History of Catalonia
Encyclopedia
The territory that now constitutes the autonomous community
of Catalonia
in Spain, and the adjoining Catalan region of France, was first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic. Like the rest of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula
, it was colonized by Ancient Greeks
and Carthaginians
and participated in the pre-Roman Iberian culture.
With the rest of Hispania
, it was part of the Roman Empire
, then came under Visigothic rule after Rome's collapse. The northernmost part of Catalonia was briefly occupied by the Moorish
(Muslim
-ruled) al-Andalus
in the VIII century, but after the defeat of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqiwas's troops at Tours
in 732 local Visigoths regained autonomy, though they voluntarily made themselves tributary to the emerging Frankish kingdom, which gave the grouping of these local powers the generic name Marca Hispanica
or Spanish March.
Identifiably Catalan culture developed in the Middle Ages
under the hegemony of the Counts of Barcelona. As part of the Crown of Aragon — most historians would say the dominant part — the Catalans became a maritime power, expanding by trade and conquest into Valencia, the Balearic Islands
, and even Sardinia
and Sicily
.
The marriage of Isabella I of Castile
and Ferdinand II of Aragon
(1469) unified Christian Spain; in 1492, the kingdom of Granada, the last political entity of al-Andalus in the peninsula, was conquered and the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Americas
began. Political power began to shift away from the Crown of Aragon towards Castile.
For some time, Catalonia retained some its own laws, but these gradually eroded (albeit with occasional periods of regeneration) as did those of other parts of the country. Like other previously independent parts of the country, Catalonia experienced a loss of control over its own affairs over the centuries; this is especially so after the enthronement of the centralising Bourbon Dynasty in Madrid since under the Habsburgs the region was ruled as part of the independent Kingdom of Aragon.
The most significant conflict regarding this loss of control was the War of the Spanish Succession, which began when Carlos II died without an heir in 1700 and he appointed his grandnephew, Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV and of his sister, the Infanta Maria Teresa of Austria, as King of Spain, something the Habsburgs in Vienna were not in agreement with.
Catalonia supported the claim of a member of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg
dynasty (after breaking an oath of loyalty to Philip V from 1702), while the rest of Spain generally supported the French Bourbon claimant, Felipe V. Following the final surrender of Catalan troops on September 11, 1714, Felipe V's Nueva Planta decrees
banned all the main Catalan political institutions and imposed military-based rule over the region. However, the Crown allowed for the region's Civil Law to be maintained.
As Philip V of Spain, Philip of Anjou abolished the ancient privileges of all of Spain's medieval kingdoms, including Aragon and, invariably, Catalonia, and, following the model of France, tried to impose a unifying legislation in the whole country, as well as inaugurating the Sallic Law and founding in 1714, Spains Royal Language Academy, or the Real Academia Española.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Catalonia became a center of Spain's industrialization; to this day it remains the most industrialized part of Spain, rivaled only by the Basque Country
and the region of Madrid.
In the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia enjoyed and lost several times varying degrees of autonomy, but like the rest of Spain, Catalan autonomy and culture were crushed to an unprecedented degree after the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic
(founded 1931) in the Spanish Civil War
(1936–39) brought General Francisco Franco
to power. Even though public use of the Catalan language
was banned some people continued to speak the language privately.
After Franco's death (1975), the Spanish transition to democracy
, and the adoption of a democratic Spanish constitution
(1978), Catalonia recovered cultural autonomy and political autonomy.
The first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia
were at the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic. The oldest known trace of human occupation is a mandible found in Banyoles
, described by some sources as pre-Neanderthal
some 200,000 years old; other sources suggest it to be only about one third that old. Some of the most important prehistoric remains were found in the caves of Mollet
(Serinyà
, Pla de l'Estany
), the Cau del Duc in the Montgrí mountain ("cau" meaning "cave" or "lair"), the remains at Forn d'en Sugranyes (Reus
) and the shelters Romaní
and Agut (Capellades
), while those of the Upper Paleolithic
are found at Reclau Viver, the cave of Arbreda and la Bora Gran d'en Carreres, in Serinyà, or the Cau de les Goges, in Sant Julià de Ramis
. From the next prehistoric era, the Epipaleolithic
or Mesolithic
, important remains survive, the greater part dated between 8000 BC and 5000 BC, such as those of Sant Gregori (Falset
) and el Filador (Margalef de Montsant).
The Neolithic
era began in Catalonia around 4500 BC, although the population was slower to develop fixed settlements than in other places, thanks to the abundance of woods, which allowed the continuation of a fundamentally hunter-gatherer
culture. The most important Neolithic remains in Catalonia are the Cave of Fontmajor (l'Espluga de Francolí
), The Cave of Toll (Morà
), the caves Gran and Freda (Montserrat
) and the shelters of Cogul and Ulldecona.
The Calcolithic or Eneolithic period developed in Catalonia between 2500 and 1800 BC, with the beginning of the construction of copper
objects. The Bronze Age
occurred between 1800 and 700 BC. There are few remnants of this era, but there were some known settlements in the low Segre zone. The Bronze Age coincided with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans
through the Urnfield Culture
, whose successive waves of migration began around 1200 BC, and they were responsible for the creation of the first proto-urban settlements. Around the middle of the 7th century BC, the Iron Age
arrived in Catalonia.
s: The Indiketes in Empordà
, the Ceretans in Cerdanya
and the Airenosins in the Val d'Aran
. The influx of Celtic peoples led to a characteristic blend of cultures known as Celtiberian
, which was affected by the first arrival of colonists from Ancient Greece
and Carthage
; like the rest of the Iberian Peninsula
, Catalonia participated in what became the Iberian culture. At this time Empúries
(originally Greek
Emporion market, then Emporiae), on the coast of what is now the Catalan province of Girona
, a commercial enclave, founded from the Greek city of Phocaea
in the 6th century BC.
From the 8th century BC to the 7th century BC the indigenous peoples came into contact with the colonizers, and the first iron objects are found in the area. From the 7th century BC to the middle of the 5th century BC, the process of Iberianization was consolidated. A period of plenty lasted from the middle of the 5th century BC until the 3rd century BC. Finally, after the 218 BC arrival of the Romans
, the Iberian culture was absorbed into that of Rome.
arrived in Empúries, with the objective of cutting off the sources of provisions of Hannibal's Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War
. After the Carthaginian defeat, and the defeat of various Iberian tribes who rose up against Roman rule, 195 BC saw the effective completion of the Roman conquest of the territory that later became Catalonia and Romanization began in earnest. The various tribes were absorbed into a common Roman culture and lost their distinct characteristics, including differences of language.
