The Grain King of Valladolid
Marquis Juan, who had emerged as the most powerful figure in Valladolid, was a man who existed in a strange limbo—a noble in name, yet cast out from high society due to his lowly origins and his erratic, unconventional behavior. In Valladolid itself, no one dared to look down on him; he had provided jobs for countless hidalgos who relied on him for their daily bread, and he had secured the hearts of the common folk. However, for the nobles based in the surrounding cities and towns, despising him had become a sort of sport. At social gatherings, they would insult him, calling him a "vulgar coachman" or a "dirt-grubbing farmer." It was their way of resisting the massive new order he was building.
But the saying that money talks is rarely wrong. By the great harvest of 1628, even the local landowners had to change their tune. After all, his granaries were the only places with enough space to store their overflowing wheat.
Count Mojodos, one of the local power brokers, had risen to become the hottest star in high society simply by being the most vocal in his insults toward Marquis Juan.
"No! Marquis Juan! What do you mean the warehouses are full? Kick out the others' goods! Take mine—take mine!"
Though he had clearly been told it was impossible, the Count had dragged his carts all the way to the warehouse city and was now throwing a tantrum.
"Haha. Everyone has entrusted their wheat to me with such care. How could I possibly do that, Count?"
Count Mojodos, stomping his feet in frustration, felt his insides burning at the Marquis's calm reply. If he sold his grain now, he wouldn't even cover the cost of the seeds. He had to hold out until the price rose. His family's own warehouses were already packed, and Marquis Juan’s were the only ones left that would accept goods from others.
There were other places, of course, but they charged storage fees that bordered on highway robbery. Marquis Juan, however, kept his fee steady at 1% per month—neither raising nor lowering it—which was why everyone was clamoring to store their grain here. Besides, he was the kind of man who would return goods in perfect condition even to common merchants who brought in simple receipts. It was the most trustworthy warehouse around.
The Count had come in person to demand the warehouse doors be opened, but since the Marquis himself had come out to handle the situation, he couldn't even resort to bullying the staff.
Marquis Juan had been employing over a thousand construction workers year-round. He never stopped using them to reclaim farmland, expand warehouses, and build granaries. As a result, a granary district of a staggering 100,000 fanegas was rising—a scale comparable to the granaries of Madrid, a city of 100,000 people.
The Count stomped his feet, staring at the stone granaries, each buried with forty underground silos, each holding 50 fanegas.
"I’ve heard all the rumors! 100,000 fanegas! There’s no way all those granaries could be full, is there?"
"They aren't even finished yet. The lime in the walls needs to dry, and we still have to build the warehouses above ground."
At the Marquis's words, the Count stomped his feet again. He had made a fortune because Don Quixote had been a massive hit, but that didn't mean he could just dump his July harvest on the side of the road.
"Come on! Can't you just do it roughly?"
"If I do that, the wheat will all rot. That won't do."
The Count grabbed the hand of Marquis Juan—a man he usually didn't even consider a person—and pleaded.
"Hey! Marquis Juan! Don't be like that, let's just do it roughly. So what if a little rots? You can just feed that to the peasants below!"
"I am a farmer myself; how could I neglect the crops knowing they are rotting? Don't do that. I will contact you once the construction is finished."
Faced with a clear dismissal, the desperate Count feigned anger.
"Hey! Hey! I came all this way, and this is how you treat me!?"
"If you must insist, how about this? There is a little space left in a granary over there..."
"Oh! There is space left? Open that spot for me immediately!"
"If you follow that road, there is a village I’ve reclaimed that still has an empty granary. It has a granary, but they haven't had a harvest yet. If you go there and deposit it, I will issue you a storage receipt."
Anything was fine! As long as he got a receipt, he could just come back to this warehouse city later and haul the wheat away. Honestly, the Count had just wanted to dump his wheat at the warehouse city and have them handle the receipt automatically.
"Where! Where do I have to go!"
"Down there in the Duero River basin. There was a village that had become almost a ruin, so I’ve consolidated the rights and am attempting to resettle it."
The Count was astonished as he looked at the precise map the Marquis showed him. It was a map that meticulously displayed the water systems and road networks of the region, centered on Valladolid. The edges of the map were filled with mysterious symbols and numbers—abcde 12345—suggesting there was some sort of system to it.
The Count sent his servants to send the wheat there and received the storage receipt written by the Marquis himself. He had to accept a slight discount rate, but it was a gentleman's deal.
"Thank you! I’ll hold a banquet later, so please make sure to attend."
"Haha. I’ll take the sentiment, Count."
"Ugh, that son of a bitch... I want to crack his skull open with an axe."
A man who had been watching the Count leave with eyes full of resentment muttered, fingering the handle of his axe.
"That rude bastard, he never once called you 'Excellency' until the end. Excellency, why did you accept that man's wheat? Shall I go at night with an axe and send him off?"
This was Lope Balboa, a sturdy hidalgo from Oñati in the Basque country. Despite his appearance, which resembled a mountain bandit, he was a good father who loved his fox-like wife and rabbit-like children. He had been an elite veteran of the Army of Flanders before settling here on the recommendation of General Spinola.
"Anyone who puts goods into my warehouse is my customer, Lope."
He always stayed by my side, providing close protection for any emergencies. He possessed both the seasoned demeanor of a veteran who had fought in countless wars and the rugged nature of a Basque man.
I spread out the map and pointed to the granary the Count would be visiting. It was the granary next to the lake. When I placed a thin sheet of oil paper over the map, it showed the drainage canals under construction and the planned vineyard sites.
To be honest, I really didn't want to do this. The terrain was such that if a flood hit, you could say "goodbye to everything," and the surrounding area was sandy soil, so giving up on the wheat farming I was confident in was the only logical choice. What was even more maddening was that the Duero River, true to its nature as a difficult river for farming, went wild during the flood season and dropped to a trickle during droughts, leaving no way to use waterwheels or irrigation canals.
