Koldo Trapaga Monchet

This research aims at shedding light upon the evolution of a unique natural spot of the Spanish Monarchy throughout sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Royal Site of Soto de Roma, located between Genil and Cubillas rivers in the Granada Kingdom, was shaped and managed in accordance to the political evolution and military struggles of the Spanish Monarchy. Furthermore, the article explores as well the various natural uses of Soto de Roma, from a natural spot dedicated to hunting activities to a forested area devoted to supply timber for Catholic Kings’  eets and fortresses.

Publication: Dutch Crossing, 2015, 39-1 (March 2015), pp. 3-25, ISSN: 0309-6564

In September 1517, Archduke Charles left the Habsburg Netherlands to make his way to Castile accompanied by his complete entourage, including the Household of Burgundy. After that date, other than during the occasional visit by Charles V or Philip II, the Burgundian service was not to return to Flemish lands, which prompted the search for a new model to hold the various elites in the Habsburg Netherlands together when the monarch was not present. Until quite recently, historiography had systematically neglected the study of the households of the governors-general in the Habsburg Netherlands in favour of the political history arising from the famous Dutch Revolt. Lately, however, this has been changing, so that we are now able to present a general framework describing the way these households were used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they searched for a suitable model. This, as we shall see, was bound up with the changing circumstance­s affecting the Court in Madrid and was modified as the dominant Court factions came to decisions about the way that the Spanish Monarchy should be organized and the various nations integrated into it. With this in mind, this article will examine the way in which the choice of one model or another enabled the Flemish elites to feel that they were involved, at least to some extent, in governing their own territories, and the difficulties that arose when they felt excluded.

In April 1617, in times of the problematic political articulation of the Portuguese kingdom within the Catholic Monarchy, Don Diego de Silva, marquis of Alenquer and count of Salinas, made his entry in the court of Lisbon as the new alter ego of Philip III. The beginning of the Thirty Years War and the active participation of the court of Madrid led to the strengthening of the naval squadrons of the Monarchy. The objective of this article is to give an approximation to the way the royal forests of the Portuguese Kingdom were used to remodel the naval power of the fleets of the Consulado and the Eastern Indies.

The traditional historiography of the Spanish Monarchy has studied the second half of the seventeenth century through the perspective of “decadence”. According to this interpretation, since the beginning of the reign of Philip IV (1621-1665), the Spanish Monarchy was not able to guarantee the survival of the Monarchy. However, the renewal of political studies had shed new light over the political configuration of the Monarchy in Europe and America. Thus, the political leaders of the Monarchy tried to set up a new system which could be understood as the reconfiguration of the whole Monarchy.
In the case of Catholic Netherlands, Philip IV was trying to find a solution from 1641 onwards. Nevertheless, the military defeats of 1643-1646 slowed his thought up until 1656, when he nominated Infant Juan José (1629-1679) as Governor General. During his stay in Brussels (1656-1659), Infant Juan José established a new political order which still needed to be continued. For that reason at the beginning of the 60’s, Philip IV named his son governor general during his lifetime. Otherwise the King was still reluctant to trust the governing in Flemish aristocracy.
Infant Juan Jose was aware of the political crisis of the Catholic Monarchy. Henceforth, he started off a new policy, different from the one his father had done before. Unlike his father, Infant John trusted Flemish aristocracy and used the royal patronage giving to Flemish aristocracy employs across the length and breadth of Spanish Monarchy. Moreover, he set up several marriage agreements in order to relate the universal government of the Monarchy to Flemish, Aragoneses, the Valencians, Catalonian and new elites. This policy was continued until the end of the century not only by him, but also by other ministers.
Therefore, the main goal of this panel is to analyse the political reconfiguration of Catholic Netherlands during the second half of the seventeenth century taking into account the importance of policies, religion and marriages.