Most of what is now Catalonia first became part of the Roman province
of Hispania Citerior
; after 27 BC, they became part of Tarraconensis, whose capital was Tarraco (now Tarragona
). The arrival of Roman administrative and institutional structures led to the development of a network of cities and roads
, the adoption of agriculture
based on cereal
s, grape
s, and olive
s, the introduction of irrigation
, the development of Roman law
, and the adoption of the Latin
language.
affected the whole Roman Empire, and gravely affected the Catalan territory, where there is evidence of significant levels of destruction and abandonment of Roman villa
s. This is also the period of the first documentary evidence of the arrival of Christianity
. While archaeological evidence shows the recovery of some urban nuclei, such as Barcino (later Barcelona
), Tarraco (later Tarragona), and Gerunda (later Girona
), the previous situation was not restored: the cities became smaller, and constructed defensive wall
s.
In the 5th century, as part of the invasion of the Roman Empire by Germanic tribes, the Visigoths led by Athaulf, installed themselves in Tarraconensis (410) and when in 475 the Visigothic king Euric
formed the kingdom of Tolosa (modern Toulouse
, France), he incorporated the territory equivalent to present-day Catalonia. The Visigoths dominated the territory until the beginning of the 8th century, first from Toulouse and later from Toledo
. In 718, the Muslim conquest of Spain
reached the northeastern part of the peninsula and made incursions into Septimania
, a process that took place with few major battles in this region, one of the most notable being at Tarragona.
as part of the Carolingian reaction against the Moorish advances. In the last quarter of the 8th century, the Franks pacified Septimania
and conquered the Pyrenean
portion of Catalonia extending their power as far as Girona. Charlemagne
's son Louis
took Barcelona from the Moorish
emir in 801, ultimately forming a frontier zone at the rivers Llobregat
, Cardener
, and the middle branch of the river Segre. This borderland between the Franks and the Moors became known as the Marca Hispanica
(Spanish Marches
), a buffer zone ruled by the Count of Barcelona, with outlying small separate territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with armed retainers, who theoretically owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor, or (with less fealty) to his Carolingian and Ottonian
successors.
This new Frankish territory was first organized politically into different counties
(in the narrow sense of the word: the ruler of each took the title of count
). At the end of the 9th century, the Carolingian monarch Charles the Bald
designated Wilfred the Hairy — a noble descendant of a family from Conflent
and son of the earlier Count of Barcelona Sunifred I
— as count of Cerdanya and Urgell
(870); after Charles's death (877), Wilfred became count of Barcelona and Girona (878) as well, which brought together the greater part of what was to become the Catalan territory, and although on his death the counties were divided again among his sons, except for one brief period Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona continued to be unified under one count.
made official in 987 when he failed to swear fealty to Hugh Capet, the first Capetian
monarch. In those years of the formation of the Catalan counties, the population of the territory began to increase for the first time since the Muslim invasion. During the 9th and 10th centuries, Catalonia increasingly became a society of aloer
s, peasant
proprietors of small, family-based farms, producing little more than subsistence
, and owing no formal feudal
allegiance.
The 11th century was characterized by the development of feudal society, as the miles formed links of vassal
age over this previously independent peasantry.
The middle years of the century were characterized by virulent class warfare. Seigniorial violence was unleashed against the peasants, utilizing new military tactics, based on contracting well armed mercenary
soldiers mounted on horse
s. By the end of the century, most of the aloers had been converted into vassals.
This coincided with a weakening of the power of the counts and the division of the Spanish Marches into more numerous counties, which gradually became a feudal state
based on complex fealties and dependencies. From the time of the triumph of Ramon Berenguer I
over the other Catalan counts, the counts of Barcelona stood firmly at the peak of a web of fealty, tying all the Catalan counts to their crown.
parallel to Castile
at a later date, as "Catalunya" or "Catalonia".
The term "Catalonia" is first documented in an early 12th-century Latin
chronicle called the Liber maiolichinus, where Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona
is referred to as catalanicus heroes, rector catalanicus, and dux catalanensis. The name Catalania (Catalonia) is also found and catalanenses (Catalans) appears opposite goti ("Goths"), referring to the people of the Languedoc
.
, part of the county of Empúries
, all of the county of Cerdanya
, and, briefly, even the county of Provence
. The Catalan church, for its part, became independent of the bishopric of Narbonne, recovering an episcopal see at Tarragona (1118).
During the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV
(reigned 1131–1162), several events occurred that would be crucial for the future of Catalonia.
His marriage to Petronilla of Aragon implied the union of the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon
in a new state, this union later being confirmed in the 14th century by Peter IV of Aragon
("Peter the Ceremonious"). Ramon Berenguer IV used "Aragon" as his primary title and name of his ruling house, which absorbed the House of Barcelona, abolished in 1150 for reasons of mutual convenience and by the will of the Count himself, as he relinquished his own lineage to benefit from a higher one. Thus, he took the simple title Princeps ("prince") beside his wife with her title of Regina ("queen"); and their son, now that Barcelona was incorporated into the Crown, took the title Rex ("king") of Aragon, and not Catalonia. Catalonia and Aragon, however, retained their distinct traditional rights, and Catalonia its own personality with one of the first parliament
s in Europe, the Corts catalanes.
In addition, the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV saw the Catalan conquest of Lleida
and Tortosa
, completing the unification of all of the territory that comprises modern Catalonia. This included a territory to the south of the historic Spanish Marches, which became known as Catalunya Nova ("New Catalonia") and which was repopulated with Catalans by the end of the 12th century.
, Sardinia
, and the accession to Sicily of the kings of Aragon
.
At the end of the 12th century, a series of pacts with the kingdom of Castile delimited the zones that the two kingdoms would each attempt to conquer back Muslim-ruled territory (the "Reconquista
"); to the east, in 1213, the defeat and death of Peter II of Aragon
("Peter the Catholic") in the Battle of Muret
put an end to the project of consolidating Catalan power over Provence
. His successor James I of Aragon
did not fully consolidate his power until 1227; once he consolidated his inherited realm, he began a series of new conquests. Over the course of the next quarter-century he conquered Majorca and Valencia.
