Political identities in conflict: the Lordship of Vizcaya in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

This work analyses political identities at the end of the Middle Ages in the Lordship of Vizcaya, examining chronicles and municipal documents from the period and considering symbolic or ritual elements such as heraldry in order to determine the different discourses of the day. It will then look at these different ideologies and see how they developed. Although a Vizcayan identity clearly existed, the analysis reveals how the pronounced make-up of each of the estates was superimposed against a background of intense social and political confrontation. The outcome of this confrontation is the apparent triumph of the local nobility over the towns and other groups, and the segregation of local authorities at the start of the early modern period.