Talk:Revolt of the Comuneros

Names
"Castile herself was in difficulties due to poor harvests and..."

Isn't Castile a place? Using "herself" could be confusing. CW 15:52, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if you can speak of a "Spanish state" in the 16th century (see Aftermath subsection). Spain was a geographical term for the peninsula, much as "Britain" is a term for a large island, long before it was unified politically. Anybody with an insight here? I replaced it with "integrated into the Spanish Habsburg domain" - but that seemed even less satisfactory and so have reverted to "Spanish state" - but that seems anachronistic. Charles never used the title of King of Spain, but rather King of Castile as well as calling himself King of Aragon. Would it be better that the line about "integrating" Castile be dropped altogether?   Rob 6-Jan-06 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.191.69 (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Have thought about a bit more - it still was the "Habsburg" as the empire had not yet been divided by Charles. Dropped "Spanish State" as it didn't exist. 7-Jan-06 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.191.69 (talk) 05:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Castile is a country, but She/herself "refers to abstractions personified as feminine, and also for the soul, a city, a country, an army, the church, and others." (see she) --Polylerus (talk) 22:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Rex Hispaniae
The term Rex Hispaniae is used all along the Reconquest of Spain (since Alfonso III, 866-910), but the "Anónimo Mozárabe" chronicle, in the middle 8th century, told us about the "destruction of Spain" by the arabs. I think the Reconquest made the abstract conception of a nation, Spain in this case, based in the idealized past of the gothic kingdom. This concept was only shared by the kings, aristocrats, and, specilly, the clergy. They incite the war against the moors, so the restauration of the spanish church can be achieved. Spain was an idea, not a State, an anachronism in the Middle Ages. In the period of the Hagsburg dinasty we have examples of references to Spain, not as a geographical territory, but as a nation. Quevedo refers to Spain as "mine fatherland" in one of his sonets, and Quixote tells Sancho that he will not find in Spain more than four to six knights errants. Spain is not an isolate case. The High Middle Ages were the origin of most of the European nations, some of them based with evidence in the ancient roman jurisdiction, like Spain, Gaul, or Italy. Instead, the present day idea of nation is not the saim that the one of middle ages or modern times. Everything changes with the time, we can't search for our point of view of the question in the past, because that of ours respond to our context. This doesn't means that our forefathers hadn't got an own concept of nation, who suits whit their era. Excuse my poor english.

V.M.A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.42.51.20 (talk) 13:27, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Page title
"War of the Communities" is a literal translation of the Spanish name for the conflict. There doesn't seem to be much English literature on the topic, but what little I've read uses "Revolt of the Comuneros" or "Comuneros Revolt of 1520-21." Checking Google Scholar...
 * "Revolt of the Comuneros" has 162 hits, albeit some dubious and some for revolts with the same title elsewhere, but some clearly on this topic;
 * "War of the Communities" has 4 hits. The ones that are on point, like this, are Spanish papers that have a translated English abstract at the top, and were probably mechanically translated.  (The rest is in Spanish.)

So, yeah. Moving it back here as the normal English term, and adding a hatnote for the other revolts. SnowFire (talk) 00:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Recent changes
Pat: Nice to see some others taking interest. Unfortunately, I disagree with most of your changes, but I can see why you'd make some. To explain my thoughts:


 * I don't see the necessity for a new disambiguation page. Comunero already has the exact same content, and furthermore, there are only two reasonable other possibilities.  I think the rule of thumb is that when there are three possibilities, that's too long for a hatnote and the page should be created; I think there's no problem with mentioning only two other possibilities.
 * Number style: Eh, I prefer the spelled-out versions. Apparently it's acceptable either way according to the MoS for short numbers a la "twenty" vs. 20 (MOS:NUM: "numbers greater than nine are commonly rendered in numerals, or may be rendered in words if they are expressed in one or two words (16 or sixteen, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred").  Not a big deal, but figured I'd register my opinion.
 * "Juan de Padilla" seems to me to be used far more often thatn Juan Lopez de Padilla in the history books; you seem to have gone the other way on this. Also, it's extremely important to say "Constable of Castile" and "Admiral of Castile" in the infobox, because that's the title they're referred to in most of the history books.  If anything, if we wanted to reduce the amount of space used, I'd almost be tempted to just say "Constable of Castile" and wikilink it to the actual one.  See Battle of Waterloo's infobox for an example: nobody actually uses his real name, he's just the Duke of Wellington.
 * "Joanna the Mad" is entirely the way she should be referred to, because that expresses extremely useful information about her just in her name! We save a sentence fragment of "Joanna, who was considered crazy, did blah blah blah."  Also, by using the title which she was universally known by, we save ourselves from having to decide whether to call it "mental health problems" or "madness."  Regardless of what she was afflicted with, it's universally NPOV true that she was called "Juana la Loca."
 * Not sure why we'd want to change Philip the Handsome -> Philip I; again, that's how he was known. More memorable that way, spicier writing.
 * Why remove the wikilink to Moriscos?
 * You uncommented this out: "A series of bad harvests and plague epidemics struck the land. Together with continuing fiscal pressures, discontent spread widely among all classes of the population. The area that suffered the most was central Castile, its agriculture struck by crop failures. The coastlines, such as in Andalusia, were still able to rely on maritime trade as a counterweight to the internal economic troubles. Burgos in the north still prospered with the monopoly its merchants exercised on the wool trade, a fact resented by others." That was in the original Spanish Wikipedia article, but eh.  I think the phrasing could be better, and there's already a fair amount on the economy in the article.  I had replaced it with the lines "A close correlation can be drawn between poor economic fortunes over the previous twenty years and the comuneros cause; central Castile suffered from agricultural failure and other setbacks under the Royal Council, while Andalusia was relatively prosperous with its maritime trade."  More succinct; I just had left the old version in there commented out by accident.  This article is already around on the maximum length for most FAs; it can exceed it, but in general, I'm looking to keep the text trim.  (Which will be hard, since I intend to be adding some more details elsewhere from some of my research.)
 * Corunna: This is a mess due to Galician. I've used English names of cities with common English names consistently (Seville not Sevilla), so writing A Coruna here would be misleading.  It isn't even the Spanish name.  Only fair thing to do is use the English name, then Spanish & Galician in parentheses since it isn't entirely clear that the English place is the same due to the divergent spellings.
 * I'll admit "low noble" is a potentially misleading phrase, but "junior noble" is even worse. That implies he'll become a real noble when he gets older.  Suggestions?  ("Unlanded noble" is close, but also awkward.)
 * "General Pardon" is one phrase, hence the wikilink for both. General Pardon makes it look like a normal pardon that was general, with the adjective inexplicably capitalized.
 * The last part you uncommented out is misleading, since it implies that the merchants lost big time after the war. That's what the es. wikipedia article said, but everything I've read is a bit more nuanced - in many ways, Spain prospered after the war, and Charles did roll back the power of the nobility which was good for the gentry.  Now, the gentry undoubtedly suffered in 1580 onward with Philip II, but that's a bit too far in the future.  The stuff about compensation for the nobles who lost property is interesting, but ultimately cuttable since we're close to length requirements; that kinda stuff happens after many wars and just isn't that important.

Thoughts? I feel bad doing this, but I'm highly tempted to revert most of your changes here. For one, the spelling out numbers vs. using numerals issue is entirely optional either way, but needs to be consistent. If one of us writes one way and the other the other way, it'll look silly... and since I've been writing most of the article and trying to keep it consistent, I'd prefer if I could continue to write out numbers? SnowFire (talk) 23:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I will attempt to reply to some of this:-

There are some problems with Juan López de Padilla's name, since Juan de Padilla on Wikipedia actually refers to another person. Further discussion of this problem should take place on e.g. the "Juan de Padilla" talk page.

I would argue that as a general rule Wikipedia articles should refer to someone by the name of their Wikipedia biography.

In these more sensitive times we should be cautious about referring to people by names like "Joanna the Mad" even if this was what her contemporaries called her. In some places names like "Joanna" or "Queen Joanna" were piped to "Joanna the Mad", which is itself a redirect to "Joanna of Castile", not a good way of operating. Also, while she probably did have some mental health problems, could these have been exagerrated by her political opponents?

I don't think it's good practice to leave passages commented out without any attempt to resolve the issues. PatGallacher (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, the POV issues only apply when it's the editor's POV. Joannna's contemporaries thought she was mentally incapable, which is what's important.  According to accounts which I don't think there's much reason to doubt, she refused to eat or sleep, refused to change her clothes or bathe, was convinced that her ladies in waiting were trying to kill her, etc.


 * As for names, the name of the article seems like a good rule of thumb, but "Joanna the Mad" is bolded and mentioned right at the top as an alternate name. Not that there's anything wrong with using Joanna I either, but Joanna the Mad is also correct.  You may be right about political opponents, but, well, so it goes.  Julian the Apostate's article is even at the location of his unflattering name; it's what was used to refer to him, so so it goes.


