Fueros
fueros: Spanish for "privileges" or "rights". Not to be confused with derechos, as in human rights (derechos humanos or DD.HH.).
In medieval Castilian law, the king could assign privileges to certain groups. The classic example is the Church, whose members 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 Meseta organization, composed of wealthy sheepherders, enjoyed vast grazing rights in Andalucia after that land was "reconquered" (q.v., see also history of Castile) from the Muslims. Lyle N. McAlister writes in Spain and Portugal in the New World that the Meseta's fuero helped impede the economic development of southern Spain, creating the pressure that encouraged Spaniards to emigrate to the New World.
The military had similar fueros (c.f. 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.
The cry for fueros (meaning regional autonomy) was one of the demands of the Carlists of the 19th century. The old conflict between unitarianism and federalism in Spain was handled in the post-Franco constitution by the establishment of autonomous communities (e.g. Castile, Catalonia, Valencia, etc).
