Why the Indies trade left Seville
Seville had housed the Casa de Contratación, the office that regulated trade with the Indies, since 1503, and it did not lose the business quietly.[6] The two cities argued over the Casa for years. The Guadalquivir supplied the practical case against Seville: ships were getting bigger, the river was hard to sail, and merchants knew that the bay of Cádiz offered better chances for smuggling.[7]
Cádiz had been climbing the system for decades, and Seville watched it happen. The head of the Indies fleets officially moved there in 1679.[8] In March 1717 José Patiño took up the post of Marine intendant of Cádiz, two months before the official transfer of the Contratación.[9] The Consulado de Cargadores, the guild of merchants who loaded goods for the Indies, travelled south with the Casa, and together they made Cádiz the commercial and financial centre of the Carrera de Indias.[10]
- 1503
Seville gets the Casa
The Casa de Contratación takes its seat in Seville.
- 1679
Fleets start from Cádiz
The head of the Indies fleets is officially moved to the city.
- 1717
Casa and Consulado move
The Casa de Contratación and the Consulado de Cargadores transfer to Cádiz.
- 1778
Free trade
The Reglamento de Libre Comercio ends the Cádiz monopoly.
What the monopoly built in Cádiz
The monopoly filled a walled peninsula with newcomers. Cádiz grew from 30,000 people in 1709 to 77,500 in 1791[5], among them hundreds of merchants, Spanish and foreign, who came from places as far apart as Ireland, Russia and the American colonies.[12] The departure and arrival of the fleets through the bay was a public spectacle that nobody ignored.[13]
400%
Counting outward expeditions to America shows how the trade moved:
The jump came with free trade, not with the monopoly. Between 1778 and 1788 exports from Cádiz grew by 400 per cent and reached 72 per cent of Spain's legal exports to the colonies[3], though by the early nineteenth century the city had slipped from terminal port to intermediate port on the American routes.[15]
José Cadalso, a merchant's son who wrote about Spain
José Cadalso was born in Cádiz on 8 October 1741, the son of a merchant who had left for America while his wife was still pregnant and did not return until 1754.[18] The family was rich enough for him to study with the Jesuits in Paris and Madrid and to make the Grand Tour that a young gentleman of the period was expected to make.[19]
He chose the army. Cadalso was promoted colonel in 1782 and died fifteen days later at the siege of Gibraltar.[20] Between his Grand Tour and that death he wrote satire, poetry and the Cartas marruecas, a book of letters among three invented correspondents: Gazel, an Arab who arrives in Spain with a diplomatic mission, the Christian Spaniard Nuño Núñez and the old Moorish sage Ben Beley.[21]
Don't miss · Activity
Cádiz Cathedral Tower Climb (Torre del Reloj)
Climb the Torre del Reloj at Cádiz Cathedral: what the ticket includes, the hours to check, and the view over the old town and the Atlantic…
The letters look at the situation of Spain and the Spaniards through foreign eyes[22], and they reached print as a book in 1793, eleven years after the author's death.[23]
In Los eruditos a la violeta an old father tells his son, about to travel, that it would be absurd to inspect foreign countries before knowing his own.[24] Cadalso grew up with a father who had spent more than a decade across the ocean.
José Celestino Mutis, the Gaditano who crossed the ocean
José Celestino Mutis trained in Cádiz, Seville and Madrid[25], then went in 1760 to the New Kingdom of Granada in South America[26] and stayed for nearly 50 years.[27]
Recommended tours
Tours are selected for quality, not commission. We earn a small fee if you book, at no extra cost to you.
A modern study of his life describes a biography that runs between natural history and commerce.[28] Cargoes of quina and silver, along with a superb record of American plants, reached Europe after passing through his hands.[29]
Deep dive · Article
Why Christopher Columbus Sailed From Cádiz in 1493 and 1502
Christopher Columbus sailed from Cádiz on his 17-ship Second Voyage in 1493 and his Fourth Voyage in 1502. Trace his fleets and medieval El…
In 1783 the archbishop-viceroy Caballero Góngora made real a wish Mutis had held for twenty years, a botanical expedition.[30] Mutis presided over it for 25 years, until his death in 1808[31], and its herbarium came to hold more than 24,000 plants.[32] The entomologist Edward O. Wilson found that his field notes make him the first person in the New World to study ants and their behaviour in detail.[33] Spain's government could not afford to print the Flora de Bogotá that grew out of the work, with its more than 6,000 illustrations.[34]
Where the merchant city still stands
Torre Tavira is the easiest place to see the trade from above. It belongs to the palace of the Marqués de Recaño, built in 1730, and was used to monitor shipping in the bay and warn the town of approaching ships.[37] The marquis had won his title by sending his own cargo with the Flota de Indias.[38] The palace later housed a drawing school from 1787 and, in 1812, the first seat of Spain's Supreme Court.[39]
The tower stands 45 metres above sea level[40], and in 1778, the year of the free-trade rules, it was designated the official watchtower of the port.[41]
The Casa de las Cuatro Torres, built between 1736 and 1745, shows the same ambition at street level.[42] Urban ordinances allowed one lookout tower per house, so the owner built four independent houses inside one building and got four towers.[43] Rooms there were let to people waiting in the city for their ships.[44]
The old town walk includes Torre Tavira. Torre Tavira's own site speaks of 134 watchtowers[45], and the roofline outside the tower is the best summary of what the monopoly paid for.