According to the Fuero de Guipúzcoa, it had its seat in the General Meetings with the number 12 on the left hand side of the Corregidor. He voted for 45 fires. In Gorosábel's time it occupied the 9th position and voted for 66 fires. After its emancipation from the lordly tutelage in 1556, the valley was empowered by royal provision issued by Princess Juana, governor of these kingdoms, in Valladolid on April 12, 1557, to appoint each year its ordinary mayor and other officers of the municipal government, as it had done before, and in the manner and time that in the other villages in the region, according to Ordinances dating from 1600. With this valley having its own municipal government, as well as civil and criminal jurisdiction, it did not take long to ask the king to incorporate it for all purposes into the corregimiento of Guipúzcoa, although this included the clause that the knowledge of the business and causes of its neighbors and inhabitants in the first instance was reserved exclusively to the mayor of the valley. The king agreed to all this and consequently the competent royal provision was issued in Madrid on December 21, 1558. However, it stipulated that the sentences and orders of the mayor of the valley of Léniz could be appealed before the corregidor, as in the other towns. That the latter would take the accounts of the rents, own, sisas and distributions of the valley, and would visit it when he considered it convenient. The royal provision added that the corregidor could know in the first instance of the business and causes of the neighbors and inhabitants of this valley, that being personally in it he had prevented; and also outside this case, whenever its mayor made his voluntary referral. Thus the things, happened in the year of 1560 that having gone to this valley a merino of the corregidor D. Lope García de Varela with commission of the same one to make certain ution, the mayor Lope Ibáñez de Uribe prevented him to practice the diligences of its fulfillment. As a consequence, the corregidor proceeded criminally against the aforementioned mayor, ordering his arrest, which gave the valley the opportunity to represent the king against such measures, which it considered to be an infringement of its jurisdiction. Once the proceedings were taken to the royal council, this supreme court issued a decree in Madrid on December 19, 1561, ordering the corregidor Varela and his successors to keep and comply with the privilege of the first instance that the valley had. Subsequently the province litigated with this before the same supreme court, ing the observance of part of the same one of the conditions under which it was incorporated to its Brotherhood. It was in fact an express and strict clause of the annexation contract that the corregidor of the province had to exercise the same jurisdiction in the valley of Léniz as in the other towns of the province. Nevertheless, the province was unable to achieve its intention; and in this way the exclusive jurisdiction of the mayor of the Léniz valley in the first instance, in accordance with the privilege that was granted to him in 1558, was uted. This was observed from then on until the establishment of the courts of first instance in the year 1841 in this province of Guipuzcoa.