The medieval legal collections and codes known to us are very weakly correlated with the data of records and acts that should have been the result of their practical application. Even the existence of a reference to a certain tradition does not guarantee the coincidence of the norm, fixed in writing, and the norms applied. In this article, using the example of city privileges – the fuero of Toledo (12–13 centuries), it is demonstrated that medieval normative texts were not always intended for use in the regulation of practical legal acts. Two texts of the numerous fuero of Toledo - Fuero mozarabe (1101) and the so-called Fuero-compilation (mid. XII century), most often copied and received royal confirmation, which allows them to be considered the collections of norms and privileges most relevant to the city. However, attempts to find evidence in private legal acts and court decisions that would prove the practical existence of legal traditions, fixed in them, give a very scant result. The history of these texts shows that the main role in their editing and preservation was played by concejo, and not by the royal authority on whose behalf the charters were composed. By the middle of the 13th century the concejo of Toledo after several decades of effort gets that version of the text of the fuero, which was no longer necessary to change. The preambles and clauses of the subsequent confirmations testify that the main sense in reproducing the text of the fixed norms was seen not so much in maintaining the legal order and justice as in preserving the memory of the good deeds of the ancestors and in the hope of a good memory of oneself. Thus, many city fueros of the 12th – 13th centuries, which are usually interpreted as texts that fix the legal norm, somehow connected with legal practice, were by no means considered in this capacity when their records were compiled.