The study of the Iberian nobility on both sides of the ocean as two separate realities is a deeply rooted tradition, whether analyzing what is usually known as "Indian" nobility or considering some (very few, apart from those exercised as offices of the Monarchy) of the activities of Castilian titles in America (i.e. Maruri, 2003, 2007, 2007, 2009, 2017, Felices, 2012). There are isolated data in such perspectives that allow us to think of a different dimension and dynamics, which lead to one of the main questions addressed by this project: can we speak of a transatlantic nobility in the framework of the Hispanic Monarchy? From this approach we propose the possibility of investigating the spatial continuity - legal, social, human continuity, etc. - of the nobiliary fabric on both sides of the Atlantic, taking as a reference the group that would succeed in its process of social ascension and wondering about how it was able to take advantage of - or overcome the difficulties involved in - this transatlantic component.
This research, which deepens and broadens the path of studies led by Bartolomé Yun Casalilla (UPO) on the Castilian and Iberian aristocracies and the circulation and role of the elites in the formation of the first global empire (Yun, 2002, 2009 or 2019, as well as Yun and Janssens, 2005), attempts to fill some existing gaps in the historiography and to advance new areas of research. It is a perspective of intertwined history that not only helps to break with a vision, today criticized, that emphasized the immobility of the peninsular aristocracies (see Yun, 1999 and Soria, 2000 and 2007, above all), but also to better understand the conjunction between change and continuity, as well as the process of social ascension, that took place in the elites of the empire.
Such a perspective requires a study of a general nature, based on a solid and sophisticated relational database on as many individuals and families as possible, and a study of specific sagas to see how the relationships between the members of these groups and how each was projected on the opposite side of the ocean influenced the rise of family trunks. This "game of scales" will create questions about the general from the particular and vice versa, and will allow us to discover complimentary and contradictory dimensions hitherto unexplored or little emphasized (Revel, ed. 1996 and 2005).
Director of the project: Bartolomé Yun Casalilla
English 
Spanish