1 Families who owned land would generally go to the notary on the occasion of the eldest son's wedding, to grant through ‘marriage contracts’ his rights as principal heir, as well as those of the secondary heirs, younger sons and daughters. In addition to giving this full legal coverage to the agreements reached between the two families concerning the marriage which was to be celebrated, marriage contracts usually included detailed provisions designed to ensure that the family's main assets were duly passed on from generation to generation. Conditions were frequently inserted in these contracts, establishing for example that the designated universal heir would only become so if he had legitimate offspring who came of age. See Barrera-González, A., Casa, herencia y familia en la Cataluña rural. Lógica de la razón doméstica (Madrid, 1990), 92–104.Google Scholar

2 See Barrera-González, , Casa, herencia y familia, 1–5, 63–73.Google Scholar

3 See Prat, J., ‘Estructura y conflicto en la familia pairal’, Ethnica 6 (1973), 133–80Google Scholar; Terradas, I., El món històric de les masies (Barcelona, 1984), 15–54Google Scholar; and Goldschmidt, W. and Kunkel, E. J., ‘The structure of the peasant family’, American Anthropologist 73 (1971), 1058–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See Barrera-González, , Casa, herencia y familia, 294–9.Google Scholar

5 Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, using data from a community in the region of Les Baronnies, on the French side of the central Pyrenees, shows with abundant statistical evidence that there exists exactly the opposite trend there, at least during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and she concludes: ‘II est clair… que l'épouse d'un “mariage-souche” est en moyenne plus jeune que l'épouse des “mariages-sauvages” des cadets… Un cadet se marie beaucoup plus tard qu’ un héritier, car il doit constituer un pécule avant de s'établir’ (‘Mariages-sauvages centre mariages-souches: la guerre des cadets’, paper presented at the Siena conference ‘Dimensions of in equalities among siblings’, July 1991). This is puzzling, since comparable systems of succession and inheritance exist in both regions. It implies that there must be other variables at work: ecological, historical, socio-economic, and that to come up with a sufficiently generalized explanation of those differential demographic trends is not easy. As with almost all other social phenomena, complexity is what characterizes them. More detailed, rigorous, comprehensive and well-contextualized analyses are called for.

6 A research project is under way which will incorporate, in an integrated analysis, data from all vital registers from one of these four parishes: birth (baptism), marriage and death records which run from 1655 to 1990 in an uninterrupted and complete series; a not-so-complete series of parish periodic ‘censuses’ (nominal counts by household of adults above seven years old), taken with the aim of recording annual fulfilment of religious duties, covering the period 1794–1980, and nominal lists of the civil censuses taken at intervals – irregular at the beginning – between 1859 and 1990. To these records will be added oral information about the life history of almost every individual in the last four generations, collected as part of the genealogical reconstruction study mentioned above. The Fundació ‘La Caixa’ from Barcelona has funded the preliminary stages of this new project.

7 The alternatives open to younger siblings in medieval England were quite analogous to those presumably open to Catalans, as interpreted by Homans, G. C. in his book English villagers of the thirteenth century (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), 139:CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Those who were not apprenticed to an urban trade might enter the Church or the Army, become farm labourers, marry into the household of an heiress, or live as perpetual bachelor dependents in their brothers’ households. Barring these alternatives, there was yet one other open to them: “Sturdy beggars, both men and women, were always common on the roads of old England”’ (as quoted in Goldschmidt, and Kunkel, , ‘The structure of the peasant family’, 1066).Google Scholar

8 What a respected Catalan historian has to say about the genealogical history of his own family is very much to the point: R d'Abadal, La Casa Abadal del Pradell (Vic, 1968), 15Google Scholar. See also Barrera-González, , Casa, herencia y familia, 160–7.Google Scholar

9 As an example, see Barrera-González, , Casa, herencia y familia, appendices B.2 and B.3, 394–420.Google Scholar

10 For a more detailed account of these data, see Barrera-González, , Casa, herencia y familia, 202–22.Google Scholar

11 It has to be said, though, that heirs in remote mountain areas and regions with high migration rates have recently found it difficult to attract marriage partners. In some areas this problem has become a large-scale one, posing serious threats to the future of the households concerned. (See the article by Dolores Comas in El Pais (Madrid), 15 02 1985.)Google Scholar

12 See Habakkuk, H. J., ‘Family structure and economic change in nineteenth-century Europe’, Journal of Economic History 15 (1955), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Bourdieu, P., ‘Célibat et condition paysanne’, Etudes rurales 5–6 (1962), 32–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 In Catholic countries, where people who follow ecclesiastical careers have to remain celibate, priests and nuns should in my opinion be included when calculating these ‘celibacy rates’.

15 Bobadilla, M., ‘Soltería en el Valle de Gistau y Les Baronnies d'Esparrós’, in Comas, D. and González-Echevarría, A. (eds.), Familia y relaciones de parentesco (Valencia, 1990).Google Scholar

16 Comas, D., ‘Sistema de herència i estratificació social: les estratègies hereditàries al Pirineu aragonés’, Quaderns 2 (1980), 25–56.Google Scholar

17 Prat, J., ‘Estructura y conflicto en la familia pairal’, Ethnica 6 (1973), 133–80.Google Scholar

18 Alós, Li. Ferrer I, Pagesos, rabassaires i industrials a la Catalunya Central (segles XVIII–XIX) (Barcelona, 1987).Google Scholar

19 Roigé, X., Curs domèstic, matrimoni i herència al Priorat (segles XIX–XX) (University of Barcelona, 1988).Google Scholar

20 Bourdieu, , ‘Célibat et condition paysanne’.Google Scholar

21 Arensberg, C. M. and Kimball, S. T., Family and community in Ireland (Cambridge, Mass., 1940).Google Scholar

22 Llor, Miquel, Laura a la ciutat dels sants (Barcelona, 1931)Google Scholar; Villalonga, Llorenç, Béarn (Barcelona, 1961).Google Scholar

23 As already mentioned (see note 14), to the numbers of bachelors and spinsters should be added those who followed an ecclesiastical career, making a total of 36 in Generation ‘B’ and 27 in Generation ‘C’. Overall 15–20 per cent of the total population in the municipality of Gurb remained celibate, a dramatic effect caused by the workings of the inheritance and succession system.