The aim of this contribution is the presentation of the political conflicts between the Archbishop of Lima, Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo (1538–1606), together with his faithful collaborator the parish priest Alonso de Huerta, and the cathedral chapter. Though the chapter was a sort of senate or permanent council of the diocese clergy, it by no means acted as an institution involved in the missionary commitments of Archbishop Mogrovejo. On the contrary, its members rallied around against what they considered to be a violation of their economic privileges, and on several instances they denounced the Archbishop, as well as the parish priest Alonso de Huerta, arguing that they intruded in the internal rules of the chapter.

The financial struggles that Castilla underwent during the second half of the 16th century forced the Crown to look for new ways of funding. The monetary changes encompassed the use of copper coins known as piezas de vellón. . Throughout the 17th century, there were 25 laws decreed altering in one way or the other the monetary value of the coins. These adjustments did not go unnoticed, having a direct impact on the monetary system creating instability and dramatic price fluctuations, on top of countless protests and rejections. The Government, conscious of the severity of the situatíon, made several attempts to resolve the imbalances, which only triumphed once the underlying fiscal problems disappeared. We see in this century co-ordination between monetary and fiscal policy in which monetary policy had to finance the deficit incurred by the fiscal authorities.

This article tries to establish the chronology and dynamics of the 17th century economic depression in the region of Evora, in Southern Portugal. By examining a set of key variables –vital statistics, prices of foodstuffs and farm rents– the onset of the depression is located in the last decade of 16th century, and its continuation up to 1660 is attested. A number of attempts to recovery are detected, but all of them were checked by poor harvests, sometimes joined by plague and war. On the whole, high prices of foodstuffs appear to be associated with signals of depression in the behaviour of other variables. This seems to indicate that these price increases were supply-driven, rather than demand-driven, weighting heavily on the incomes of most families, whereas small farmers were unable to take advantage of these seemingly favourable conjunctures.

Silver coins were an excellent instrument of payment in the seventeenth century, but given its high weight and value, its use and transport involved high risks and costs. Is it possible to estimate those costs? So far, we know how much the Spanish Crown paid to its bankers for money transport, but how much did the bankers themselves pay? And how much did other economic agents pay? What was cheaper: the use of bills of exchange or that of coins? How did the export of precious metals work in Spain?

Miguel de Cervantes placed some passages of his masterpiece in Catalonia. Nevertheless, the features he uses to approach the Catalan reality -halfwaybetween 16th and 17th centuries- are obviously influenced by Don Quixote's personality. At that time, the Catalan economy was making its way in every sphere of activity which could operate at a profit. Far away from that magnificent Middle Ages, agriculture had to be rearranged and it was necessary to promote the most competitive products and to try to find markets for them. New generations devoted themselves to this purpose, people who were equally distant from the old patrician oligarchies and from the fickleness of the marginal nobility. They were laying, perhaps without knowing it, the path to modernity.