 * For Padilla, perhaps you have a point. I'll double-check the sources, and maybe he should be referred to by his full name in at least a few places.


 * For commenting out passages, I agree, but the article is still something of a work in progress. I'd like to submit this to WP:FAC eventually, and I'd definitely have removed that stuff by then.  I kept it for the time being mostly because if, say, sub-articles are spun out where length isn't a consideration, commenting out "extra" info means that it's easy to find and move.  Speaking of which: I'm considering something along the lines of a Military history of the Revolt of the Comuneros, comparable to the distinction between American Revolution and American Revolutionary War.  Could be useful if the information on the battles swells too high, perhaps. SnowFire (talk) 02:36, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Translation notes
While I'm at it, figure I should lay out a few assumptions I've made in case people wonder why:
 * Comunidad is left untranslated. "Commune" or "Community" are both valid translations, but Community doesn't have the implications of government Comunidad had in the revolt.  The Comunidad was a community but also the city council itself.  "Commune" is closer, but that's mixed up with all sorts of utopian ideas from the 19th century and socialist ideas in the 20th, which weren't really present.  "City state" is probably closest, actually.  I think just leaving it untranslated is fine.
 * Comunero/s doesn't get italics, because it's a proper name, not so much a word (compare: nobody italicizes falangists). Cortes gets italics the first time when introduced as a word, and then never after, since I think that's also kind of drifted into English.
 * Charles being both King Charles I and Emperor Charles V is annoying. Normally I'd use the most common English name, Charles V, except that this takes place in Spain where he's Charles I.  ARGH.  Result: refer to him just as "Charles" with no numeral at all, unless it's important or specifically being brought up.
 * English names for the most important cities are used, but for lesser cities the Spanish version is. Seville and Corunna are the big examples of the English being used; many of the other cities are the same in both languages, just with the English ones missing an accent (like Avila).  Generally kept the accents so that people don't "correct" them to the accent later anyway and cause things to drift out of alignment.

SnowFire (talk) 23:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Hatnote
I quote the guideline Disambiguation: "If there are three or more topics associated with the same term, then a disambiguation page should normally be created for that term". So the hatnote should be a link to a disambiguation page. PatGallacher (talk) 01:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I still lightly disagree, since about has options for as many as five extra uses, and I've seen the two other uses thing in quite a few good articles. But this is a pretty minor issue.  I intend to bring this article off to peer review once it has some more references added, and I figure we can raise the question there to others and see what they think.  I don't think it's a big deal either way.  SnowFire (talk) 06:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

(Edit: Since I linked this in the PR, a quick diff to see what we're discussing without digging through the archives would be this change. I think the rule of thumb is that when there are three possibilities, that's too long for a hatnote, but two is fine.  Though admittedly these are a long two.) SnowFire (talk) 06:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Lede section
(copied from SnowFire's talk page, re this edit by Ceckauskas Dominykas)

The phrase is not logical. It says that king arrived with Flemish escort and these factors led to revolt. It sounds like Castilians were xenophobes, but this is discussed in any book on the subject that this had nothing to do with xenophobia. And phrase like this can disturb reader. I don't understand why you prefer non-referenced end illogical phrase over more detailed and referenced one. Maybe if you don’t like that it is discussed two times in the article you should delete the later phrase. --Ceckauskas Dominykas 15:32, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Response: Okay, there's several issues here.


