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Dénia, discovering the furs: the history of Valencian laws and institutions

14 October 2022 - 11: 16

It is the fifth year that we have received a subsidy granted by the Ministry of Participation, Transparency, Cooperation and Democratic Quality of the Generalitat Valenciana for the dissemination of the Statute of Autonomy and the recovery of Valencian Civil Foral Law.

Between September 29 and October 9, nearly 200 people have participated in the series of five conferences, inserted in the program of events in commemoration of October 9, this year dedicated to the history of Valencian laws and institutions , analyzed with a gender perspective.

And it is that without a doubt the new millennium belongs to women. It is a hyperbole, however, research and the "History of women" had never been promoted like now. But, why promote this Story and, in your thread, why promote these Conferences?

After a very long period in which research builds a History, where men, hierarchies and powers are spoken of almost exclusively as issues that explain societies and in which women are relegated to the domestic sphere, where they carry out activities that are not valued as part of of the structural framework, it is clear that a careful, serious, or scientific interpretation of the historical evolution is not being made.

The absence of women in historical discourses is not only related to the difficulty of finding them in the sources, a circumstance that is strictly true, as we have verified throughout the conferences, but also to the conventions of traditional historical research.

From the conviction that it is possible to elaborate inclusive historical discourses from rigorously scientific positions, we have proposed these two conferences on women in the Valencian medieval sources and legislation, aware that writing about women will not end their invisibility but, at least, It invites us to reflect and encourages us to start new research methodologies that link women with more global historical processes.

That is why it is good to walk towards a history where not only the economic, political and social structures, traditionally in the hands of men, are essential, but must also take into account the private sphere: the family, health , domestic work, caring for offspring and dependents, maternity, breastfeeding, childhood..., all actions traditionally feminine and with specific weight in the historical evolution of human societies.

In this area it has been very gratifying to receive Carmen Lázaro Guillamón, doctor in Roman Law and Pepa Sanz Moncho, master in Advanced Techniques of Historical Investigation, who have dedicated, respectively, individual conferences to the analysis of the legal status of women in the Furs and of the medieval woman in the Marina Alta during the XNUMXth to XNUMXth centuries.

Carmen Lázaro Guillamón, through the exhaustive exegesis of the Furs, has carried out the analysis of the legal capacities of this sector of the population, women, structured around their vital future, such as nutrition, marriage and widowhood. She has shown that studies on women should not be reduced to the biographical analysis of the great female figures, but rather it is necessary to be in the analysis of the everyday life of the common woman, for example immersed in becoming historical-legal. And it is in this sense that the Furs hide some surprises, as we have been able to verify, despite what Fur VI-XI-1 says according to which The nature of the female is skinnier than that of the man.

Pepa Sanz Moncho's conference has presented an investigation based, likewise, on the systematic exegesis of the county archives: notarial protocols, tax documentation such as registers, foyers, morabatinos and peita, as well as legislation, Sunna and Xara i Furs, and literary sources . All primary sources, where the feminine element is scarcely frequent, but which allow, most of the time in a tangential way, to draw conclusions about the lives of women who are often driven away from their homes, their Mudejars, as well as the settlers who recently arrived in a world that was alien to them, the Christian women. Pepa Sanz Moncho has dealt with both of them.

Led by experts, the cycle has been completed with three open-air conferences accompanied by guided tours. Jaume Sau Moncho , art historian and official guide, has presented the material traces of the city that received the conquerors, Daniya. The route of the walls of the Islamic city has allowed it to urbanistically contrast the change produced with the arrival of the Christian troops and the costly colonization of the city.

With Josep Marqués Costa, archaeologist, we have entered a more than mythical landscape, we have taken a walk through the Pop valley, outlined by the Cavall Verd mountain, in search of the castle. We have gone from Benigembla to Murla, passing through Vernissa, to make contact with the farmhouses that have endured in time and space and with others that disappeared with the expulsion of the Moors, such as Vernissa or Canècies.

The cycle has ended with a conference given by Jaume Salort Ronda, historian, who has valued Dénia as the capital scene of the War of Succession and the first city of the Kingdom of Valencia to proclaim the Archduke Carlos legitimate king, with the name of Charles III. In line with the exceptionally detailed historical cartography and the History of the City of Denia by Roc Chabàs (1876), he has presented the different urban spaces and the castle, and how they were affected by the war.

Massu Sentí Currant
Director of the Dénia Archaeological Museum

1 Comment
  1. Luis says:

    «…..it is clear that a careful, serious, or scientific interpretation of the historical future is not being made….»

    If they try to reinterpret history by introducing the current gender ideology, it is clear that they themselves are not making a "careful, unscientific" interpretation of historical development. They are simply trying to shoehorn in an ideology that has no place.
    It is like trying to reinterpret the medieval religious ideology with the current one.
    A pity that they destroy history in this way and on top of that say that they were "macho".


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