The latter became a new state, the third kingdom associated with the Crown of Aragon (or, as some historians now call it, the Catalan-Aragonese empire), with its own court and a new fuero (code of laws): the Furs de Valencia. In contrast, the Majorcan territory together with that of the counts of Cerdanya and Roussillon
and the city of Montpellier
were left as a kingdom for his son James II of Majorca
as the Kingdom of Majorca
. This division began a period of struggle that ended with the annexation of that kingdom by the Crown of Aragon in 1344 by Peter IV "the Ceremonious".
Catalonia saw a prosperous period at the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th. The population increased; Catalan culture expanded into the islands of the Western Mediterranean. The reign of Peter III of Aragon
("the Great") included the conquest of Sicily
and the successful defense against a French crusade; his son and successor Alfonso
("the Generous") conquered Minorca
; and Peter's second son James II
, who first acceded to the throne of Sicily and then succeeded his older brother as king of Aragon, conquered Sardinia; under James II, Catalonia reached the height of its power in the Middle Ages.
Nonetheless, the second quarter of the 14th century saw crucial changes for Catalonia, marked by a succession of natural catastrophes, demographic crises, stagnation and decline in the Catalan economy, and the rise of social tensions. The reign of Peter the Ceremonious was a time of war: the annexation of Majorca, the quelling of a rebellion in Sardinia, a rebellion by Aragonese unionists (that is, a faction who wished to extinguish local privileges in favor of a more centralized kingdom of Aragon), and, above all, war with Castile. These wars created a delicate financial situation, in a framework of demographic and economic crisis, to which was added a generation later a crisis of succession generated by the death in 1410 of Martin I
without a descendant or a named successor. A two-year interregnum
progressively evolved in favor of a candidate from the Castilian Trastámara
dynasty, Ferdinand of Antequera, who after the Compromise of Caspe
(1412), was named Ferdinand I of Aragon
.
Ferdinand's successor, Alfonso V
("the Magnanimous"), promoted a new stage of expansion, this time over the Kingdom of Naples
, over which he finally gained dominion in 1443. At the same time, though, he aggravated the social crisis in Catalonia, both in the countryside and in the cities. The outcome of these conflicts was the 1462 "remença
" (serf
s') rebellion, a peasant rebellion against seignorial pressures, which led to a ten-year civil war
that left the country exhausted. The remença conflict did not reach any definitive conclusion and from 1493 France formally annexed the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya, which it had occupied during the conflict. Ferdinand II of Aragon
("Ferdinand the Catholic") finally resolved the major grievances of the remences with the Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe in 1486, profoundly reformed Catalan institutions, recovered without war the northern Catalan counties, and increased active involvement in Italy.
brought about a dynastic union of the Crown of Aragon with Castile. In 1516 the monarchies were formally united into a single Kingdom of Spain, but each former kingdom conserved its political institutions and maintained its own courts, laws, public administration, and separate coinage of money.
When Christopher Columbus
"discovered" America during a Spanish-sponsored expedition, it shifted Europe's economic centre of gravity (and the focus of Spain's ambitions) from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean and undermined Catalonia's economic and political importance. Aragonese and Catalan power in the Mediterranean would continue, but efforts to achieve further Spanish conquests in Europe itself generally slackened, and the maritime expansion into the Atlantic and the conquest of Central
and South America was not a Catalan enterprise. Castile and Aragon were separate states until 1716, in spite of the dynastic union, and the newly established colonies in the Americas were Castilian, administered as appendages of Castile, until 1778 Seville
was the only port authorized to trade in America, and until the dynastic union Catalans, as subjects of the Crown of Aragon
, had no right to trade in the Castilian-ruled Americas.
In the 16th century, the Catalan population began a demographic recuperation and some measure of economic recuperation. The reign of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
as Charles I of Spain was a harmonious period, during which Catalonia generally accepted the new structure of Spain, despite its own marginalization. As the focus of Spanish maritime power and of European rivalry shifted to the Atlantic, the Kingdom of Valencia
became the most important kingdom of the former Aragonese confederation, eclipsing Barcelona. The reign of Philip II
marked the beginning of a gradual process of deterioration of Catalan economy, language, and culture. Among the most negative elements of the period were a rise in piracy along the coasts and banditry in the interior.
acceped to the throne in 1621, the Count-Duke of Olivares
attempted to sustain an ambitious foreign policy by taxing the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, which meant laying aside the until-then-prevailing principles of confederation
, in favor of centralism (often referred to in a Spanish context as unitarism). Resistance in Catalonia was especially strong, given the lack of any significant apparent regional return for the sacrifices.
When Spanish tercios (military corps) concentrated in Roussillon at the end of the 1630s, because of the Thirty Years' War
with France, the local peasants were required to lodge and provision the troops. On June 7, 1640, an uprising known as the Corpus de Sang
took the lives of various royal functionaries, not all of them Castilian. Mutinies continued; the Generalitat of Catalonia succeeded in channeling the revolt against the policies of the Count-Duke, transforming a social revolt into a political war against Castilian domination, a war for Catalan independence.
The president of the Generalitat, Pau Claris
, declared a Catalan Republic under the protection of Louis XIII of France
. This allowed French troops to draw that much closer to the heartland of Spain. By 1652, Catalonia was again occupied by Spanish troops; war with France lasted until 1659, when the Peace of the Pyrenees ceded Roussillon, Conflent, Vallespir
, Capcir
, and the northern half of Cerdanya to France. These remain French territory to this day.
(1705–14) resulted in the revocation of Catalonia's traditional autonomy and privileges as apunishment for their sedition. Afterwards, the government attempted to harmonise the Catalans' sense of identity as a nation within Spain. The Catalan language was withdrawn from the administrative area in varying degrees for the next two and a half centuries.
In the last decades of the 17th century, despite the persistence of intermittent violent conflict with France, the Catalan economy began to recover, not only in Barcelona, but also along the Catalan coast and even in some inland areas. However, at the end of the century, after the death of the childless Charles II
(1700), the crown of Spain went to Philip V
of the House of Bourbon
. The Grand Alliance
of England, the United Provinces
(the antecedent of the Netherlands) and Austria gave military support to a rival claimant to the crown, Archduke Charles
. Catalonia initially accepted Philip V following prolonged negotiations between Philip V and the Catalan Cortes between 12.10.1701 and 14.1.1702, which resulted in an agreement where Catalonia retained all its previous privileges and gained a the status of free port (Puerto Franco) for Barcelona as well as the right to commerce with America, but this did not last. In 1705 the Archduke entered Barcelona, which recognized him as king in 1706; thus, this breach of an oath of loyalty had negative repercussions when Philip V eventually won the war.
