Editing Mesta (section)

===Conflicts involving transhumance===
Cereal growing inevitably competed with sheep rearing, and the movement of flocks from the Old Castile to Andalucía created conflict between shepherds and the farmers cultivating crops along migration routes, as well as those local owners of sheep in areas of winter pasture.<ref>Braudel, p. 92</ref> During the 13th and 14th centuries, the widespread introduction of the [[carruca|heavy plough]] in Old Castile led to increased cereal production and led to the abandonment of marginal cultivation, creating more pasture. The emigration of much of the Muslim population from New Castile to Granada and North Africa also led to the abandonment of areas of dry farming there. These changes favoured stock-raising, and there was probably enough land for both pasture and arable farming at first.<ref name="Reilly, pp.139-40"/>

Laws confirming the Mesta's rights and tax privileges were issued seven times in the 14th century. However the frequency with which legislation was restated under relatively strong monarchs, and the absence of confirmatory legislation under weak ones, particularly for much of the 15th century, showed how extensive was resistance to the Mesta's privileges, as it required the Crown's support to enforce obedience to the laws protecting its members.<ref>Klein, pp. 190-1</ref> There is ample evidence from this period of disputes over unauthorised tolls and encroachment on the cañadas, and ploughing of pastures which might only be used for a few months a year.<ref>Klein, pp. 12, 20-1</ref> In theory, the Mesta had the right of pasturage and transit over all land except that in use for growing cereals, vineyards, orchards, hay meadows producing winter feed for cattle and land reserved for deer, but these mediaeval privileges had ceased to exist in reality by the end of the 15th century, largely because the frequency of encroachments on pasturelands and the numbers of unjustified tolls swamped the courts with far more cases than they could deal with adequately.<ref>Marín Barriguete (1992), pp.132-4</ref>

Itinerant judicial officials, each termed an ''Entregador'', were tasked with keeping open the cañadas and their watering and resting stations, resisting encroachments on public pastures and protecting the shepherds. Initially one such official patrolled each of the four main cañada systems, but their numbers were increased to six in the late 15th century, then later reduced to only three in 1650. They were initially appointed by the Crown to protect the interests of the Mesta and adjudicate in disputes it had with towns and the landowners along the transhumant routes. In 1568, the Entregadors became officers of the Mesta, and lost the prestige of being royal officials.<ref>Klein, pp.86-8</ref>

Flocks migrating south required stops for rest, feeding and watering om route and were vulnerable to excessive charges there, and to excessive rents charged at their destinations by owners of winter pastures. The shepherds had little alternative to paying or risking heavy livestock losses. The military orders also opposed the attempts of northern pastoralists to use winter grazing in their territories.<ref>Bishko (1963), pp. 62-3</ref> The strong monarchy of the late 15th and 16th centuries, which supported the export of merino wool, was better able to protect the members of the Mesta and the emergence of the right of ''posesión'' in the 16th century, attempted to control these charges and rents and guarantee shepherds access to the pastures at fixed prices, although there was increasing pressure for new arable farmland to be brought into use in the 18th century.<ref>García Sanz (1998), pp.82-4</ref>

Under the later Habsburg monarchs, there was increasing resistance to the passage of transhumant flocks. This led to the decline in smaller owners being involved in transhumance and the dominance of the Mesta by those with very large flocks, who had the money to pay for grazing along migration routes and the political influence to enforce their rights. The towns en route either tried to dissuade or divert transhumant flocks from their territory, or to extract as much as they could by leasing their pastures for flocks on their way to and from the south.<ref>Marín Barriguete (1992), pp 134-5</ref> Although, in theory, the Mesta's legal rights were clear and the association had an impressive apparatus to enforce them, these rights were breached when routes of the cañadas were moved away to fertile pastures or restricted to below their legal width, and illegal dues were imposed. Even where the Mesta's right were restored after lengthy court proceedings, those that had infringed them usually received no financial or other  penalty.<ref>Marín Barriguete (1992), pp 137-8</ref> Both summer and winter pastures used by transhumant sheep were supposed to remain unploughed and unsown, as was reconfirmed by a royal decree of 1748. In the 18th century, this uncultivated land came under great pressure as the numbers of transhumant sheep doubled, but rents for pasture were fixed and the land could not be used for crops.<ref>Simpson, pp. 63-57</ref>

During the 17th century, the powers and incomes of the Entregadors were steadily eroded by the courts, and the government granted exemptions from the Entregadors' jurisdiction to towns willing to pay for them and, by the end of that century they were virtually powerless against the courts and exempted towns, although the office remained in existence for another century.<ref>Klein, pp.122-4, 132-4</ref> By the start of the 18th century, local officials had taken over control of their towns’ grazing grounds, and had enclosing them on the basis that they were so covered with undergrowth as to be useless as pasturage, whether or mot this was accurate. By this time, the Mesta had suffered severely from the general economic decay of the 17th century, and its weakened Entregadors could no longer successfully oppose these local interests.<ref>Klein, pp.97, 105</ref>