But there was a reason I had to forcibly develop it: the bridge that had been broken in 1626 still hadn't been fixed, and the "Bald Count-Duke" had issued an order saying, "You fix it." To be honest, in hindsight, I was the one who had hindered it. I had used all the stone that was supposed to go there to build my own warehouses.
True to the name "Lake of Duero," the village, which featured a lake that was more of a swamp in the center, had turned into a mud pit during the great flood of '26. Every house had melted away, and the church had been swept off. The site, which had become a massive swamp until the water receded, was still a ruin where the bodies of those who had drowned that day would occasionally surface. Even the few people who had remained in the ruined village had died of malaria, making it a land of terror that no one dared approach.
Even my employees, who usually jumped at my every word, would say, "Ah, this is a bit much..." because it was such a hopeless place. So, I had been focusing on infrastructure-heavy investments, laying wide drainage canals, raising the ground level, and building the granaries first.
To satisfy Olivares's demand to restore the bridge and secure the transport route, the key was to restore the ancient Roman-era bridge to the southwest using this place as a base.
One of the expensive designers I had hired had designed a dual drainage system. First, a drainage canal one vara deep would lower the lake's water level and ensure constant drainage. Then, a wide emergency drainage canal, six varas wide and slightly shallower at two pies deep, was designed to handle floodwaters.
Digging the canals deep a year before building the granaries to lower the lake level in advance, and driving piles deep to prevent ground subsidence—the people of this era were truly remarkable.
"Damn, if they have this kind of technology, how great would it be if they used it for farming? Why do they only use it to build churches?"
I grumbled as I continued to check the schedule.
As the population around Valladolid continued to grow, an important commodity other than food began to run short. It was wine. It was the 17th-century equivalent of "Pepsi Zero Lime Flavor" and a daily necessity that replaced drinking water. People satisfied their thirst and found joy in life by mixing wine with water or water with wine.
However, as demand in Valladolid increased, the wine producers to the south were raising their prices. It was a "take it or leave it" attitude, but unlike grain, which you could harvest in a year, grapevines took at least five, no, ten years to grow, so it wasn't something I could easily solve.
"You are scheduled to visit the brewery today, Excellency."
Leonel, who served as both chief accountant and steward, said to me. At the mention of beer, I could hear Lope Balboa gulping down his saliva.
"Lope. Is the beer in Valladolid any good?"
"For a gruit beer, it’s tasty! It’s good enough that even those Germans would drink it while grumbling."
The temporary solution I had chosen instead of wine was beer. To the Spanish, beer was perceived as a "barbaric northern beverage" or "the drink of Flemish bumpkins." The strict, solemn, and serious men of Castile believed only wine was the truth. But since wine was expensive and scarce, I had built a brewery to tell them to drink this instead.
If there was no "Pepsi Zero Lime," shouldn't they drink "Coca-Cola Zero"? Honestly, I also wanted to drink good beer, so I had settled a few families of Bavarian beer masters, introduced by General Spinola, and opened the brewery.
"They were whining that they couldn't make beer without Bavarian hops, but they're making it well now."
"That’s right. It’s just those weak Germans whining."
Leonel agreed with my words. They had whined that beer should only be made with barley and hops, but they were making beer just fine with the overflowing wheat.
Of course, the beer masters from Bavaria had been appalled by the environment of Valladolid, where hops could barely grow at all. The gruit beer they had made using the native rosemary had been terrible, with a strong, off-putting taste.
"So, I found land under the monastery to the north and had them farm hops, so we should be able to get a supply starting next year."
Leonel pointed to the abandoned wasteland to the north on the map. To grow hops, we had to establish a settlement far to the north. Quixote, whom I trusted most, and the "Conqueror" had long since gone ahead to lead the way.
Honestly, I would have preferred to just import them rather than farm crops I wasn't familiar with. But in this land of romance, it was just as difficult for goods to come in as it was for them to go out, so it was better to be self-sufficient than to pay the exorbitant transport costs.
While Leonel and I were busy talking, a dispute was breaking out at the northern settlement.
"How dare you build buildings and farm on monastery land as you please!"
As one of the mounted hidalgos shouted, Quixote, who heard him, yelled back.
"We have the authority to reclaim this wasteland! Furthermore, we have already finished talks with the monastery to provide them with a portion of the harvest regularly and receive blessings for the safety of the farmland! What kind of rowdiness is this!"
Even before Quixote had arrived, Marquis Juan had already finished talks with the monastery. He had sent money and manpower to repair their sanctuary, and in exchange for providing a portion of the annual produce to help the monastery, they had agreed to pray for the blessing of the farms.
"Shut up! I cannot stand to see you acting as you please in front of the Manrique family's territory!"
"It's not even your land, so why are you making a fuss, you bastards!"
The "Conqueror" spat out an insult and raised his hand, and the settlers from the Tercio formed a scrum to back him up.
"Grrr!"
As the hidalgo reached for the hilt of his sword, the Conqueror smiled broadly and said.
"Draw your sword! You bastard! I'll kill you!"
***
Author's Note:
I have changed the "Merry Christmas" from the previous chapter to "¡Santas Pascuas!" (Santas Pascuas) for a more appropriate phrase. Thank you for your help!
Regarding Laguna de Duero, I don't know if it was actually wiped out, but I have assumed it became a ruin.
Lope Balboa is not a historical figure, but a supporting character from the Captain Alatriste series. In the movie, he dies around the Siege of Breda, but in this world, the Dutch front never opened, and he drifted here instead.
I think I'm crazy too... taking a day off just because I wanted to write a novel...