El puerto de Alicante y el control del contrabando en tiempos de Antonio Leguey, comandante de su Resguardo entre 1793 y 1799

Smuggling has always been one of the blights that has most negatively affected the Public Treasury. In the Old Regime, the «r esguardos » in charge of the pursuit of illicit trade, perceived together with other administrative and judicial officials, a part of their confiscations, which generated frequent confrontations of competences and by the distribution of these confiscations. With this background, the article aims to document the dissidence that come out in the bosom of Provincial Board of Alicante when, in 1793, he joins her the commander of the Reservation don Antonio Leguey, old  « guardia de Corps », that from the first moment demands a strict compliance with the regulation, what immediately generates disagreements whit less scrupulous characters in its execution and, from there, start a struggle that, with accusations and denunciations of by means, degraded the coexistence and service. The rarefied environment, plagued by incidents and intrigues, can be extrapolated, with its own nuances, to any other part of the national territory, finalizing the case that occupies us throughout 1799, with the death of some of its implicated, the retirement of the commander by royal order of March 8, and the removal from office Tobacco Income upon the entry into force of a new modality in the administration of the rents royals by royal decree of  September 25.