Vigilance and tax fraud in early modern Catalonia

Through the analysis of a broad range of primary sources from the perspective of the Cultures of Vigilance, this article sheds light on how Early Modern Catalan society interacted with public institutions regarding the fight against tax fraud. By studying the surveillance mechanisms used by fiscal authorities in both local and regional scenarios, this work shows the existence of a relevant partnership between early modern public powers and the individuals that made up the society of the time. Private people, guilds, tax farmers, and public officials collaborated to create a system of vigilance in which everybody was surveilling and under surveillance using direct and indirect methods. In this sense, the article claims that, for public officers and institutions to benefit from these vigilance practices, the individuals that made up society had to be genuinely willing to collaborate, thus pointing towards the existence of a deeply rooted symbiosis between citizens and the Early Modern State.