The concern with the mapping of Spain was part of the inventory of resources which marked the growth of the early modern state. One critical aspect of the same process was a new attention to population. Echoing a familiar theme, the Venetian ambassador Mocenigo noted in 1631 that ‘the Spains, the states of this king in Italy and all the Spaniards scattered throughout the Indies do not come to two-thirds of the twenty million people’ on which the arch-enemy France could count.1 Since the classical geographer Strabo, whose ideas had been given a new lease of life by Giovanni Botero (1589), the geography (and warlike temper) of Spain was held to be inimical to cities and to a numerous population. In an age when populousness was associated with prosperity and the arts of peace, Spain’s lack of people tended to be held up as a reproach. ‘All nations marvel at the decline of our population,’ wrote the later president of the Council of Castile, the count of Campomanes in 1774-though, in a change of emphasis which would mark the advent of modern times, he warned that a numerous population by itself was not necessarily a good thing.2