The Black Death

The Black Death in the Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula in the mid-fourteenth century was divided among several Christian kingdoms — Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre — and the Muslim Kingdom of Granada in the south. The region’s population of approximately six to eight million people was engaged in agriculture, pastoralism, and the long-distance commerce that flowed through its Mediterranean and Atlantic ports. When the plague arrived from the Mediterranean in 1348, it struck a peninsula already shaped by centuries of conflict between Christian and Muslim states and by the complex interactions of diverse religious and cultural communities.

The Crown of Aragon: Barcelona, Valencia, and Mallorca

The Crown of Aragon — a confederation of the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia, and the Kingdom of Valencia — was a major maritime power in the western Mediterranean. Its ports, particularly Barcelona and Valencia, maintained extensive commercial connections with Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and the ports of North Africa. These same connections carried the plague to the peninsula.

Barcelona was struck in the spring of 1348, likely through ships arriving from Marseille or Genoa. The city, with a population of perhaps 30,000, was the commercial capital of the Crown of Aragon and one of the most important ports in the western Mediterranean. The mortality was severe: the chronicler Pere Miquel Carbonell, writing in the late fifteenth century but drawing on earlier sources, reported that the plague killed a large proportion of the city’s inhabitants. The city’s consellers (governing council) attempted to impose quarantine measures, restricting the entry of travellers from infected areas, but these efforts were largely ineffective.

Valencia was struck shortly after Barcelona. The city’s position on the Mediterranean coast and its role as a major commercial centre made it highly vulnerable. The mortality in Valencia was devastating — some contemporary sources claim that 300 people were dying daily at the epidemic’s peak. The city’s religious houses were particularly hard hit, and the disruption of pastoral care was severe.

The island of Mallorca, which was part of the Crown of Aragon and a significant commercial entrepôt, was struck in 1348. The island’s capital, Palma, suffered heavy mortality, and the rural communities of the interior were also affected. The plague’s impact on Mallorca’s commercial role was significant: the island’s position as a waypoint for maritime trade between Italy, North Africa, and the Iberian mainland was disrupted as shipping routes were abandoned.

Castile: The King Who Died

The Kingdom of Castile, the largest and most powerful state in the Iberian Peninsula, was struck by plague in the summer of 1348. The disease entered through the Mediterranean ports of the Crown of Aragon and spread westward through the interior. The Castilian cities of Burgos, Toledo, Seville, and Valladolid were all affected, though the chronology and severity varied by region.

The most dramatic episode in the Castilian experience of the Black Death was the death of King Alfonso XI. The king, who had been conducting a long siege of the Muslim-held city of Gibraltar, contracted plague in his camp in March 1350 and died on 26 March — the only reigning European monarch known to have perished in the Black Death. His death was a political catastrophe: his successor, Pedro I (later known as “Pedro the Cruel”), was only fifteen years old, and the kingdom was plunged into a period of factional conflict that would culminate in a civil war and Pedro’s eventual murder in 1369.

The Castilian chronicler Pero López de Ayala, who lived through the plague and later wrote a detailed history of the reign of Pedro I, described the epidemic’s impact with characteristic precision. He recorded that the plague struck the king’s camp at Gibraltar and killed many of his soldiers and courtiers. The siege was abandoned after the king’s death, and the Christian advance against Granada was halted for a generation.

The mortality rates in Castile are difficult to establish with precision, as the kingdom’s administrative records are less detailed than those of the Crown of Aragon or England. However, the evidence of farm abandonment, the decline in tax revenues, and the disruption of the wool trade — Castile’s principal export — all suggest that the demographic impact was severe, with mortality rates comparable to those elsewhere in Europe.

Portugal

Portugal, on the Atlantic coast of the peninsula, was struck by plague in late 1348 or early 1349. The disease likely entered through the port of Lisbon, which maintained maritime connections with the ports of the Mediterranean and northern Europe. The mortality in Lisbon was significant, though precise figures are lacking.

The Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes, writing in the early fifteenth century, described the plague’s impact on the kingdom. He recorded that King Afonso IV lost members of his court to the disease and that the epidemic disrupted the kingdom’s commercial and administrative life. The economic consequences included the disruption of the wine and salt trades, which were the mainstays of the Portuguese export economy.

Portugal’s relatively small population — perhaps one to one and a half million — meant that the absolute number of deaths was lower than in the larger kingdoms, but the proportional impact was comparable. The labour shortages that followed the plague affected Portuguese agriculture and contributed to the kingdom’s increasing reliance on maritime commerce and, eventually, overseas exploration.

The Kingdom of Granada

The Muslim Kingdom of Granada, the last surviving Islamic state in the Iberian Peninsula, was affected by the plague, though the evidence is less detailed than for the Christian kingdoms. The Granadan physician and historian Ibn al-Khatib (1313–1374), who served as vizier to the Nasrid sultans, wrote one of the most remarkable medical treatises of the plague era. His Muqni’at al-sa’il ‘an al-marad al-ha’il (“A Persuader for the Questioner Concerning the Dread Disease”) argued forcefully that plague was contagious, citing empirical evidence from his observations in Granada and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Ibn al-Khatib’s contemporary, the physician Ibn Khatima of Almería, independently reached similar conclusions about the contagiousness of plague. Both scholars challenged the prevailing theological opinion — shared by many Muslim and Christian authorities — that disease was a direct act of God and not transmitted between individuals. Their work represents one of the most sophisticated medical analyses of the plague produced anywhere in the medieval world.

The plague’s impact on Granada was significant, though the kingdom’s mountainous terrain and its relatively limited commercial connections to the plague-affected regions of Europe may have provided some protection. The Nasrid dynasty survived the epidemic and continued to rule Granada until the Christian conquest of 1492.

The Impact on the Reconquista

The Black Death had a significant, though indirect, impact on the Reconquista — the centuries-long Christian campaign to conquer the Muslim territories of the Iberian Peninsula. The death of Alfonso XI at Gibraltar in 1350 halted the Castilian advance against Granada at a critical moment. The political instability that followed — the minority of Pedro I, the civil war of the 1360s, and the eventual establishment of the Trastámara dynasty in 1369 — diverted Castilian energies away from the war against Granada for several decades.

The Kingdom of Granada, though weakened by the plague, was able to exploit the Christian kingdoms’ internal conflicts to maintain its independence. The Reconquista did not resume in earnest until the late fifteenth century, when the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile united the two largest Christian kingdoms and provided the political stability necessary for the final conquest of Granada in 1492.

Jewish Communities in the Iberian Peninsula

The persecution of Jewish communities during the Black Death was less severe in the Iberian Peninsula than in the Rhineland, though antisemitic violence did occur. The Jewish communities of the Crown of Aragon — particularly those in Barcelona, Valencia, and Zaragoza — were attacked in 1348, and some were destroyed. In Barcelona, the Jewish quarter (the call) was stormed by a mob, and many Jews were killed.

However, the Iberian Jewish communities were larger, more established, and better integrated into the political and economic life of the kingdoms than those of northern Europe. The royal authorities in both Castile and Aragon generally sought to protect their Jewish subjects, who were valuable sources of tax revenue and administrative expertise. The massacres of 1348, while devastating for the communities directly affected, did not destroy the Iberian Jewish population as a whole.

The more significant threat to Iberian Jewry came later, in the pogroms of 1391, when anti-Jewish riots swept through Castile and Aragon, killing thousands and forcing many more to convert to Christianity. These pogroms were not directly caused by the plague, but the social and economic disruption caused by the epidemic may have contributed to the climate of tension and resentment that produced them.