The apex of the institutional system was the monarchy, justified since the beginning of the reconquest as a legacy of the Visigothic Hispania in the Cantabrian cores: Kingdom of Asturias, Kingdom of León and county and then the kingdom of Castile; or Carolingian feudalism in the Pyrenees: Barcelona Condal Court subsequently principality of Catalonia, county and later kingdom of Aragon, and the kingdom of Navarre. This, in fact, had met almost all of the Christian territories early eleventh century, then break it up with the inheritance of Sancho III the Great among his descendants of Jimena dynasty, facing each other while being geographically expanded by Al-Andalus. By then the concept of hereditary monarchy was sufficiently settled to use it as a heritage institution within the vassal dynamics of feudalism, with all the limitations that this expression has in the Iberian Peninsula. The European influence that came with the Camino de Santiago and the Order of Cluny determined to be the house of Burgundy which ended entroncando in the western kingdoms (Portugal, Leon and Castile).The same supporting procedures (to which is added the very existence of the monarchy) were used to justify social dominance of the nobility (the bellatores or feudal defenders), with the higher clergy formed a single ruling class: the privileged.
The formation of the authoritarian monarchy culminates with the powerful Trastámara dynasty originated in Castilla in the person of a bastard, Henry II of Mercedes, boosted power by jealous high nobility to avoid the same concentration of power, which is also implemented Aragon following the Compromise of Caspe. The crisis of the fourteenth century had been determined to produce a clear separation between high and low nobility of noblemen and gentlemen, whose social prestige, when he could not be sustained in the control of land, was wanted with all kinds of proofs, habits, enforceable kings of arms, coats of arms ... if they could not be supported by those not hide their economic decline.after the revolt anti Pedro Sarmiento speaks of Toledo (1449). That legal discrimination remained a major factor of social cohesion fortiori even after the expulsion of the Jews (1492) and the Moors (1609) as a useful scapegoat maintaining the existence of the new Christian, provided that no escaping or the highest noble houses and the king.
