As with the English Parliament, the Castilian Cortes needed to be summoned to assent to new taxes. Nevertheless, the Cortes in Castile and Aragon primarily represented the major cities, rather than both the urban and rural areas, as the English Parliament did. By the fifteenth century, it represented only eighteen cities, each of whom sent two deputies. In consequence, the Cortes did not represent as broad a set of groups as the English Parliament did, and it never developed as a nexus of diverse interests vying to place constraints on absolutism.