The resulting war (1705–14) may have benefitted Charles's foreign allies, but was a disaster for the Catalan and Aragonese lands. By 1710 politico-administrative structures of Valencia and Aragon were destroyed and their privileges abolished. The later course of the war and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713–14) ended the possibility of Barcelona's resistance. After the fall of Barcelona (September 11, 1714), the triumphant forces systematically dismantled the Catalan institutions, in a process that culminated in the Nueva Planta decree
(1716), which abolished the Catalan constitutions
, established a new territorial and administrative structure for the whole of Spain, suppressed the Catalan universities (Barcelona University moved to Cervera) and abolished the administrative use of the Catalan language; half a century later, the Catalan language would also be banned from primary and secondary schools.
goods and other textiles. By the end of the 18th century, the popular classes began to experience the first effects of proletarianization
.
and the French Revolutionary Wars
. In 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars
, Catalonia was occupied by the troops of General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme
. The official Spanish army had evaporated, but popular resistance against the French occupation occurred in Catalonia as in other parts of Spain, and eventually developed into the Peninsular War
. Girona
was besieged by the French and defended by its inhabitants under the direction of general and military governor Mariano Alvarez de Castro
. The French finally took the city December 10, 1809, after many deaths on both sides from hunger, epidemics, and cold; Álvarez de Castro died in prison one month later.
Between 1812 and 1813, Catalonia was directly annexed to France itself, and organized as four (later two) départements.
French dominion in parts of Catalonia lasted until 1814, when the British General Wellington
signed the armistice
by which the French left Barcelona
and the other strongholds that they had managed to keep until the last.
"Carlist
" partisans of Infante Carlos
and the liberal
partisans of Isabella II
led to the First Carlist War
, which lasted until 1840 and was especially virulent in the Catalan territory. As with the Basques
, many of the Catalans fought on the Carlist side, not because they supported absolute monarchy, but because they hoped that restoration of the Old Regime would mean restoration of their fueros and recovery of regional autonomy.
The victory of the liberals over the absolutists led to a "bourgeois revolution" during the reign of Isabella II. The reign of Isabella II was marked by corruption, administrative inefficiency, centralism, and political and social tensions. The liberals soon divided into "moderates" and "progressives", and in Catalonia a republican
current began to develop; also, inevitably, Catalans generally favored a more federal Spain.
In September 1868, Spain's continuing economic crisis triggered the September Revolution or La Gloriosa, beginning the so-called Sexenio Revolucionario, the "six revolutionary years" (1868–1873). Among the most notable events of this period were the government of General Joan Prim and his assassination, the federalist revolt of 1869, the rise of Amadeo to the monarchy, the proclamation of the First Spanish Republic
, the outbreak of the Third Carlist War
and the spread of the ideas of the First International.
policies, which reduced the competition from foreign products. As in so much of Europe, the popular classes were molded into an industrial proletariat, living and working in inhuman conditions.
led to a restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in the person of Alfonso XII
. A period of political stability, of repression of the workers movement, and of a slow growth in Catalan nationalist identity extended to the early years of the 20th century, when once again political opposition broke to the fore, especially republicanism and Catalan nationalism
, but also class-based politics reflecting social tensions.
The following decades saw the rise of the political Catalanism still prevalent today: the first formulations of the modern Catalan national identity can be seen in Valentí Almirall. In 1901 Enric Prat de la Riba
and Francesc Cambó
formed the Regionalist League
, which led to the electoral coalition Solidaritat Catalana.
Catalan nationalism, under the leadership of Prat de la Riba, achieved in 1913 a victory in obtaining partial self-government for the "Commonwealth" (Catalan: Mancomunitat; Spanish: Mancomunidad), a grouping of the four Catalan provinces, presided over first by Prat de la Riba, and later by Josep Puig i Cadafalch
; this was later suppressed in March 1925, during the 1923-1930 dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera
.
The Catalan workers movement at the turn of the twentieth century consisted of three tendencies: syndicalism
, socialism
, and anarchism
, part of the last openly embracing "propaganda of the deed" as advocated by Alejandro Lerroux
. Along with Asturias
, Catalonia in general and Barcelona in particular was a center of radical labor agitation, marked by numerous general strikes, assassinations (especially in the late 1910s), and the rise of the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
(National Confederation of Labour, CNT). The escalating violence between Catalan workers and the Catalan bourgeoisie led the latter to embrace the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, despite his centralizing tendencies. (See also Anarchism in Spain
.)
After the fall of Primo de Rivera, the Catalan left
made great efforts to create a united front under Francesc Macià. The Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia, or ERC) represented a break with the electoral abstentionism that, until then had been characteristic of the Catalan workers. Advocating socialism and Catalan independence, the party achieved a spectacular victory in the municipal elections of April 12, 1931, which preceded the April 14 proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic
. The Catalan Generalitat was revived, and a September 1932 statute of autonomy for Catalonia gave a strong, though not absolute, grant of self-government. A similar statute granted automomy to the Basque Country
.
Under its two presidents, Francesc Macià (1931–1933) and Lluís Companys (1934–1939), the republican Generalitat carried out a considerable task, despite the serious economic crisis, its social repercussions and the political vicissitudes of the period, including its suspension in 1934, due to an uprising in Barcelona in October that year. As for the workers' movement, there was the CNT crisis with the break-away faction in the 1930s and the formation of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ' onMouseout='HidePop("13034")' href="/topics/Poum">POUM
) and Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
(Catalan: Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, PSUC).
After the electoral victory of the left in the Spanish national elections of February 1936 came the July 1936 armed insurrection that led to the Spanish Civil War
. The defeat of the initial military rebellion in Catalonia placed Catalonia firmly in the Republican camp. During the war, there were two rival powers in Catalonia: the de jure power of the Generalitat and the de facto power of the armed popular militias
. Violent confrontations between the workers' parties culminated in the defeat of the CNT-FAI and POUM, against whom the PSUC unleashed strong repression. The local situation resolved itself progressively in favor of the Generalitat, but at the same time the Generalitat was losing its autonomous power within republican Spain.
