due to gross mismanagement, and indeed, the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish character render this people, even at the present day, but little fitted to embark upon commercial schemes requiring competent directors, heavy capital, and confident assistance, moral and material, from a large body of investors. Spaniards, as I have insisted elsewhere, do not pull well together; and so, early in the nineteenth century, the association of the five great gremios, which had possessed at one time many millions of pesetas, suspended payment of all dividends. It is fair to add, however, that this collapse was partly owing to the wars between France and Spain.
[35] In the reign of Francis the First, the importation of Catalan cloth into France was prohibited altogether.—Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières en France, Vol. II., p. 73.
Among the various cloths (exclusively or chiefly of the less expensive kinds) which were manufactured in the capital and country of Cataluña, we read of those of pure scarlet, scarlet tinted with light or dark purple, ash-coloured, carmine, and rose; of cloth of combed wool, medias lanas (half-woollens), serges, and cadinas or banyolenchs. But before the close of the fifteenth century the production of these fabrics had suffered a serious decline caused by the tactless government of Ferdinand the Catholic, and above all, by the introduction of the Inquisition into Barcelona. A privilege of Ferdinand, granted on November 4th, 1493, to the Barcelonese clothmakers, admits that this was the foremost and most useful local manufacture (“no y ha altre art ni offici que mes util done”), adding, however, that it had fallen into a state of sad prostration “owing to the indisposition of these times.” (Capmany, Memorias, Vol. II., Doc. ccxliv).
This was undoubtedly the case; for in a report of the city council drawn up in 1491, it is stated that good cloth can only be manufactured from good wool, but that this had now become a difficult matter at Barcelona, because the clothmakers were without the money to purchase such wool. In consequence, they appealed to the city (then even more resourceless than themselves) to help them.
Although it has become fashionable in some quarters to deny that the Inquisition contributed in a sensible degree to the decline of Spanish arts and industries, the following passage, quoted from the municipal archives of Barcelona, places the fact beyond all argument as far as this locality is concerned. The city councillors declared in 1492 that “by reason of the Inquisition established in this city, many evils have befallen our commerce, together with the depopulation of the said city, and much other and irreparable damage to her welfare; and as much more harm will occur in the future, unless a remedy be applied, wherefore the said councillors entreat of the king's majesty that of his wonted clemency he order the said Inquisition to cease; or else that he repair the matter in such wise that the merchants who departed because of the Inquisition may return, and continue in the service of their God, their king, and of the general welfare of the city aforesaid.”