Lawsuits and Egodocuments on Sexual Intimacy in Early Modern Bilbao

There is nothing more private than an intimate relationship between two people. There is emotion, trust and commitment involved. Many of these love stories were so intimate that there is no written record of them. However, the archives bring to light many stories that have emerged from this private world. Some for positive reasons, such as a wedding, but many other stories became public when the couple ended on bad terms.The interest of this paper lies in those private bedroom stories that ended up being very public. I am referring specifically to the cases known as promises or words of marriage. In these situations, the promise of marriage was usually followed by a private relationship of a sexual nature, which was usually broken when the man became engaged to another woman, or when the woman became pregnant and the man did not want to take care of the child.In this way, several cases of private relationships in early modern Bilbao will be brought to light through court documents found in the archives of Bilbao, Calahorra and Valladolid.