ABSTRACT
Folklorists have also noted the democratic spirit in the folk communities of medieval Europe. Vicuna Cifuentes notes that the Castilians, in the times before Spain became an empire, "saw in each peasant an hidalgo" and that plebeians and nobles were identified in the same aims.4 In the term pueblo Mili:i y Fontanals includes not only the Spanish peasants but the "military aristocracy, which was also uneducated and extremely rude."5 The border ranchero also lived in a rude and egalitarian society.
