Ferdinand II of Aragon, better known as Ferdinand the Catholic, has passed down to posterity as a clever man. With lights and shadows, of course. And although there were probably many more successes than mistakes, he did not stop perpetrating what in our eyes today would be some kind of abuse. But it is a mistake to judge the past with the eyes of the present, even if it is now very fashionable to do so and to demand sanctions and apologies from a furious and puritanical revisionism.
But hey, as I said, Ferran found himself in the line of succession to the Aragonese crown after the death of his half-brother Charles, Prince of Viana. And in those turbulent times he had to spend part of his childhood and adolescence, until his early youth, contemplating the ravages of the Catalan civil war that took place between 1462 and 1472. Fratricidal war and with a king that was funny, but with ramifications that make it both medieval and modern, because there are historians who have wanted to see a popular and revolutionary bias in the battles in which the Busca and the Beam faced each other and where the concept was coined still in force of the "Catalan evils" for those who did not support the rebel faction opposed to Joan II of Aragon, Count of Barcelona. Once again, what if you broke the oath to the king, what if the taxes and money, what if the country and here we govern ourselves and what if for noble my ladies wills. The story of almost always…
This comes despite the fact that a mature Ferdinand II, already crowned king and more than used to government and power, found a procedure to distribute positions and benefits without encouraging rival factions or party grievances: the insaculation, which to leave very established in the privileges of 1498 and 1499. In this King Ferdinand was fine and very Catholic.
The thing is simple and consists, in reality, of a lottery between several candidates considered capable for a certain position or job. The names are put in a bag or similar container and, by means of written papers, colored balls or any other system for the style, the aedile, judge or councilor is elected. Which results, when named, sansaculate. And yes, the language has these things...
Insaculation worked in Catalonia, for certain positions, until the New Plant Decree. And of course there is a catch, which consists of who and how he makes the list of potential beneficiaries. But it still has advantages knowing that chance determines between supposed equivalents, if not equals, who will be primus inter pares. It certainly makes Cainite competition and outsized promises pretty pointless. And since they all go to the same bag, it leaves everyone's game in a clear second place.
Given that we do not cease in our desire to claim the uses prior to the War of Succession, perhaps it would not be bad to recover the system of insaculation to appoint councillors, for example. And we could even export the method and solve once and for all the already chronic crisis of the government of the lord judges of the kingdom. At least, we would save ourselves from going through as much embarrassment as in these almost four years - I say this because of the General Council of the Judiciary - and we could even launch a patriotic lottery, much better than the Grossa, to see who and with what skills could enter the draw to be a councillor. Given what we have seen, neither age nor past convictions are an impediment.
