Anonymous Noblemen: The Generalization of Hidalgo Status in the Basque Country (1250-1525)

Towards the end of the Middle Ages one of Europe's most important concentrations of nobility was to be found on the Spanish Atlantic coast between Asturias and Guipuzcoa. Many of these nobles were hidalgos, proud but impoverished nobles common in sixteenth-century picaresque novels a full four hundred years before historians turned their attention to them. This book (which is linked to over a decade of research by a team of specialists into the social, economic, political, and ideological tra…