Los interrogatorios de los Catastros españoles de la Edad Modernafuentes geohistóricas para conocer los paisajes y las sociedades

Résumé

The XVI century marks a milestone in the understanding of the world and in the collection of geographical knowledge. In both fields Spain and Portugal are two pioneers. In Spain, Philip II, “the king among the geographers”, as Richard Kagan called him, is fundamental. Under his rule several interrogatories are designed, completed, and sent to the different Spanish and American territories, the peninsular one generically denoted as “Relaciones Topográficas”. These interrogatories are meant to gather information of the territories and the people of the vast empire in which the Sun did not set. The XVIII century turns its eyes to the XVI and reformulates the Interrogatories with a more practical and economic vision, since the territory and the people are synonymous with resource and good government. From the State, two interrogatories are designed for the Spanish textual cadastres: Patiño and Ensenada. In this century, others also use this method to collect geographical information: well-known are TomásLópez’s Interrogatories and the Real Audiencia of Extremadura. In this work we perform a comparative study of the information contained in these questionnaires as geohistorical sources of analysis of the landscapes in the geographic discipline.