The military forces of the Generalitat were concentrated on two fronts: Aragon and Majorca. The latter was an utter disaster. The Aragon front resisted firmly until 1937, when the occupation of Lérida and Balaguer
destabilized it. Finally, Franco's troops broke the republican territory in two by occupying Vinaròs
, isolating Catalonia from the rest of republican Spain. The defeat of the Republican armies in the Battle of the Ebro
led in 1938 and 1939 to the occupation of Catalonia by Franco's forces, who abolished Catalan autonomy and brought in a dictatorial regime, which took strong measures against Catalan nationalism and Catalan culture. Only forty years later, after Franco's death (1975) and the adoption of a democratic constitution in Spain (1978), did Catalonia recover its autonomy and reconstitute the Generalitat (1979).
George Orwell
served with the POUM in Catalonia from December 1936 until June 1937. His memoir of that time, Homage to Catalonia
, was first published in 1938 and foreshadowed the causes of Second World War
. It remains one of the most widely read books on the Spanish Civil War.
.
After an initial period in which Spain tried to build an autarky
, in the 1960s the economy entered a stage of agricultural modernization, increasing industrialization and the start of mass tourism. Catalonia was on the receiving end of migration within Spain, which especially accelerated the growth of Barcelona and its surrounding area. Working-class opposition to Franco began to appear, usually clandestinely, and most notably in the form of the Comisiones Obreras
("Workers Commissions"), a return of trade union
organizing, and the revival of the PSUC. In the 1970s democratic forces united under the banner of the Assemblea de Catalunya ("Catalan Assembly").
. This constitution recognized the existence of multiple national communities within the Spanish state, which proposed the division of the country into autonomous communities
. The first general elections in 1977 restored a provisional Generalitat, headed by Josep Tarradellas and including representatives of the various leading forces of the time. In 1979, the statute of autonomy was finally approved delegating more automomy in matters of education and culture than the 1932 statute, but less in terms of the systems of justice and public order. In it, Catalonia is defined as a "nationality", Catalan is recognized as Catalonia's own language, and became co-official with Spanish. New elections under this statute gave the Catalan presidency to Jordi Pujol
, a position he would hold until 2003. During this time he also led Convergència i Unió (Convergence and Unity, CiU) a center-right Catalan nationalist electoral coalition consisting of his own Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya
(Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, CDC) and the smaller and more conservative Unió Democràtica de Catalunya
(Democratic Union of Catalonia).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the institutions of Catalan autonomy continued to develop, among them an autonomous police force, the creation of the comarcal
administrations (roughly equivalent to United States "counties" or United Kingdom "shire
s" or "counties", but distinct from the historical Catalan counties) and a supreme court in the form of the Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya.
Catalonia's Law of Linguistic Normalization promoted Catalan-language media. The Catalan government provides subsidies to various means of promoting Catalan culture, including (for example) the making of Catalan-language films or the subtitling of foreign-language films in Catalan.
In 1992 Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics
, which brought international attention to Catalonia. During the 1990s, the absence of absolute majorities in the Spanish parliament
made governments reliant on support from the various nationalist parties (Catalan, Basque, Canary Islands
, etc.) which was leveraged by CiU, to gain broaden the scope of Catalan autonomy during the last government of Felipe González
(1993–1996) and the first of José María Aznar
(1996–2000).
In November 2003, elections to the Generalitat gave the plurality, but not the majority of seats to CiU. Three other parties (Socialists' Party of Catalonia
–Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
, PSC-PSOE, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Initiative for Catalonia Greens
(ICV)) united to take the government, making Pasqual Maragall, (PSC-PSOE) the new president.
This government proved unstable, especially on the issue of reforming the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia
, and new elections were held in autumn 2006. The result was again a plurality, but not a majority, for CiU, and PSC-PSOE, ERC and ICV again formed a coalition.
On 16 September 2005, the ICANN
officially approved the domain.cat
, the first domain for a language community.
Autonomous communities of Spain
An autonomous community In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian .*Galician .*Basque . The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "nationalities and regions" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".Political power in Spain is...
of Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
in Spain, and the adjoining Catalan region of France, was first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic. Like the rest of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
, it was colonized by Ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Carthaginians
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
and participated in the pre-Roman Iberian culture.
With the rest of Hispania
Hispania
Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....
, it was part of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, then came under Visigothic rule after Rome's collapse. The northernmost part of Catalonia was briefly occupied by the Moorish
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
(Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
-ruled) al-Andalus
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
in the VIII century, but after the defeat of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqiwas's troops at Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
in 732 local Visigoths regained autonomy, though they voluntarily made themselves tributary to the emerging Frankish kingdom, which gave the grouping of these local powers the generic name Marca Hispanica
Marca Hispanica
The Marca Hispanica , also known as Spanish March or March of Barcelona was a buffer zone beyond the province of Septimania, created by Charlemagne in 795 as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom....
or Spanish March.
Identifiably Catalan culture developed in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
under the hegemony of the Counts of Barcelona. As part of the Crown of Aragon — most historians would say the dominant part — the Catalans became a maritime power, expanding by trade and conquest into Valencia, the Balearic Islands
Balearic Islands
The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...
, and even Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
and Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
.
The marriage of Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
and Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...
(1469) unified Christian Spain; in 1492, the kingdom of Granada, the last political entity of al-Andalus in the peninsula, was conquered and the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
began. Political power began to shift away from the Crown of Aragon towards Castile.
For some time, Catalonia retained some its own laws, but these gradually eroded (albeit with occasional periods of regeneration) as did those of other parts of the country. Like other previously independent parts of the country, Catalonia experienced a loss of control over its own affairs over the centuries; this is especially so after the enthronement of the centralising Bourbon Dynasty in Madrid since under the Habsburgs the region was ruled as part of the independent Kingdom of Aragon.
The most significant conflict regarding this loss of control was the War of the Spanish Succession, which began when Carlos II died without an heir in 1700 and he appointed his grandnephew, Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV and of his sister, the Infanta Maria Teresa of Austria, as King of Spain, something the Habsburgs in Vienna were not in agreement with.
Catalonia supported the claim of a member of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
dynasty (after breaking an oath of loyalty to Philip V from 1702), while the rest of Spain generally supported the French Bourbon claimant, Felipe V. Following the final surrender of Catalan troops on September 11, 1714, Felipe V's Nueva Planta decrees
Nueva Planta decrees
The Nueva Planta decrees were a number of decrees signed between 1707 and 1716 by Philip V—the first Bourbon king of Spain—during and shortly after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession which he won....
banned all the main Catalan political institutions and imposed military-based rule over the region. However, the Crown allowed for the region's Civil Law to be maintained.
