Divulgatón | Consenting to taxation, resisting power: lessons from the Middle Ages to the present

Paying taxes is part of our everyday reality. Bringing together two distinct traditions, the long historical experience and the modern conception that taxes had to be approved by parliaments, Benjamín Franklin wrote in 1789 that "in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes".

States, now and in the past, are conditioned by the need to balance their funding and spending needs. Also by generating, through fiscal and income redistribution policies, identification between rulers, institutions and citizens. In current terms this is "good fiscal governance", understood as the support of the Welfare State, subject to democratic control and governed by principles of legality and transparency. If that identification is not achieved, democracy is at risk and the State, today and in the past, is called into question.

From the INCOSIS research project of the Universidad de Málaga, funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, and integrated into INSEI and the Red Arca Comunis, we propose a micro-talk in which four specialists (Ángel Galán, Pablo Ortego, José Manuel Triano and Diego González) will address, in an entertaining and relaxed way, the relationships between the payment of taxes, legitimacy and conflict in the case of medieval Castile.

In reality, the great questions about taxes have not changed much: Who must pay them? Who is entitled to grant them on behalf of the political community? What tensions and conflicts arose regarding their payment? On what was it legitimate to spend public resources? How was the payment of taxes used in political struggle?

Historical experience does not provide direct solutions for the 21st century, but the long duration of fiscal systems allows us to explore all possibilities in the present and in the past. Knowing this past can help citizens develop a greater critical awareness of the complex political and economic realities behind something as everyday as contributing to the State's coffers.