{
  "id": "ordenanzas-de-bilbao-1737",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The Ordenanzas de Bilbao of 1737",
  "summary": "A merchant corporation wrote its own commercial law, the crown confirmed it, and the result was the most complete commercial code in Europe seventy years before the French one. Its court decided cases \"la verdad sabida, y la buena fe guardada por estilo de Mercaderes\" and refused to admit papers drawn by lawyers; its chapters cover general average and marine insurance; and one clause writes a separate, higher allowance for the trade to the Indies.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "commercial-law",
    "law",
    "trade",
    "maritime",
    "insurance",
    "spain",
    "americas",
    "spanish-empire",
    "institutions"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "manila-galleon"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-real-global-currency"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mercado-summa-de-tratos-y-contratos"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "gamboa-comentarios-ordenanzas-de-minas-1761"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "gardoqui-and-sons-of-bilbao"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-compania-guipuzcoana-de-caracas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "reglamento-de-comercio-libre-1778"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "consulados-de-lima-y-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "universidad-de-los-mareantes-de-sevilla"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "seguros-maritimos-de-la-carrera-de-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What were the Ordenanzas de Bilbao of 1737?",
    "Did Spain have a commercial code before the French Code de commerce?",
    "How were commercial disputes decided in the Spanish consulados?",
    "Did Spanish commercial law regulate marine insurance?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The code was made by a merchant corporation and confirmed by the king, and the printing read here says so on its title page: \"Ordenanzas de la ilustre Universidad, y Casa de Contratacion de la M. N. y M. L. Villa de Bilbao, insertos sus reales privilegios, aprobadas, y confirmadas por el Rey nuestro señor Don Felipe Quinto (que Dios guarde) año de 1737\". The copy opened is not the first printing: the same page adds \"Reimpresas con superior permiso. Madrid. En la Imprenta de Sancha. Año de 1796. A costa de la misma Universidad, y Casa de Contratacion.\"",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The confirmation recites a chain of merchant self-government reaching back two and a half centuries before it. The Confirmacion real of Philip V opens the volume and states that the prior and consuls of the Universidad y Casa de Contratacion of Bilbao represented to the crown that, having obtained a real cédula issued by Queen Juana at Seville on 22 June 1511, which itself inserted the one granted by Ferdinand and Isabella at Medina del Campo on 21 July 1494 at the instance of the prior, consuls and merchants of the city of Burgos, they had governed themselves in their commerce and jurisdiction by the ordinances contained in those royal cédulas and by later ones.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The first chapter is about jurisdiction rather than about goods. It is headed \"De la jurisdiccion del Consulado\", and transcribes at length, in quotation, the reales privilegios on which that jurisdiction rests, including the address of Queen Juana's cédula to the prince, prelates, members of the royal council, oidores of the audiencias, alcaldes and town councils of all the kingdoms and lordships.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The procedural rule is the most striking provision in the book, and it is a deliberate exclusion of the ordinary law. Chapter one, paragraph VI, orders that suits and differences between the parties be determined in the consulado \"breve, y sumariamente, la verdad sabida, y la buena fe guardada por estilo de Mercaderes, sin dar lugar á dilaciones, Libelos, ni Escritos de Abogados\", and without keeping \"la forma, y orden del Derecho\". No written demand or petition may be admitted until the prior and consuls have had the parties before them and heard their actions and defences verbally and tried to end the dispute; petitions afterwards admitted in writing must not be drawn, ordered or signed by lawyers, and where a paper is suspected of having been drawn by one it is not to be admitted until the party declares on oath that it was not.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The maritime chapters do the technical work that later codes are credited with. The chapter on averia gruesa — general average, the sharing of a sacrifice made to save ship and cargo — provides that the value of masts cut, and of sails, cables and other tackle lost or abandoned, be estimated at what they were worth when they were cut, broken or abandoned, by judgment and legal ascertainment; and that once the value of ship and cargo has been liquidated, the general average be distributed prorated sueldo á libra among the interested parties.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Insurance has a chapter of its own with an enumerated list of perils. Chapter twenty-two, \"De los seguros, sus polizas, y forma de hacerse\", opens by noting that in this commerce various contracts of insurance are customarily made, by sea as well as by land, in which the insurers take upon themselves the risk, damages and contingencies of fortuitous cases: as regards the sea, shipwrecks, averages, jettison, capture by enemies, detention by princes, barratry of the master and mariners, fires and others.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The code legislates against over-insurance in terms a modern underwriter would recognise. Paragraph VII of that chapter forbids anyone, for himself or in another's name, to insure a greater amount than the goods insured actually come to with their duties, costs to shipboard and insurance premiums, on pain of nullity of the insurance; and it provides that the insured must in all cases run ten per cent of the risk himself and may insure only the remaining ninety, unless the insurers agree to cover the whole and the policy says so — with the retention made compulsory again where the insured owner sails with his own goods in the vessel.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "One clause is written for the American run in particular, and it states its reasoning openly. Paragraph VIII allows that \"en los Negocios, y Comercio de Indias, y otras partes remotas, que por los grandes riesgos, y otras razones se pueden prometer ganancias mayores que las regulares de la Europa\", insurance may be taken out for the return voyage, over and above the principal interest of the insured, up to twenty-five per cent by way of expected profit, and not beyond that amount. The transatlantic trade is thus not an afterthought in the code but a named case with its own rule.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "What this volume cannot establish should be stated beside what it does. It is the text of a code and the crown's confirmation of it; it is not evidence of how the Bilbao consulado's judges actually decided, of how far the rules were kept, or of which other tribunals in Spain or in the Indies adopted them and for how long. The exclusion of lawyers' writings, read against the interest of the merchants who wrote it, is as easily a merchant oligarchy keeping outsiders out of its own court as it is cheap and rapid justice, and nothing in these sheets settles which it was in practice. The copy read is the Madrid 1796 reprint, so its readings are those of that impression.",
      "sources": [
        "bilbao-ordenanzas-1737-madrid-1796"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The history of commercial codification is normally told in English as beginning with the French Code de commerce of 1807, with the Spanish world entering only as a borrower afterwards. The Ordenanzas de Bilbao were confirmed in 1737 and were still being reprinted at the corporation's own cost in 1796, and almost nothing in English quotes them. This object reads the sheets: the confirmation that traces the jurisdiction back to Burgos in 1494, the paragraph that decides merchants' suits on truth known and good faith kept and refuses papers drawn by lawyers, the general-average rule, the enumerated perils of the insurance chapter, the compulsory ten per cent of risk left with the insured, and the clause that writes a separate allowance for the trade to the Indies. The counterpoint is on the record too: a court that bars lawyers is also a court that merchants control.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-11",
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    "name": "The Ordenanzas de Bilbao of 1737",
    "description": "A merchant corporation wrote its own commercial law, the crown confirmed it, and the result was the most complete commercial code in Europe seventy years before the French one. Its court decided cases \"la verdad sabida, y la buena fe guardada por estilo de Mercaderes\" and refused to admit papers drawn by lawyers; its chapters cover general average and marine insurance; and one clause writes a separate, higher allowance for the trade to the Indies.",
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        "name": "Ordenanzas de la ilustre Universidad, y Casa de Contratacion de la M. N. y M. L. Villa de Bilbao, insertos sus reales privilegios, aprobadas, y confirmadas por el Rey nuestro señor Don Felipe Quinto (que Dios guarde) año de 1737",
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