 * First, the lede paragraph is meant as a summation of the entire article (see WP:LEDE). Everything in it should be in the article already and referenced there (so yes, it should be in two places); there's no need for citations in it.  More generally, the lede should be short.  I don't think we have room for any more details here.
 * Secondly, I'm not sure what you're getting at content wise. As is noted in the article, there was both a culture clash between the incoming Flemish & old-guard Castilians as well as a power struggle.  The bit about the Flemish being big drinkers is a cute tidbit but I just don't think there's room; it's sufficient to say that the two sides didn't get along, and further that thanks to William de Croy his Flemish buddies were getting extremely rich off government offices and other assorted corruption.  So no, I don't think that the Castilians come off as simply xenophobes since we mention the issue of privilege and position.  (The culture clash issues, which you seem to want to accentuate, if anything hits the xenophobia angle much harder - ultimately drinking habits are not that relevant and not that great a reason to rebel.) SnowFire (talk) 03:41, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Republican flag
About the relationship between Comuneros and the flag of the Second Spanish Republic, I don't have references, and es:Bandera de la Segunda República Española while thorough does not have them as well. --Error (talk) 01:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah. Will go back and try and research this myself later, but it seems that at the very least, adding the purple stripe was part of Castilian nationalism, but it's not clear how many people tied that to the Comuneros.  Some, for sure, but I can't tell if it was a major amount.  I'm removing it for now largely since there's not much room for more images in that section, but am going to try and take a second look and see if it can be restored. SnowFire (talk) 20:26, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Good Article Nomination comment
Huh, it says you're not supposed to start a section anymore... anyway, as can be seen, this is an A-Class article that was also a former FA candidate. Hopefully, since A>GA, this should be an easy pass, but I'm also interested in a peer review if possible about the prose. The FAC had some, to me, nebulous complaints about "the prose isn't good enough," and I'd be happy if anybody could give their thoughts on if there's any improvements to be made. (Vaguely tempted to have another go-round at FAC, but I haven't found much I personally would want to change since then, so perhaps a fresh set of eyes is needed.) SnowFire (talk) 20:26, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Please discuss your edits
HCPUNXKID, calling my edits vandalism does not inspire confidence in you, this is a vanilla editorial disagreement. I wrote this article; it is basically a featured article in all but name, as the only complaints at the Featured Article Candidacy were vague prose ones, not factual ones. I've already explained my stance in my edit summaries; if you'd like to make changes, you need to actually discuss my points rather than call it vandalism. To recap, flags are not needed and misleading - neither side particularly rallied around a flag, and both sides considered themselves Castilians. The closest thing to a "rebel" flag would be File:Flag of Castile (purple).svg or File:Morado-comunero.jpg - but these flags were associated with the comuneros in the 20th century, long after the revolt itself. (But at least they are authentically linked, even if retroactively.) Basically it's a bad idea.

As for capitalizing royalist / rebel, the usual standard is *not* to capitalize it, and that'd be consistent with the rest of the articles. It's not a big deal, but it's not an improvement to edit war over that kind of thing.

As I already mentioned in the edit summary, the POW / executed symbols for leaders are for infoboxes on battles, not wars or conflicts. Check out World War I or the like. SnowFire (talk) 17:11, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I congratulate you for writing the article, but that dont make the article your personal property. Also, I didnt read any WP rule that says that editions must be discussed before being made, thats what you claim. Saying that adding the flags is misleading is your personal opinion, not a WP policy, as flags are added always if are accurate in every conflict.


 * Neither side particularly rallied around a flag? False, royalists rallied aroud the File:Banner of arms crown of Castille Habsbourg style.svg, while Comuneros rallied around the File:Banner of arms kingdom of Castile.svg (wich was later mistaken as purple, giving birth to the 19th-20th century confusion).


 * POW / executed symbols for leaders are for infoboxes on battles, not wars or conflicts? False again, see Saddam Hussein at Iraq War.


 * Although, I hope that we can debate to reach a compromise in all these issues. Regards, --HCPUNXKID (talk) 11:50, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * When there's contention, it's preferred to discuss your edits, yes. Your first edit certainly required no such notice, but after I disagreed, you needed to actually explain why you thought your version was better rather than accuse me of being a vandal because I disagreed.


 * For flags, do you have sources that back up your claim? (If not, then there's no point going further.  If so, then depends.  Also, it isn't just "my opinion" that flags can be sketchy: there are explicit rules against the overuse of flags on English Wikipedia, because back in 2005-2007 people went around sticking flags on absolutely everything, and it got ridiculous.  Flags of sub-national entities and during rebellions are in fact explicit cases to be very, very cautious about applying flags.)


 * You found a use where POW / KIA is used on an entire war article. Wikipedia is pretty big, so this isn't surprising.  It doesn't mean it's right, though; I'd argue that it's the Iraq War article that is in error, as there are plenty of cases where the KIA/POW marker is NOT used, such as World War I or World War II.  It's just not a good idea: does it add anything to mark Mussolini as "KIA"?  It's just distracting.  And what about Roosevelt, who died before WWII ended but of natural causes?  He too died right before the end of the conflict, just not at the hands of enemy action.  It's misleading and, more to the point, not useful for what a *whole war* infobox should be about. SnowFire (talk) 15:57, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Image choice for King Charles I of Castile and Aragon
I changed the portrait of King Charles I of Castile and Aragon to a high quality one, but have been reverted with the reasoning that the "focus is more on Charles" in the original. Which do you think represents the subject best?


 * I was the one who reverted. If you want to make and use e a cropped version, that's fine.  I just think that including the frame is appropriate if the focus is the portrait itself (e.g. in an article about the painter), but that is not the case here - Charles himself is.  SnowFire (talk) 19:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)