Definition
A term from Spanish law meaning delivery — specifically, the act of transferring possession of property from one party to another. Entrega functioned in Spanish legal tradition as the formal mechanism by which ownership or possession was completed, analogous to the common law concept of livery of seisin or, in the context of personal property, simple delivery. The term appears most directly in Las Partidas, the thirteenth-century Castilian legal code that formed the backbone of Spanish civil law and was carried into legal systems derived from Spanish colonial rule.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In contemporary Spanish, "entrega" means delivery, handover, or surrender — used in everyday contexts ranging from package delivery to the awarding of prizes.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not include "entrega" as an English entry, reflecting its status as a borrowed Spanish term rather than naturalized English vocabulary.
The legal significance of entrega lies not in any gap from common meaning — the Spanish is transparent — but in the formal legal weight the act carried under Las Partidas and derivative systems. In Spanish law, entrega was not merely physical handover but a legally operative act completing a transfer of rights. Researchers encountering the term in legal sources should resist treating it as casual or informal delivery.
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Why It Matters in Research
Entrega is a research term for a specific corridor of legal history: jurisdictions whose private law descends from Spanish civil law, including Louisiana, Texas, California, Florida, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, and historically the Philippines. In those contexts, questions of property transfer, inheritance, and conveyance may have been governed at some point by Spanish-law principles under which entrega was the operative act of delivery.
The primary trap for researchers is anachronism. The common law of property developed delivery doctrines largely through different channels — livery of seisin for real property, manual delivery for personalty — and when American courts absorbed or translated Spanish-law property concepts after territorial acquisitions in the nineteenth century, they did not always map entrega cleanly onto common law equivalents. Judicial opinions from early statehood periods in Texas, California, and Louisiana sometimes use entrega untranslated, sometimes render it simply as "delivery," and sometimes reason through it with common law analogies that may not be historically accurate.
Researchers working in probate and succession records from Spanish colonial territories will encounter entrega frequently in the context of inheritance — where delivery to an heir or legatee formalized the transfer of a decedent's property. The relevant Las Partidas provisions (Part 6, Title 14) govern succession, making this a focused reference point when tracing the doctrine.
Las Partidas itself is available in English translation (Scott, 1931) and should be consulted directly when historical dictionary entries cite it without explanation, as all five source dictionaries here do. The citation to Part 6, Title 14, Law 1 is specific and verifiable; researchers can locate the succession and delivery provisions in that title.
Entrega also appears in archival and notarial records from Spanish colonial administration, where the term may signal the completion of a transaction in deed or grant documentation. Spanish-language archival sources predating American territorial acquisition are not indexed by English legal concepts — entrega will not surface in a common law keyword search.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries agree completely: entrega means delivery in Spanish law, and all cite Las Partidas, Part 6, Title 14 as the primary authority. The entries are among the most compressed in these collections — none offers substantive analysis, doctrinal context, or discussion of how entrega operated within Spanish succession or property law more broadly.
Bouvier's entry is the most minimal, offering only the two-word definition. Black's (both editions) and Burrill add the Las Partidas citation but nothing further. Rapalje & Lawrence appears to have suffered a typesetting error or editorial splice in the surviving text, where material about entry and right of entry follows the entrega definition without clear separation — researchers should not treat that appended material as part of the entrega entry.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide: any discussion of how entrega compared to livery of seisin, how American courts treated the concept after territorial acquisition, or whether the act required witnesses or formalities beyond physical transfer. For that analysis, researchers must go to Las Partidas directly or to treatises on Spanish civil law.
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Jurisdictional Note
Entrega as a legally operative concept belongs to the Spanish civil law tradition and appears in the legal history of all U.S. jurisdictions with Spanish colonial heritage. Louisiana's civil law system retains the most living connection to civilian delivery doctrine; Texas, California, and Florida land grant disputes litigated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on Spanish-law delivery principles. Entrega has no operative role in common law jurisdictions.
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