Spain, Catastro de Ensenada, 1749-1756

What is in This Collection?

These are census records of the Spanish regions of Andalucía, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, and Murcia. The cadastre registers have been well-preserved. They generally includes information about the land, the income, the ownership, the assets, the head of household, and the heirs.

This cadastre was created when the country was preparing for a profound fiscal reform. The reform was aimed at improving the state of the Castilian treasury, simplifying the system of contributions, and making the system fairer. The idea was to replace income from the provinces by a single tax, which was intended to be universal and proportional to the wealth of the taxpayers. It was thus necessary to investigate the wealth of the subjects. The cadastre became the official register of the quantity, value, and ownership of real estate used in apportioning taxes.

The cadastre was divided into sections called: Memoriales (Memorials), Respuestas Generales (General Answers), Respuestas Particulares (Personal Answers),Libro de lo Real (Book of Real Estate), Libro de lo Personal o de Cabezas de Casa (Book of Personal Information or Heads of Household), Estados o Resúmenes (Quantitative Summaries). This cadastre is in the form of a register and includes the quantity, value, and ownership of real estate used in apportioning taxes. The Cadastre of the Marquis of Ensenada includes a description of the properties and the population—both the secular and ecclesiastical—throughout the 22 provinces of the Old Crown of Castile, which occupied 70% of the territory of modern-day Spain.

This cadastre is known in Spanish as the “Catastro del Marqués de la Ensenada” and was conducted between 1750 and 1754 by Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea, I Marquis of Esenada. He had been called by King Philip V of Spain as the Secretary of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer (or Minister of Finance) of the Crown of Castile.

Because the cadastre was made for tax purposes, you can learn interesting facts about the towns such as its principal industry, quantity and types of buildings, and how much land was under cultivation by examining the Respuestas generales. The Cadastre of the Marquis of Ensenada was taken by assigned persons; it is a reliable source for research in Spain.

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

Reading These Records

These records are written in Spanish. For help reading them see:

• Spanish Genealogical Word List
• Brigham Young University: Spanish Script Tutorial

FamilySearch Learning Center:

• Reading Spanish Handwriting
• Paleogra-what?! Deciphering Spanish Handwriting - Introduction
• Registros Civiles y Parroquiales (In Spanish)

To Browse This Collection

You can browse through images in this collection using the waypoints on the Collection Browse Page for Spain, Catastro de Ensenada, 1749-1756.

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The books of Real Estate and Personal or Heads of Household Names of property owners Places where properties are located and in some cases the names of neighbors A notation on the title page if there is an index of the people included in the cadastre Sons and daughters that worked on the property Type, measurement, value, and quality of the properties Number of workers Number of heirs

Memoriales de legos o seglares and Personal de legos o seglares Names of the head of household as well as the Name of spouse Name(s) of child/children Other people living in the home (could be relatives and servants)

Collection Content

Sample Images

• Spain, Cadastre of the Marquis of Ensenada
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