The current configuration of the province of Granada is the result of a long process of territorial organization that reached its culmination in 1833, by means of the decree of provincialization promulgated by Javier de Burgos, Ministry of Development of the government of the regent Maria Christina of Bourbon. Until that date, what now constitutes the province of Granada was integrated within the limits of the so-called Kingdom of Granada.
It is necessary to go back to the Kūra of Elvira and the Zirid Taifa of Granada as the most significant precedents of what later became the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, assimilated by the Crown of Castile after the end of the Reconquest (1492). However, it was in the transition from the authoritarian monarchy of the Habsburgs to the absolutist monarchy of the Bourbons that the territorial organization of the State became a recurring theme of great political importance. The absolutist conception of the state encouraged the development of a series of projects, either of a liberalism or conservative nature, which would replace the old historical kingdoms of the Reconquest with the modern Spanish provinces.
The former Kingdom of Granada will be an important part of this process, given the imbalance of its superficial extension with respect to other provinces and its internal heterogeneity, which made its supervision and administration by the central state very difficult. Thus, already in 1799 the Maritime Province of Malaga was created, which grouped the districts of the western part of the kingdom around the clear capital of Malaga, with a population of some 50,000 inhabitants in those years. In the other provincializing projects, the capital of Malaga was a constant tonic.
The size of the Kingdom of Granada was still quite disproportionate and in the constitutional project of Bauzá (1813) a dialogue began on the need to constitute a province in the easternmost part of the kingdom. On this occasion neither the capital nor the demarcation of both provinces could be as obvious a question as it had been in the case of Malaga. The options of Guadix and Baza as capitals of the new province were considered, but finally, in the provincialization of Cortes of 1822, the option of Almería was chosen and the border shifted to the east, thus including the high plateaus of Guadix and Baza-Huéscar in the province of Granada. Thus, the provincial division of 1822 was repealed by the restoration of absolutism in 1823, the territory of the former kingdom of Granada was divided into three provinces, leaving the province of Granada with its boundaries practically defined in its current state, only nuanced with the subsequent and final provincialization of Javier de Burgos from Motril (1833).
Background
Although there were earlier territorial circumscriptions, such as the Kūra of Elvira, which became the Taifa of Granada with the decomposition of the Caliphate of Cordoba in 1031, the birth of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada can be dated back to 1232, when Yusuf ben Nasri 'Alhamar' proclaimed himself Sultan of Granada.
The area of the Kingdom was about 34,000 km2, somewhat larger than the 27,000 km2 that the Christian Kingdom of Granada would be configured after the Reconquest. The Emirate or Sultanate of Granada extended over the entirety of the current provinces of Granada, Malaga and Almeria, in addition to border areas of the provinces of Jaen and Cadiz.
The frontier between the Crown of Castile and the kingdom of Granada was formed by a complicated defensive-offensive system, established by the Pact of Jaén and characterized by the construction of fortifications parallel to the natural limit of the Baetic System, with the exception of the Sierra de Cazorla and Segura, where the Adelantamiento de Cazorla and the Encomienda de Segura de la santiaguista were located, respectively, which formed the outpost of the territories of the Crown of Castile.
The extension of the Kingdom of Granada after the Reconquest was reduced to what today are the provinces of Malaga, Granada and Almeria, except for the district of Antequera and the current municipalities of Sierra de Yeguas, Alameda and Cañete la Real, which belonged to the old Kingdom of Seville, where the first two were included in the district of Estepa and the last one in the district of Osuna. On the other hand, the towns of Puebla de Santa María (El Bosque), Setenil, Grazalema, Villaluenga del Rosario, Benaocaz, Ubrique and Alcalá del Valle, today in the province of Cádiz, and those of Sill plate and Bélmez de la Moraleda, which are currently integrated in the province of Jaén, were part of the Kingdom of Granada.
This demarcation was only administrative and fiscal, since the kingdom of Granada, incorporated into the Crown of Castile, did not have any type of attribution over its limits or political capacity for autonomous action or decision, beyond municipal life and the vote in Cortes. The territory was divided into zones or partitions for the collection of rents and extraordinary rights for the Crown, in some cases based on the existing ecclesiastical circumscriptions. Thus, the following demarcation was carried out:
The city of Granada with the parties of the alcaicería, the major and minor rents, the cattle corral, the tithes and Alquería, the Renta de la seda de Granada, the rents of the Alpujarras, Almuñécar, Salobreña and Motril. Judicial district of Baza. Judicial district of Guadix. Malaga and its bishopric Almeria and its bishopric.
