I. The Cortes of Castile

Extract

This will be a short account of the origin, growth, and death of the great parliament of Castile, the Cortes. That sounds a bit dramatic, but there’s nothing to be done about it, for the history of the Cortes of Castile has the elements of a proper tragedy: the self-destruction of a nation by pride, parochialism, and arrogance. One of my colleagues, now deceased, used to account for the aberrations of Spanish collective behavior by ascribing them to “Spanish individualism.” I can only guess that what he had in mind was that Spaniards, when they act in groups, act differently from the rest of us—in which he was certainly correct. Now, when group actions become consistent, formalized, and ritualistic, I call that pattern of conduct an institution, regardless of whether or not someone has taken the trouble to codify it. Institutions, then, have their origin and their being in the minds of men acting collectively.