As Philip V of Spain, Philip of Anjou abolished the ancient privileges of all of Spain's medieval kingdoms, including Aragon and, invariably, Catalonia, and, following the model of France, tried to impose a unifying legislation in the whole country, as well as inaugurating the Sallic Law and founding in 1714, Spains Royal Language Academy, or the Real Academia Española.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Catalonia became a center of Spain's industrialization; to this day it remains the most industrialized part of Spain, rivaled only by the Basque Country
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....
and the region of Madrid.
In the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia enjoyed and lost several times varying degrees of autonomy, but like the rest of Spain, Catalan autonomy and culture were crushed to an unprecedented degree after the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
(founded 1931) in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
(1936–39) brought General Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
to power. Even though public use of the Catalan language
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
was banned some people continued to speak the language privately.
After Franco's death (1975), the Spanish transition to democracy
Spanish transition to democracy
The Spanish transition to democracy was the era when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. The transition is usually said to have begun with Franco’s death on 20 November 1975, while its completion has been variously said to be marked by the Spanish...
, and the adoption of a democratic Spanish constitution
Spanish Constitution of 1978
-Structure of the State:The Constitution recognizes the existence of nationalities and regions . Preliminary Title As a result, Spain is now composed entirely of 17 Autonomous Communities and two autonomous cities with varying degrees of autonomy, to the extent that, even though the Constitution...
(1978), Catalonia recovered cultural autonomy and political autonomy.
Prehistory in Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
were at the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic. The oldest known trace of human occupation is a mandible found in Banyoles
Banyoles
Banyoles is a city of 17,309 inhabitants located in the province of Girona in northeastern Catalonia, Spain.The town is the capital of the Catalan comarca "Pla de l'Estany"...
, described by some sources as pre-Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
some 200,000 years old; other sources suggest it to be only about one third that old. Some of the most important prehistoric remains were found in the caves of Mollet
Mollet
Three generations of the family named Mollet were royal gardeners to the kings of France, from Henri IV to Louis XIV. They include*Claude Mollet *André Mollet...
(Serinyà
Serinyà
Serinyà is a village in the province of Girona and autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain....
, Pla de l'Estany
Pla de l'Estany
Pla de l'Estany is a comarca in Catalonia, Spain. Its name means "plain of the lake", the lake in question being the Lake of Banyoles. Banyoles is also the name of the capital of the comarca and home to over half of its people...
), the Cau del Duc in the Montgrí mountain ("cau" meaning "cave" or "lair"), the remains at Forn d'en Sugranyes (Reus
Reus
Reus is the capital of the comarca of Baix Camp, in the province of Tarragona, in Catalonia, Spain. The area has always been an important producer of wines and spirits, and gained continental importance at the time of the Phylloxera plague...
) and the shelters Romaní
Romani
Romani relates or may refer to:- Nationality :*The Romani people**their Romani language*The Latin term for the ancient Romans, see Roman citizenship*The Italian term for inhabitants of Rome...
and Agut (Capellades
Capellades
Capellades is a town in Catalonia, located in the south of the comarca of Anoia, some sixty metres above the Anoia river where it cuts through the Serrelada Pre-litoral, or precoastal range, in the Capellades Gorge...
), while those of the Upper Paleolithic
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...
are found at Reclau Viver, the cave of Arbreda and la Bora Gran d'en Carreres, in Serinyà, or the Cau de les Goges, in Sant Julià de Ramis
Sant Julià de Ramis
Sant Julià de Ramis is a village in the province of Girona and autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain....
. From the next prehistoric era, the Epipaleolithic
Epipaleolithic
The Epipaleolithic Age was a period in the development of human technology marked by more advanced stone blades and other tools than the earlier Paleolithic age, although still before the development of agriculture in the Neolithic age...
or Mesolithic
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....
, important remains survive, the greater part dated between 8000 BC and 5000 BC, such as those of Sant Gregori (Falset
Falset, Tarragona
Falset is the principal village of the comarca of the Priorat, in Catalonia, very famous for its wine. It has a castle and two palaces...
) and el Filador (Margalef de Montsant).
The Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
era began in Catalonia around 4500 BC, although the population was slower to develop fixed settlements than in other places, thanks to the abundance of woods, which allowed the continuation of a fundamentally hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
culture. The most important Neolithic remains in Catalonia are the Cave of Fontmajor (l'Espluga de Francolí
L'Espluga de Francolí
L'Espluga de Francolí is a village in the province of Tarragona and autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain....
), The Cave of Toll (Morà
Mora
-People:* Alberto J. Mora , General Counsel of the United States Navy * Alfonso Mora , Venezuelan former tennis player* Bruno Mora , Italian football player and coach* Cristian Mora , Ecuadorian football goalkeeper...
), the caves Gran and Freda (Montserrat
Montserrat (mountain)
Montserrat is a multi-peaked mountain located near the city of Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. It is part of the Catalan Pre-Coastal Range. The main peaks are Sant Jeroni , Montgrós and Miranda de les Agulles...
) and the shelters of Cogul and Ulldecona.
The Calcolithic or Eneolithic period developed in Catalonia between 2500 and 1800 BC, with the beginning of the construction of copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
objects. The Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
occurred between 1800 and 700 BC. There are few remnants of this era, but there were some known settlements in the low Segre zone. The Bronze Age coincided with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans
Proto-Indo-Europeans
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...
through the Urnfield Culture
Urnfield culture
The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns which were then buried in fields...
, whose successive waves of migration began around 1200 BC, and they were responsible for the creation of the first proto-urban settlements. Around the middle of the 7th century BC, the Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
arrived in Catalonia.
The rise of Iberian culture
During the period of Iberian civilization, the Catalan territory was home to several distinct tribeTribe
A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...
s: The Indiketes in Empordà
Empordà
Empordà is a historical region of Catalonia divided since 1936 into two comarques, Alt Empordà and Baix Empordà....
, the Ceretans in Cerdanya
Cerdanya
Cerdanya is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it has been one of the counties of Catalonia....
and the Airenosins in the Val d'Aran
Val d'Aran
The Val d'Aran is a valley in the Pyrenees mountains and a comarca in the northwestern part of the province of Lleida, in Catalonia, northern Spain. Most of the valley constitutes the only part of Spain, and of Catalonia, on the north face of the Pyrenees, hence the only part of Catalonia whose...
. The influx of Celtic peoples led to a characteristic blend of cultures known as Celtiberian
Celtiberians
The Celtiberians were Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula in the final centuries BC. The group used the Celtic Celtiberian language.Archaeologically, the Celtiberians participated in the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain...