In the last decades the Environmental history studies growth hugely, analysing among other themes human footprint in the environment. Throughout early modern period wood and timber were the most demanding raw materials. Hence, European Kings issued regulation codes in order to assure the requests coming from shipyards. Kings did not only regulate forests belonged to them, but also those whose owners were private individuals and body communities. In this paper we are focusing on the Royal forest (Real Sitio) Soto de Roma situated in Granada’s meadow.
In Castile reign forests lands belonged the king were known as Sitios Reales, whereas in Portugal coutadas and matas was the name given. Kings made use of them for rather activities than hunting, being a nature resource from where wood was withdraw for several purposes. Portuguese’s coutadas and matas had been studied in relation with shipbuilding, whereas the Spanish Sitios Reales have been mainly analysed from Art historians’ perspective. The Royal forest Soto de Roma has been received lesser attention in comparison with other Reales Sitios.
Soto de Roma’s forest resources played a significant role in the maintenance of Spanish Empire, becoming an area from which timber was extracted for artillery gun carriage. King’s fleets and fortresses artillery deployed Soto de Roma’s white and black poplar timber. Therefore, this paper shed light upon the Soto de Roma’s importance and its evolution from an interdisciplinary approach throughout early modern period. It aimed at exploring how the interaction of political policy-making, social environment, dwellers everyday life and Spanish Monarchy internal and external evolution affected Soto de Roma’s natural resources.

En las últimas décadas la historia medioambiental (Enviromental History) ha conocido un gran auge, al analizarse el impacto que ha tenido la explotación de los recursos naturales por parte del ser humano en la configuración de los espacios geográficos. La explotación de los bosques para la obtención de madera tuvo como consecuencia la deforestación de los bosques, con el siguiente impacto ecológico y mutaciones en el mapa geográfico europeo. Desde esta perspectiva, en el siglo XVI se produjo a nivel europeo una escasez de madera que obligó a los soberanos a desarrollar una intensa actividad legislativa tendente a reglamentar los bosques que formaban parte de su patrimonio y aquellos que no les pertenecía, sino que estaba en manos de otros propietarios.
En el reino Castilla las tierras que pertenecían al Rey eran conocidos con el nombre de Sitios Reales, mientras que en el reino de Portugal lo eran como coutadas y matas. La utilización y aprovechamiento de estos espacios forestales no se circunscribían a actividades cinegéticas, sino que constituían una fuente de aprovisionamiento de madera para numerosas actividades. Las coutadas y matas han sido estudiadas e interrelacionadas con la construcción naval, mientras que en el caso hispanos los Sitios Reales han sido principalmente analizados desde la perspectiva de la Historia del Arte.
El Real Sitio y Soto de Roma, situado en el fértil valle de Granada, ha recibido menos atención por parte de los especialistas de la materia. Por ello, el objetivo de la siguiente propuesta es realizar un estudio del significado e importancia del Real Sitio y Soto de Roma a través de  una perspectiva interdisciplinar. Se va a interrelacionar la articulación territorial del Real Sitio y Soto de Roma con la utilización de sus recursos naturales, desde las personas encargadas de su cuidado y explotación hasta su utilización en la industria de la construcción naval. La documentación histórica consultada permite reparar la evolución y cambios acaecidos en el paisaje a lo largo de la Edad Moderna, observándose una transformación paisajística como consecuencia de la explotación de los recursos realizada por el ser humano. Asimismo, pretendemos ponerlo en relación con la evolución político-histórica de la Monarquía hispana, desde el momento en que el Real Sitio y Soto de Granada fue incorporada a la Monarquía en 1492 hasta mediados del siglo XVII.

During the Modern Ages, wood represented a natural resource, indispensable to naval construction. Since the discoveries period, both Portuguese and Spanish Monarchies increased the consumption of this prime-material. However, the demand was superior to the supply capacities of Iberian woodlands. This matter lead the Iberian sovereigns to develop legislations concerning the safekeeping, maintenance and control of forests and woods (Sitios Reales in Castilla; Coutadas y Matas in Portugal). The union of both crowns, in 1580, by Filipe II, brought together two distinct traditions.
The objective of this presentation is to approach the institutionalization held by the Courts of Lisbon and Madrid during the 16th century, with particular attention to the reign of Filipe II (I of Portugal). During his ruling we recognize the establishment of political structures, regulated by the crown. This administrative changes had impact on the ordination of Iberian forests, understood as natural areas, source of a necessary provision of arsenals and naval dockyards.

