Fuero

The fuero is a Spanish legal term and concept; there is a similar Portuguese term, the foral.

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The word comes from Latin forum, an open space used as market, tribunal and meeting place.

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Fuero has meant several things: a compilation of laws, especially a local one; a set of laws specific to an identified class or estate (for example fuero militar, comparable to a military code of justice or fuero eclesi?stico, specific to the Church); a charter.

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It dates back to the feudal era: a fuero could be conceded or acknowledged by the lord to certain groups or communities, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, the military, and certain regions (most notably, the Basque Country) that fell under the same monarchy as Castile or, later, Spain, but were not fully integrated into those countries.

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The relations among fueros, other bodies of law (including the role of precedent), and sovereignty is a contentious one that echoes down to the present day. The various Basque provinces generally regarded their fueros as tantamount to a constitution, a view that has been accepted by others, including John Adams, who cited the Viscayan fueros as a precedent for the United States Constitution. This view regards fueros as granting or acknowledging rights. In the contrasting view, fueros were privileges granted by a monarch.

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In practice, distinct fueros for specific classes, estates, towns, or regions usually arose out of feudal power politics, and were (depending on one's point of view) wrested from the monarch in exchange for the general acknowlegement of his or her authority, granted by the monarch to reward loyal subjection, or (especially in the case of towns or regions) simply acknowledged the distinct legal traditions.

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In medieval Castilian law, the king could assign privileges to certain groups. The classic example is the Roman Catholic Church; the clergy did not pay taxes to the state, enjoyed the income via tithes of local landholding, and were not subject to the civil courts (ecclesiastical, i.e. church-operated, courts, tried churchmen for criminal offenses). The powerful Mesta organization, composed of wealthy sheepherders, enjoyed vast grazing rights in Andalucia after that land was "reconquered" from the Muslims (see Reconquista). Lyle N. McAlister writes in Spain and Portugal in the New World that the Mesta's fuero helped impede the economic development of southern Spain, creating the pressure that encouraged Spaniards to emigrate to the New World.

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The military had similar fueros; the situation was not unlike the distinction of military law today. It has been argued that the military fuero is part of the military culture of Latin America, which has been partially blamed for the various military coup d'etats of the 20th century.

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During Reconquista, the feudal lords granted fueros to some villas and cities, to encourage the repopulation of the frontier and of commercial routes.

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These laws regulated the governance and the penal, process and civil aspects of the places.

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Often the fueros of an existent place were granted to another, with small changes, instead of crafting a new redaction from scratch.

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In the 20th Century, Francisco Franco's regime used the term fueros for several of the fundamental laws (as in Fuero de los Espa?oles, issued July 17, 1945). The term implied these were not constitutions subject to debate and change by a sovereign people, but bills granted by the only legitimate source of authority, as in feudal times.

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Spanish: Spanish can mean:...

Portuguese: Portuguese is an adjective refering to matters related to Portugal. It may refer to the following articles:...

Class: Class may refer to:...