2017

Angel Fuentes

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

El monasterio de los Jerónimos de Santa María de Belem en contexto. Propaganda, escenografía y legitimación dinástica en tiempos del Rey Don Manuel

Carlos Lixó Gómez

Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Landscape and documentation: a historical reading of high-medieval fortifications in Galicia

[Titulo original: Paisagem e documentação: uma leitura histórica das fortificações alto-medievais na Galiza]

Gonzalo Escudero Manzano

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

“The local communities on the late Medieval Douro borders and their relationships with the kingdom of Leon and the califate of Cordoba (10th-11th centuries)”

The objective of this project is to analyse the expansion and settlement of the central powers (of Leon and Cordoba) over the late Medieval local communities in south Douro. The premise is that this process did not take place in a demographic vacuum nor with disorganised communities even while the central authority remained a diffused concept, projected in many ways in the territory through negotiations with local leaders. Therefore, the intentions here involve reviewing the role played by the central authority in reformulating the actions and agency of the rural population. This perspective may serve to highlight the roe of the internal social hierarchies and their assimilation into central political structures. Thus, the project seeks to obtain responses for the different models of establishing central rule over rural entities in border environments, the formulas for mutual political recognition among both scales of power and the establishing of clientele networks between the kings of Leon and the califates of Córdoba with the local representatives of these communities. Based on recourse to chronicles, documentation and archaeological findings, we may analyse the extent of central authority involvement in these societies, the exchanges and the mixed materials and the steady abandoning of their own cultural expressions. Furthermore, this serves to set out a cartography with the goal of observing the regional dynamics and the diachronic evolution of the settlement of central authorities over these spaces.

Biographic note
Graduating in History from the University of Salamanca and with an international doctoral degree in History and Archaeology from UCM – Complutense University of Madrid, his main line of research approaches the formation, expansion and implementation of Asturian-Leonese power over rural communities, with particular attention to the role of the royal delegates and local representatives. He has co-organised various seminars and debates about medieval studies and participated in different research projects about rural society in the northwest of the peninsula over the course of time. He is currently studying the relationships between the population on the Late Medieval Douro borders with the kingdom of Leon and the califate of Cordoba on a support grant for the requalification of the Spanish university system financed by the national Ministry of Universities.