Salt of Ibiza for Italy: The attempts of recovery of the Milanese salt market in the second half of the 17th century

In this paper, our interest has been to analyze the attempt for improving the trade of salt on the Ibiza island on the part of the Spanish Monarchy in the second half of the XVIIth Century. The salt consumed in the Duchy of Milan traditionally was sent from Ibiza, but the Monarchy verified that the Venetians was taking possession of the above mentioned market, and they were sending salt from other places of the Mediterranean. This situation created problems of diverse type, but especially it was limiting the possibillities of recovery of the salt mines of Ibiza, the only resource of the island capable of generating income (if they were well managed). The used documents come from the files corresponding to Ibiza inside the Secretariat of Majorca of the Council of Aragon, deposited in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon (Barcelona), and documents depodited in the series Provincial Secretaries of the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid) and the series State of the Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid).