“Por bien y utilidad de los dichos maestres, pescadores y navegantes”: Trabajo, solidaridad y acción política en las cofradías de las gentes de la mar en la España atlántica medieval

Abstract

This essay examines some issues relating to craft guilds of seafarers in the northern Peninsula in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. First of all, we reflect about the historiographical discussions on
craft guilds, both in Europe and in Spain. After that, the chronology of appearance of craft guilds
in Atlantic Spain and their social composition are analysed. Furthermore, governance, their role as
labour regulators, their welfare activity and political representation of the commons, as well as the
continued support of the monarchy, which found an ally for its centralizing policies in the craft guilds
of the towns of northern Peninsula. It therefore follows that craft guilds were established in the late
Medieval Atlantic Spain as networks of mutual aid between individuals that consciously interacted
with each other in the labour, welfare and political spheres.