SPANISH CENSUS.

£2,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Censo Español First edition of Spain's first nationwide census, the census of 1787. The first census in Spain was undertaken in Castile as early as 1594, and there was a census of the Spanish Empire in 1776, but this was the first which embraced the whole country. It is sometimes known as the Census of Floridablanca, after the reformist prime minister Count Floridablanca under whom it was undertaken from 1785 to 1787. The 43 tables list the regions of Spain alphabetically, from Andalucia to Valencia, but also include the Balearic and Canary Islands. The data accounts for the number of persons, their ages, religious affiliation, and social status. The final population count is 10,409,879. Although the census did display modern demographic techniques, the attempts to classify the population on class and occupation proved too rudimentary - servants were not classified in any consistent way, and the scope of the hidalgo class varied considerably from region to region. Even so, the census was a considerable demographic achievement, and remains studied in modern Spanish demography; it is considered more accurate than the subsequent Spanish census of 1797.

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