IV.I.V Castilla-Leon

Although, as noted in IV.1.2 above, the areas where Borrow staged his six Bible-peddling expeditions of the summer of 1838 and the first three months of 1839 really belonged in the practical sense to the orbit of Madrid, we may separate and rearrange the numbers in such a way that they reflect the sales within the borders of Spain’s formal administrative regions. Spaniards, who have a very strong sense of geography, usually appreciate such a classification; and there is no reason why we should not oblige here.

In ‘Old Castile’ (modern Castilla-Leon) the sales of New Testaments were more or less these:

Date	Section	Sold to or by	Supply	Sold	Assumed
May–Jul 37	II.1.2.a	Private sales Northern Journey		65
May 37	II.2.2.ii	Salamanca bookseller	60	3	12
Jun 37	II.2.2.iii	Valladolid bookseller	100	50	5
Jun 37	II.1.3	Satchel sale Valladolid			15
Jun 37	II.2.2.iv	Leon bookseller		56
Oct 37	II.2.2.xi	Burgos bookseller		40
Aug 38	III.2.4	Segovia and Avila (trip 3)		884
Total				1098	32

The presence of the gigantic sales results in the area of Segovia and Avila almost makes it redundant to comment upon the possible oscillations of the smaller and more uncertain numbers. For the sake of completeness it may, however, be noted that 1. a few of the 65 copies sold privately during the Northern Journey will have been sold before Borrow crossed the border between Madrid proper and Old Castile, while some may also have been sold once he left Castile for Galicia (a total of 10 is perhaps already too high a guess); 2. the sales of the Salamanca bookseller were certainly higher than the 3 copies for which we have hard evidence (I will assume another 12 in all further calculations); 3. likewise, the Valladolid bookseller will have sold a number of copies more out of his third supply of 50 (I assume a further 5 in the calculations); and 4. the size of the ‘satchel sale’ near Valladolid is, once again, no more than a conjecture. The total sales of New Testaments in Castilla-Leon will therefore probably have been somewhat higher than the total of 1,130 arrived at here, but will not have risen beyond 1,150 copies.