Operational and accounting regulations in Spanish municipal pósitos

ABSTRACT Pósitos were institutions established in Spain from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries onwards to ensure continuity in the supply of grain (at reasonable prices) to sectors of the rural population of modest means, for whom they provided a vitally important subsistence lifeline in years of bad harvests. They were funded by a mixture of contributions from local municipal councils, from the Church and from wealthy individuals, and each pósito was governed by its own individual foundation documents until 1584, when a Royal Pragmatic (a type of legislation particular to Spain) introduced a common system of regulation to be followed by all pósitos. The main purpose of this article is to describe and analyse the development of the operational and accounting regulations applicable to pósitos and to contextualise the issuance of new or updated regulations against a range of background political, social and economic developments, beginning with the standardisation of the pósitos in 1584 and ending with their virtual disappearance in 1998. Although the bookkeeping employed in the administration of the pósitos continued to be in single-entry form, in association with related internal controls it was adequate to record the transactions undertaken by the pósitos.