Gipuzkoans serving the crown

The new political framework of the Crown, which in the 16th century encompassed a worldwide empire, opened up possibilities for personal and collective growth in the service of the monarchy. Joining the armed services, whether the navy or army, went far beyond the frontier with France, the perennial rival, and many Gipuzkoans made it their career. Iñigo de Loyola was one of many descended from the nobility who sought his fortune as a soldier.
    
Another example is the Oquendo, who are associated with military and naval offices. Seamen from Gipuzkoa had already made a name for themselves, such as Elcano, the first to circumnavigate the globe, or Urdaneta who discovers the Asian route to America, as well as  many others. Constant wars and the conquest of America helped to provide (for those who survived, because the human cost was enormous) a combination of piracy, royal armoury and  iron exports to the Indias, as well as the import of American products a source of great wealth for a number of families.

Working in the Crown service wasn’t just limited to the armed forces. Many joined the administration.  Being of noble lineage aided access to civilian and military postings in the court and the expanding empire. As well as centres of higher education such as the University of Oñati  (1550) and others in Navarra,  primary and more advanced schools opened in numerous villas. It should be understood that these positions were two large extent distributed through the networks of clients and patronage established by Gipuzkoa families at Court. Rather than thinking of the individual, they thought in terms of the community, a community that began with the house in which was joined by lineage and by the ancestral home in which each member played a particular role. Numerous second sons who were not going to inherit were destined to perform certain functions in order to increase the family’s prestige and prosperity. And many of these opportunities were to be found at Court, society’s outer concentric circles of society, alongside the house, the villa, and the province.  In this respect, success at Court did not just mean social and economic success in the administration or the armed forces, it enhanced the power and prestige of the family in the widest sense of the word, and therefore the villa and the province and, at the same time, linked local and provincial institutions to higher powers.

The most notable family in the administration was Idiaquez. Many of its members went on to become Secretaries of State and occupied other high offices. Success was linked to the family network. For example, it was a Idiaquez who founded the San Telmo convents in Donostia, and his grandson would go on to become the first Duke of Ciudad Real (one of the Spanish grandees, a title held by only 100 families) viceroy of Navarra and captain general of Gipuzkoa at the beginning of the 17th century.