, which was affected by the first arrival of colonists from Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
; like the rest of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
, Catalonia participated in what became the Iberian culture. At this time Empúries
Empúries
Empúries , formerly known by its Spanish name Ampurias , was a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Catalan comarca of Alt Empordà in Catalonia, Spain. It was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea with the name of Ἐμπόριον...
(originally Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
Emporion market, then Emporiae), on the coast of what is now the Catalan province of Girona
Girona (province)
Girona is a province of north-eastern Spain, in the northern part of the autonomous community of Catalonia. It is bordered by the provinces of Barcelona and Lleida, and by France and the Mediterranean Sea....
, a commercial enclave, founded from the Greek city of Phocaea
Phocaea
Phocaea, or Phokaia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia in 600 BC, Emporion in 575 BC and Elea in 540 BC.-Geography:Phocaea was the northernmost...
in the 6th century BC.
From the 8th century BC to the 7th century BC the indigenous peoples came into contact with the colonizers, and the first iron objects are found in the area. From the 7th century BC to the middle of the 5th century BC, the process of Iberianization was consolidated. A period of plenty lasted from the middle of the 5th century BC until the 3rd century BC. Finally, after the 218 BC arrival of the Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, the Iberian culture was absorbed into that of Rome.
Roman times
Romanization brought a second, distinct stage in the ancient history of Catalonia. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio CalvusGnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus
Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus was a Roman general and statesman.His father was Lucius Cornelius Scipio, son of the patrician censor of 280, Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus. His younger brother was Publius Cornelius Scipio, father of the most famous Scipio – Scipio Africanus...
arrived in Empúries, with the objective of cutting off the sources of provisions of Hannibal's Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...
. After the Carthaginian defeat, and the defeat of various Iberian tribes who rose up against Roman rule, 195 BC saw the effective completion of the Roman conquest of the territory that later became Catalonia and Romanization began in earnest. The various tribes were absorbed into a common Roman culture and lost their distinct characteristics, including differences of language.
Most of what is now Catalonia first became part of the Roman province
Roman province
In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...
of Hispania Citerior
Hispania Citerior
During the Roman Republic, Hispania Citerior was a region of Hispania roughly occupying the northeastern coast and the Ebro Valley of what is now Spain. Hispania Ulterior was located west of Hispania Citerior—that is, farther away from Rome.-External links:*...
; after 27 BC, they became part of Tarraconensis, whose capital was Tarraco (now Tarragona
Tarragona
Tarragona is a city located in the south of Catalonia on the north-east of Spain, by the Mediterranean. It is the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and the capital of the Catalan comarca Tarragonès. In the medieval and modern times it was the capital of the Vegueria of Tarragona...
). The arrival of Roman administrative and institutional structures led to the development of a network of cities and roads
Roman road
The Roman roads were a vital part of the development of the Roman state, from about 500 BC through the expansion during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Roman roads enabled the Romans to move armies and trade goods and to communicate. The Roman road system spanned more than 400,000 km...
, the adoption of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
based on cereal
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...
s, grape
Grape
A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...
s, and olive
Olive
The olive , Olea europaea), is a species of a small tree in the family Oleaceae, native to the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean Basin as well as northern Iran at the south end of the Caspian Sea.Its fruit, also called the olive, is of major agricultural importance in the...
s, the introduction of irrigation
Irrigation
Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
, the development of Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
, and the adoption of the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
language.
Visigothic and Muslim rule
The Crisis of the Third CenturyCrisis of the Third Century
The Crisis of the Third Century was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression...
affected the whole Roman Empire, and gravely affected the Catalan territory, where there is evidence of significant levels of destruction and abandonment of Roman villa
Villa
A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity,...
s. This is also the period of the first documentary evidence of the arrival of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. While archaeological evidence shows the recovery of some urban nuclei, such as Barcino (later Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
), Tarraco (later Tarragona), and Gerunda (later Girona
Girona
Girona is a city in the northeast of Catalonia, Spain at the confluence of the rivers Ter, Onyar, Galligants and Güell, with an official population of 96,236 in January 2009. It is the capital of the province of the same name and of the comarca of the Gironès...
), the previous situation was not restored: the cities became smaller, and constructed defensive wall
Defensive wall
A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements...
s.
In the 5th century, as part of the invasion of the Roman Empire by Germanic tribes, the Visigoths led by Athaulf, installed themselves in Tarraconensis (410) and when in 475 the Visigothic king Euric
Euric
Euric, also known as Evaric, Erwig, or Eurico in Spanish and Portuguese , Son of Theodoric I and the younger brother of Theodoric II and ruled as king of the Visigoths, with his capital at Toulouse, from 466 until his death in 484.He inherited a large portion of the Visigothic possessions in the...
formed the kingdom of Tolosa (modern Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, France), he incorporated the territory equivalent to present-day Catalonia. The Visigoths dominated the territory until the beginning of the 8th century, first from Toulouse and later from Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
. In 718, the Muslim conquest of Spain
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
reached the northeastern part of the peninsula and made incursions into Septimania
Septimania
Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. Under the Visigoths it was known as simply Gallia or Narbonensis. It corresponded roughly with the modern...
, a process that took place with few major battles in this region, one of the most notable being at Tarragona.
Carolingian conquest
Within a century, the Catalan regions were conquered by the FranksFranks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
as part of the Carolingian reaction against the Moorish advances. In the last quarter of the 8th century, the Franks pacified Septimania
Septimania
Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. Under the Visigoths it was known as simply Gallia or Narbonensis. It corresponded roughly with the modern...
and conquered the Pyrenean
Pyrenean
The term Pyrenean refers to things of or from the Pyrenees mountain range. See:*Pyrenees, the mountain range dividing France and Spain*Pyrenean Shepherd or Pyrenean Mountain Dog, dog breeds sometimes shortened to Pyrenean...
portion of Catalonia extending their power as far as Girona. Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
's son Louis
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious , also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813...
took Barcelona from the Moorish
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
emir in 801, ultimately forming a frontier zone at the rivers Llobregat
Llobregat
The Llobregat is the second longest river in Catalonia, Spain. It originates in Castellar de n'Hug at an altitude of 1,259 meters in the Serra del Cadí, and ends in the Mediterranean Sea, in the municipality of El Prat de Llobregat, near Barcelona...
, Cardener
Cardener
The Cardener is a river in Catalonia, Spain. Its source is at Les Fonts del Cardener in themunicipality of La Coma i la Pedra at an elevation of 1050 m. It drains a basin of1500 km²...
