The Catholic Monarchs needed to appease their domains. So they set up a state network of brothels

To his abundant and very distinguished titles, an overwhelming list in which he accumulated the conditions of bachelor, knight captain, royal captain or perpetual alderman, Alonso Yanez Fajardoalias ‘El Granadino’, added around 1490 what was probably his most profitable position: that of the kingdom’s greatest whoremonger.

After the successful campaign of 1486 and as reward for help that he had lent in the taking of Loja and he would still lend until 1492 to take over the squares of Baza, Málaga or Almería, the Catholic Monarchs decided to grant the brave captain the income from the brothels of the Kingdom of Granada.

It wasn’t a bad perk. And the best proof is that still today, more than five centuries after his death, Fajardo is not known so much for his official rank of the Catholic Monarchs as for his business in brothels. Such weight came to have in brothels, that over time it has been nicknamed ‘the lord of whores’, ‘official hooker’ either ‘Fajardo Putero’as they referred to him among the soldiers.

By trade: major porter

Painting by Étienne Jeaurat showing French prostitutes taken to the police station.

The most curious thing is not, however, that Alonso Yáñez Fajardo, bastard son of the mayor of Lorca, decided to take a cut of the rich business of brothels in the Kingdom of Granada, an activity that he ended up managing through administrators who favored all kinds of excesses. If there is something really striking in the case, it is that he did it with the approval of the Court and that his were only a drop in the bucket. the network of brothels that worked during the reign of Isabel and Fernando.

As I remembered recently the newspaper abcin Aragon and Castilla there were already regulated brothels, spaces in which that “lesser evil” was tolerated —in the words of Saint Augustine himself— with whom you wanted avoid other problems seen worse by the authorities, such as adultery, kidnapping or rape. His Catholic Majesties seemed to recognize in that a formula that was well worth exporting to other troubled regions. And they did not hesitate to apply it.

“The link between stately gangs and ruffians created a climate of widespread conflict that was very present in the pacification policies of the Kingdom during the 15th century. In this environment of late-medieval crisis, we understand the initiative undertaken by the Catholic Monarchs to legalize prostitution, promoting themselves the creation of brothels to the point of rewarding the most loyal gentry with their monopoly”, explains the historian Milagros León in a 2022 article dedicated to the Castilian mancebías of the 17th century.

Gentlemen and municipal authorities launched into the work of regulating brothels in detail, which in turn allowed the Court to benefit doubly from the carnal business, as abounds Melagros León: the Crown was able to make it profitable in its favor and incidentally turned it into an “escape valve”, a way of quelling riots and preserving order. Or try, at least.

The Court did not even hesitate to pull laws to encourage prostitution to concentrate in brothels. In the Courts of Madrigal in 1476, the Catholic Monarchs determined that clandestine prostitutes should pay double than the public ones: 24 maravedís per year compared to 12 for the latter.

To legislate the brothels of all Castile, the ordinances of Seville were taken as a model, a city that housed the busiest brothel in the country. The result was the Pragmática of 1571, already granted by the monarch Felipe II, and a regulation that forced to control the state of health of the prostitutes or the payment of what is known as the “right of partridges”, the rent that the workers had to pay to the bailiffs of the council in exchange for their protection.

“To avoid excesses, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities decided to create municipal brothels,” explained the historian Andrés Moreno Mengíbar in 2000 a The country. With this backdrop, the Catholic Monarchs urged towns like Écija, Carmona or Cádiz to create mancebías and, among other perks in payment for their services, they granted Fajardo the monopoly of those distributed throughout Granada.

Brothel by brothel, the south was equipping itself with a dense network during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moreno Mengíbar calculates that only in Seville came to speak in the mid-16th century about a hundred of pharmacies, the name by which the houses where the prostitutes resided in exchange for the payment of rent were known.

If there is one point that stands out on the map of the 16th century European carnal market, it is, however, Valencia. There was an enormous brothel that —if we trust the Flemish traveler Antonie de Lalaingwho visited him in October 1501—accommodated “between 200 and 300” workers. “It’s as big as a small town”, highlighted the astonished courtier from Flanders, who details that the macrobrothel It was made up of several hostels spread over several streets, all organized.

Neither Valencia, nor Granada nor Seville were in any case isolated redoubts.

It is said that during the reign of Felipe III they were distributed throughout Madrid 800 brothelshouses open day and night in which wives authorized to work as such exercised, something for which certain well-defined requirements had been established: going from 12 years, being an orphan or of unknown parents and not coming from a noble birth. Such a climate of permissiveness did not last forever, of course: the panorama took a turn with the monarch Felipe IV (1605-1665), who is said to have was shocked learning about the dissolute life of the Ottoman ambassador in Madrid.

in 1623 known as “Planet King” called such a network immoral and started a long stage of restrictions. That is, the same Felipe IV of whom it is said that he was a addicted to sexa rampant libertinepromiscuous and tormented who had more than enough children to set up several soccer teams: some calculations point to between 20 and 40; certain estimates reach a whopping 46.

But that is already another chapter of the national chronicle.

Cover image: Wikimedia 1 and 2

In Xataka: The first miracle diet in history was experienced by King Sancho I of León and made him lose 120 kilos