ABSTRACT
Esther Pascua Echegaray examines the characteristics of the medieval Spanish economy and notes the increasingly dynamism of the urban sector within a dominant agricultural paradigm. Furthermore, attention must be paid to the institutional context, the market, the realm of political economy and the centrality of war. This economy does not fit within simple explanatory variables of crisis and growth. An important internal characteristic of the economic model within Spain was its regional differentiation, which was closely connected to the form of political structure found locally. Trade, across a number of axes, became ever more able to produce surplus. It was not until the mid-fifteenth century that the category of crisis has explanatory power with revolts emerging in both countryside and urban locations. By the period's end, the main features of an early-modern Spanish economy are visible, increasingly notable for complexity.
