La enfiteusis como forma de colonización en el mayorazgo castellano del marquesado de Espinardo: los señoríos de Albatana y Ontur (1751-1893)

It is a known fact that in Andalucia. Castilla, or La Mancha during the Ancient Regime, the lords of the land maintained complete control over the land which was lent to different cultivators on a short-term rental basis. In these cases, the abolition of the rights of the lords signified only the loss of their exclusive rights, private and prohibitive, for they consolidated as private property their respective patrimony. However, one can also find cases in the area of Castilla as well as in the dominions of Ontur, Albatana, and Agramon, holdings of the estate of the marquisate of Espinardo where the evolution followed lines parallel to those experienced by the lands of the dominions of the Old Corona de Aragon, and even in Galicia. The introduction of the emphyteutic relation as the only manner to colonize and establish rents in the aforemention dominions, made possible a dynamic evolution that was very different from that of the majority of the other castillian dominions because the enactment of laws that would permit the emphyteutics to rescue direct authority, with the collective payment to the titular head of the dominion, opened the possibility of definitive acces to all property by all emphyteutics, and therefore, to the disappearance of the direct domination which had remained intact in the hands of the land-holding class until 1893.