Editing Fuero (section)

===Approach===
In contemporary Spanish usage, the word ''fueros'' most often refers to the historic and contemporary '''''fueros''''' or charters of certain regions, especially of the [[Basque regions]]. The equivalent for [[Occitan language|Occitan]] usage is ''fòr'', applying to the northern regions of the [[Pyrenees]].

The whole central and western Pyrenean region was [[History of the Basque people|inhabited by the Basques]] in the early Middle Ages within the [[Duchy of Vasconia]]. The Basques and the Pyrenean peoples—as Romance language replaced Basque in many areas by the turn of the first millennium—governed themselves [[Custom (law)|by a native set of rules]], different from [[Roman law|Roman]] and [[Visigothic Code|Gothic]] law but with an ever-increasing imprint of them. Typically their laws, arising from regional traditions and practices, were kept and transmitted orally. Because of this oral tradition, the Basque-language regions preserved their specific laws longer than did those Pyrenean regions that adopted Romance languages. For example, [[Fueros of Navarre|Navarrese law]] developed along less feudal lines than those of surrounding realms. The [[Fors de Bearn]] are another example of Pyrenean law.

Two sayings address this legal idiosyncrasy: "en Navarra hubo antes leyes que reyes," and "en Aragón antes que rey hubo ley," both meaning that law developed and existed before the kings. The force of these principles required monarchs to accommodate to the laws. This situation sometimes strained relations between the monarch and the kingdom, especially if the monarchs were alien to native laws.

This tradition of "laws before kings" was enshrined in the legendary [[Fueros de Sobrarbe]], claimed to have been enacted by king [[Iñigo Arista]] in the 850s in the pyrenean [[Sobrarbe|valley of Sobrarbe]]. Although a 13th-century fabrication, the ''Fueros de Sobrarbe'' were subsequently used as the legal foundation for most Navarrese and Aragonese ''Fueros'' from the 13th century onwards. They enshrined the traditional principle "laws before kings" both in Aragonese and Navarrese law, justified the right to rebel against illegal royal decisions, and legitimised the existence of specific institutions such as the [[Justicia de Aragón]], designed to