In the struggle against the Moors the kings compound with the proud, free cities, conceding charters and municipal privileges in exchange for a tribute of gold or flesh and blood. Liberty and democracy are of more ancient date in Spain than in England. The charter of Leon, dated 1020, anterior to the great English charter, grants the municipalities an administrative and judicial jurisdiction; it recognises the hereditary rights of the serf in the soil which he tills, and his full liberty to change his seigneur; herein we see a modified feudalism. The first charters of Castile recognised the rights of the cities. In the councils of Burgos in 1169 and of Leon in 1188 the delegates of the municipalities figured; even in the Cortes of Aragon, where the Germanic tradition was predominant, representatives of the cities were admitted as early as the twelfth century. The overlord, who extended his protectorate over a city, did not despoil {40} it of its former sovereignty; the _Behetrias_ were cities or groups of cities which chose as their guardian a baron or warrior chief, without losing anything of their autonomy. The cities, proud of their privileges, united with the royal power in struggling against the nobility; thirty-four of them, in 1295, constituted the _Hermandad_ (brotherhood, guild) of Castile, which eventually numbered as many as a hundred cities. In ancient Spain we are always discovering something of the nature of a contract, a concert of free wills, a perpetual _concordat_ between governors and governed. From the Iberian tribe to the Roman city, from the city with its franchises to the villages grouped in _hermandades_, and from these to the popular _juntas_ which defend Spain against the power of France and organise an epic resistance, there is an obvious historical continuity. Local patriotism is inimical to ambitious constructive policies. Many peoples invade the Peninsula--Semites, Berbers, Arabs, Copts, Touaregs, Syrians, Kelts, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Franks, Suabians, Vandals, Goths: they become superimposed like geological strata, draw apart from one another in the mountainous parts of Spain, and convert the quarrels of provinces and the rivalries of cities into regional conflicts and racial antagonisms.