Forest management, naval need and legal-institutional confl ict: the Hispanic monarchy and the Basque institutions during the Habsburgs

Este estudio pretende analizar, desde una perspectiva jurídico-institucional, la pugna entre, por un lado, los requerimientos de la Monarquía de los Habsburgo por explotar los bosques vizcaínos y guipuzcoanos para abastecer de maderas a las Armadas que preservaban los extensos territorios hispánicos. Por otro, las necesidades de las poblaciones rurales, gestionadas por derechos propios basados fundamentalmente en la costumbre, que se sustentaban en los bienes que los árboles les proporcionaban, y fueron defendidas frente a los comisionados reales por sus instituciones locales o provincialesThe aim of this study is to analyze, from a legal and institutional perspective, the confl ict between, on one hand, the requirements of the Habsburg Monarchy by taking advantage of Bizkaia’s and Gipuzkoa’s forests to supply wood to the Navy that preserved the extensive Hispanic territories. On the other hand, the needs of rural populations, managed by inherent rights mainly based on customs, which were sustained with the consumer goods that the trees provided them, and were defended against the royal commissioners for their local or provincial institutions