Another form of collection of extraordinary tributes –destined to military expenses– were the brotherhoods that had an important development in the 16th century. The numerous enterprises that Charles I and later Philip II undertook provoked a slight attempt at territorial organization capitalized in the 17 cities that were represented in the Cortes. In 1591,The first known census was carried out between 1528 and 1536 and is known as the Census of the Pecheros, although the Kingdom of Granada was excluded from it. a compilation of goods was carried out –known as the Census of Tomás González–, where Granada appears as a city with representation in Cortes –it will be the 18th city– and it will centralize the "province"The term "province" was used in the census of Tomás González, although it has nothing to do with the current provinces. of the Kingdom of Granada in the collection of taxes among its different cities, villas, places and villages that conformed it.
In the early Modern Age, there was no single criterion for the determination of the regional entities within the Crown of Castile: Lucio Marineo SículoLucio Marineo Sículo in his (1500), when distinguishing the different Spanish provinces, followed the Roman provincialization, while Pedro de Medina (1548) made another classification, in which the Kingdom of Granada was differentiated from Andalusia. The creation of the Captaincy General of Granada and the definitive installation as the Royal Chancellery of Granada of the previous Royal Court and Chancellery of Ciudad Real (1505), whose jurisdiction included all the territory south of the Tagus River –to the north it was the jurisdiction of the Royal Court of Valladolid–, indicates that neither from the political-administrative point of view was there any intention of carrying out any type of regional integration –an anachronistic concept for the time– that specifically associated the Kingdom of Granada with the Andalusia of the Guadalquivir. In 1525 the Real Audiencia de los Grados de Sevilla was created, with a lower level of jurisdiction.
Illustrated reforms
The Bourbon dynasty established with the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1715) was accompanied by a generalized reformist air throughout the 18th century, known as the Enlightenment period. The complex organization of the territory inherited from the Habsburg and the long medieval processes of reconquest and repopulation was archaic and irrational in many aspects, disproportionate and clearly insufficient for an absolute monarchy with increasing economic needs. Among the reforms undertaken was the realization of a statistical study that made it possible to quantify the country's resources and therefore facilitated their control and exploitation: the Catastro of Ensenada (1749), in which the 22 provinces of the Crown of Castile, including the Kingdom of Granada, were registered. In the same year, King Ferdinand VI reorganized the system of intendant, assigning one to each province, together with the corregidor of the capital (positions that were separated again in 1766). Each intendant would be assisted by a subordinate lieutenant or Alcalde mayor for the exercise of judicial functions.
The process of provincialization was also a tonic in this enlightened phase that will conclude with the project of Javier de Burgos in 1833. It is from this date, precisely when the provinces that will emerge from the former Kingdom of Granada will be conceived as part of a regional entity called Andalusia, along with the provinces of the Guadalquivir. La lejanía a los centros políticos de la meseta castellana, las distantas formas de repoblación con respecto an ella y el origen de la repoblación del reino granadino, serían algunas de las causas de la inclusión del antiguo Reino de Granada en los límites territoriales de ese nuevo concepto geográfico; que, no obstante, se limitó a la agrupación nominal de las ocho provincias y a su asociación en los mapas, y no implicó la creación de ninguna institución común ni coordinación provincial, ambas cosas completamente ajenas al propósito de la división provincial.
Floridablanca Census (1789) An example closer to the reformist period of the 19th century is the Census of Floridablanca. The project was conceived by the Count of Floridablanca, who in 1785 asked each of the intendants for a list of data on the territorial and civil organization and the jurisdictional division of their respective districts. This information gave rise to the publications of Spain divided into Provinces and Intendencies and what we know as Floridablanca's Gazetteer in 1789. The new provincial configuration did not bring great modifications in the provincial demarcation, but it did provide a better knowledge of the territory that facilitated the future provincial divisions. The main shortcomings found were: the great contrasts in the extension of the provinces as well as their spatial discontinuity forming numerous enclaves and exclaves. In addition, there was great complexity in terms of internal subdivisions and denominations.Examples of subdivisions are: alcaldía, alcaldía mayor, community, county, corregimiento, district, state, merindad, partido, among many others.
Spain was configured in 31 provinces or intendant that could be grouped statistically in 5 large blocks according to their internal complexity. The province of Granada was a clear example of disproportionate surface area with respect to other provinces of much smaller size. It was included in Group BThe provinces were grouped into 4 groups – A, B, C and D –provinces with a single internal subdivision–, composed of 20 districts or partidos.
Maritime province of Malaga (1799)
By the Royal Decree of 25 September 1799 –ratified by Royal Order of 22 January 1801 under the reign of Charles IV–, six new maritime provinces were created: Cadiz, Malaga, Santander, Alicante, Cartagena and Asturias. To these must be added the ephemeral Province of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, which was created in 1804.
These maritime provinces corresponded to coastal areas with a population center that had a port and that could provide a backbone for the adjacent territory and promote the development of the coastal areas of the peninsula. Another requirement was that the province from which they were separated should be extensive and also distant from the capital or separated by a mountainous feature.