Cities of power in the Empire

Until the last great era of the Roman Empire, there was a less clear and precise definition of which were the administrative centres of the provinces than is often assumed. Such a situation was usually the result of a longer indirect process and not of a single official act. It was a factual position, and barely, if at all, a titular one. But the concept of "cities of power" is flexible enough not only to sustain discussions on whether there were provincial capitals, but also to include in such discussions the centres of the conventus iuridici and the meeting places of the concilia. On the basis of the Capita Provinciarum and the most important recent literature, two questions are discussed here: first, to what degree were the phenomena observable in the case of the Spanish provinces also typical of other provinces, and second, how have the new discoveries of the last two decades changed our image of the "cities of power" in the Spanish provinces.