From genoese asentistas to impoverished nobles. Strata, marquises of Robledo de Chavela

Abstract

Any work dealing with economic or financial aspects relative to the XVII century in Spain, particularly regarding its first-half, presents to Carlos Strata as one of the most representative figures. Whereas almost everything is known about his business or his contributions to the crown, very little has been said on his sequent generations. This paper presents a reconstruction of his family’s history, which in somewhat more than one century (1640-1760) passed form the abundance to the “most extreme need”, form living in Madrid, the centre of power and influence, to the periphery. The trajectory of this family, exhibiting a clear decline, shows the strategies that each generation, according to their own circumstances, developed in order to, if not reverse, at least slow down that trend, trying to avoid what finally occurred: the public auction of the titles, lordship and burial, those attributes that in the past determined their access to the social leadership.