of the monasteries in the countryside was huge, but small cities started to grow. In the subsequent centuries, the so call "Cuatro Villas" of the coast (Castru, Laredu, Sanander and San Vicenti de la Barquera) they grow economic- mind to good rhythm. They export to the north of Europe and then to the Mediterranean Castillian wool, the fishing activity grows (even whales were fish), they trade with Castilla and they become the more important shipyards. This four villas or cities (Sanander for example reach at one stage 25.000 citizens) were very independent, and they have special statutes, even to carry out international treaties by their own. Apart of this at one stage the villages of the Cantabrian coast and the Basques, they formed in 1296 the “Hemandad of the Marismas”, a union to defend their common interests. The councils they formed it were: Sanander, Laredu, Castru, San Vicenti de la Barquera -cantabrian-, Bermeo, Getaria, San Sebastián and Fuenterrabía -Basques- that joined with the following year. They had their capital in Castru (Cantabria). This confederacy supposed a leading naval power to the service of the Castillan kings but maintaining its autonomy.
At this stage they appear in Cantabria many pirates that they attacked boats of other countries and ever they make raids in the English coasts.
At this Cantabria was the Country with more free-men of all Europe. The hidalgos and families were very important and powerful, and many people have the right and possibility of choosing the Lord to whom they were going to serve.
July 28, 1778
They keep their culture, worships, language but they didn’t call them-self cantabrians. Sometimes they call themselves Highlanders a name that some people still use today.
THE HISTORIC SUIT OF THE VALLEYS
In the XVIII century some valleys and their councils that resisted to remain under the stately control and the will of the landlords (many descendants of the Visigoth) and they began the famous one "Suit of the Valleys"
The historic personality of the “Juntas de Puenti San Miguel” does not correspond only with there to be a representative Assembly of the common interests of the Nine Valleys (part at that time of the Asturias of Santillana), but by to have been the embryo of the own provincial constitution carried out through the Ordinance of July 28, 1778 in Puenti San Miguel.
Its origin comes given in which already immemorial from times this nation of Cantabria had an important tradition of Meetings and Assemblies and thus these Meetings were not but representation supralocal, such as, they were it in the Modern Age the Meeting of the Four Villages of the Coast of the Sea (Sanander, Laredu, Castru, San Vicente de la Barquera), Liébana, Trasmiera and Campoo. This is mostly the original national territory, but as we see not united and sometimes under other kingdoms.
To the old province of the nine valleys they would go uniting many territories of that ancestral Cantabria and in July 28, 1778 is built in the House of Meetings, for the first time, the “Province of Cantabria”. The name of our Country was used again in this Land
The number of Meetings that were celebrated in that province of Cantabria they were around 50 until 1824, because in 1833 under the regency of María Cristina and being minister Javier of Hamlets, that Cantabria would pass to be province with the name of Santander and to be included in the region of Old Castile along with Hamlets, Logroño, Soria, Segovia, Ávila. Then from this point, and mainly in the second half of XIX century, Cantabria was divided again and many territories where given to the neighbors more powerful now, like Euskadi, Asturias and obviously Castile.
The biggest part after this forced and unnatural division remains as the Province of Santander under Castile. Nowadays is the territory of the Autonomy of Cantabria no longer under Castile. But the division is still there, and provoked that in some of the territories the Cantabrian identity have loose power, but culturally remains in the majority of them. This is the reason that since quite many