== Government: Municipal councils and parliaments ==
As with all medieval kingdoms, supreme power was understood to reside in the monarch "by the grace of God," as the legal formula explained. Nevertheless, rural and urban communities began to form assemblies to issue regulations to deal with everyday problems. Over time, these assemblies evolved into municipal councils, known as variously as ''ayuntamientos'' or [[Cabildo (council)|''cabildos'']], in which some of the inhabitants, the property-owning heads of [[Medieval household|households]] (''vecinos''), represented the rest. By the fourteenth century these councils had gained more powers, such as the right to elect municipal magistrates and officers (''[[alcalde]]s'', speakers, clerks, etc.) and representatives to the parliaments (''[[Cortes Generales|Cortes]]'').
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