Director: Álvaro Aragón Ruano
Universidad del País Vasco
El Congreso trata, por un lado, de evaluar cuál fue el papel de los suministros forestales en la construcción del Estado fiscal-militar español, con todas sus implicaciones regionales, nacionales e internacionales, y, por otro, acercarse a los proyectos y políticas forestales que a lo largo de la época moderna (siglos XVI-XVIII) emprendieron las dinastías de los Habsburgo y Borbones para impulsar y desarrollar las marineas reales y mercantes.

ForSEAdiscovery (EU Marie Curie Actions project) aims to reconstruct past Iberian forestry in relation to shipbuilding from the 16 th to 18 th centuries. The project comprises fifteen research fellows from diverse academic backgrounds to develop a multidisciplinary approach to data collection from archives, archaeological sites, and forests. The team is divided into three research work packages: history, nautical archaeology, and wood science. Our team of nautical archaeologists have been recording, sampling, and analysing timber from shipwrecks in order to provide other work packages with significant data. In this way, individual research projects are incorporated within the broader aims of ForSEAdiscovery, with the project's framework resting on this multidisciplinary team and the confluence of different scientific perspectives. Here we present two case studies of fieldwork during 2015. The Galician case study is based on the data collected from three wooden shipwrecks: an 18 th century French corvette, an 18 th century Spanish frigate, and a 16 th century Spanish galleon. The Portuguese case study investigated the remains of a 16 th century Iberian shipwreck washed ashore. These examples demonstrate how a multidisciplinary, international team has approached shared research questions, the lessons that have been learned, and how these can be applied to future multidisciplinary investigations.

During dredging works in the Ribadeo estuary of northwest Spain, in 2011, a large and well-preserved shipwreck was discovered. Construction features suggested a date for the ship in the late 16th century, making this wreck a remarkable find for Spanish heritage, as it is one of the best-preserved shipwrecks from that time ever found in Spanish waters.
Dendrochronological research on 29 samples retrieved in 2012 failed to produce dates for the timbers; consequently, the exact date of the ship and its possible construction location remained unknown. In 2015 additional archaeological survey works were planned for the site in order to document further exposed structures of the shipwreck, and to collect additional samples for dendrochronological research. Simultaneously, historical research was conducted in Spanish archives to search for documents referring to the wreckage of ships in the Ribadeo estuary in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
The results of this multidisciplinary research have led to the hypothesis that the shipwreck could be the Santiago de Galicia galleon built at Castellamare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy, in the late 1580s or early 1590s, and sunk in Ribadeo in AD 1597. Dendrochronological dates obtained for two planks date the construction of the ship after 1580. Construction features of the shipwreck have been compared to those reported in 16th-century documents for the Santiago de Galicia galleon; and, the potential limitations of our methods for identifying the shipwreck are discussed.

Combined dendrochronological and archival research revealed the history of construction and subsequent repairs to the roof structures of Segovia Cathedral, the last gothic cathedral built in Spain. Although this iconic building has been extensively documented by different scholars, the completion date of the 16th century original sacristy was uncertain. Furthermore, disaster struck the building on two occasions, in the 17th and 18th centuries. First, on September 1614, lightning hit the bell tower and fire spread through the roof of the nave. Then, on 1 November 1755, the Lisbon earthquake shook the cathedral building. However, the extent of the damage caused by these events was unknown.
Our combined research revealed that the trees used to make the tie-beams of the sacristy were cut in the late summer/winter months of 1676/77, one century later than the completion date, suggesting that this part of the original sacristy was renewed when a new one was built together with the offices in an annexed building. Furthermore, absolute dates obtained for the nave indicate that the trees used to build the current roof structure were cut in the autumn/winter of 1614/15, which implies that the 16th century original roof must have burned down entirely due to the lightning fire. A historical document registering the purchase of the wood to repair this structure in 1614 confirms this information. Finally, the damage caused by the Lisbon earthquake must have compromised the structural integrity of the roof, as the support timbers used to reinforce it belong to small trees cut in the spring or summer of that same year 1755. Archival research revealed that the roofs were inspected a few weeks after the earthquake, and that repairs were carried out in 1756. This suggests that the wood to prop up the structure was most likely purchased shortly after the inspection (probably in a nearby saw mill where cheap wood from trees cut in the summer of 1755 was available), and before the repairs took place.

Keywords
Dendrochronology Cathedral roof timbers Building history Historical research Natural hazards Pinus nigra/sylvestris