, and the middle branch of the river Segre. This borderland between the Franks and the Moors became known as the Marca Hispanica
Marca Hispanica
The Marca Hispanica , also known as Spanish March or March of Barcelona was a buffer zone beyond the province of Septimania, created by Charlemagne in 795 as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom....
(Spanish Marches
Marches
A march or mark refers to a border region similar to a frontier, such as the Welsh Marches, the borderland between England and Wales. During the Frankish Carolingian Dynasty, the word spread throughout Europe....
), a buffer zone ruled by the Count of Barcelona, with outlying small separate territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with armed retainers, who theoretically owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor, or (with less fealty) to his Carolingian and Ottonian
Ottonian
The Ottonian dynasty was a dynasty of Germanic Kings , named after its first emperor but also known as the Saxon dynasty after the family's origin. The family itself is also sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Liudolf and one of its primary leading-names...
successors.
This new Frankish territory was first organized politically into different counties
County
A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain modern nations. Historically in mainland Europe, the original French term, comté, and its equivalents in other languages denoted a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain...
(in the narrow sense of the word: the ruler of each took the title of count
Count
A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...
). At the end of the 9th century, the Carolingian monarch Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald , Holy Roman Emperor and King of West Francia , was the youngest son of the Emperor Louis the Pious by his second wife Judith.-Struggle against his brothers:He was born on 13 June 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder...
designated Wilfred the Hairy — a noble descendant of a family from Conflent
Conflent
Conflent is a historical Catalan comarca of Northern Catalonia, now part of the French Département of Pyrénées-Orientales. In the Middle Ages it comprised the County of Conflent....
and son of the earlier Count of Barcelona Sunifred I
Sunifred I, Count of Barcelona
Sunifred was the count of many Catalan and Septimanian counties; including Ausona, Besalú, Girona, Narbonne, Agde, Béziers, Lodève, Melgueil, Cerdanya, Urgell, Conflent, and Nîmes; and Count of Barcelona from 844 to 848....
— as count of Cerdanya and Urgell
Urgell
The County of Urgell is one of the historical Catalan counties, bordering on the counties of Pallars and Cerdanya.The county was carved by the Franks out of a former section of the Mark of Toulouse when the Alt Urgell area became part of the Carolingian Empire between 785 and 790.The original...
(870); after Charles's death (877), Wilfred became count of Barcelona and Girona (878) as well, which brought together the greater part of what was to become the Catalan territory, and although on his death the counties were divided again among his sons, except for one brief period Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona continued to be unified under one count.
The rise and fall of the aloers
During the 10th century the Catalan counts became increasingly independent of the Carolingian power, which the count Borrell IIBorrell II, Count of Barcelona
Borrell II was Count of Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona from 945 and Count of Urgell from 948.Borrell is first seen acting as count during the reign of his father Marquis Sunyer in 945 at the consecration of the nunnery church of Sant Pere de les Puelles in Barcelona, and succeeded Sunyer along with...
made official in 987 when he failed to swear fealty to Hugh Capet, the first Capetian
House of Capet
The House of Capet, or The Direct Capetian Dynasty, , also called The House of France , or simply the Capets, which ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328, was the most senior line of the Capetian dynasty – itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians. As rulers of France, the dynasty...
monarch. In those years of the formation of the Catalan counties, the population of the territory began to increase for the first time since the Muslim invasion. During the 9th and 10th centuries, Catalonia increasingly became a society of aloer
Aloer
Aloers were independent peasant proprietors of alous in what is now Catalonia, especially during the years between the Carolingian reconquest of the Spanish Marches from the Moors in the late 9th century and the consolidation of feudalism in that region in the 11th century...
s, peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
proprietors of small, family-based farms, producing little more than subsistence
Subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed their families. The typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat and clothe themselves during the year. Planting decisions are made with an eye...
, and owing no formal feudal
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
allegiance.
The 11th century was characterized by the development of feudal society, as the miles formed links of vassal
Vassal
A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...
age over this previously independent peasantry.
The middle years of the century were characterized by virulent class warfare. Seigniorial violence was unleashed against the peasants, utilizing new military tactics, based on contracting well armed mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
soldiers mounted on horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s. By the end of the century, most of the aloers had been converted into vassals.
This coincided with a weakening of the power of the counts and the division of the Spanish Marches into more numerous counties, which gradually became a feudal state
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
based on complex fealties and dependencies. From the time of the triumph of Ramon Berenguer I
Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona
Ramon Berenguer I the Old was Count of Barcelona in 1035–1076. He promulgated the earliest versions of a written code of Catalan law, the Usages of Barcelona....
over the other Catalan counts, the counts of Barcelona stood firmly at the peak of a web of fealty, tying all the Catalan counts to their crown.
First references to the name Catalonia
In this new feudal state, each miles was the castlà ("castellan" or lord of the castle) in an area largely defined by a day's ride, the region dotted with strongholds becoming known by them, in an etymologyEtymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
parallel to Castile
Castile (historical region)
A former kingdom, Castile gradually merged with its neighbours to become the Crown of Castile and later the Kingdom of Spain when united with the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre...
at a later date, as "Catalunya" or "Catalonia".
The term "Catalonia" is first documented in an early 12th-century Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
chronicle called the Liber maiolichinus, where Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona
Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona
Ramon Berenguer III the Great was the count of Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona from 1082 , Besalú from 1111, Cerdanya from 1117, and Provence, in the Holy Roman Empire, from 1112, all until his death in Barcelona in 1131...
is referred to as catalanicus heroes, rector catalanicus, and dux catalanensis. The name Catalania (Catalonia) is also found and catalanenses (Catalans) appears opposite goti ("Goths"), referring to the people of the Languedoc
Languedoc
Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...
.
Union with Aragon
Until the middle of the 12th century, the successive counts of Barcelona tried to expand their domain in multiple directions. They incorporated the county of BesalúBesalú
Besalú is a town in the comarca of Garrotxa, in Catalonia, Spain.The town's importance was greater in the early Middle Ages, as capital of the county of Besalú, whose territory was roughly the same size as the current comarca of Garrotxa but sometime extended as far as Corbières, Aude, in France....
, part of the county of Empúries
Empúries
Empúries , formerly known by its Spanish name Ampurias , was a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Catalan comarca of Alt Empordà in Catalonia, Spain. It was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea with the name of Ἐμπόριον...
, all of the county of Cerdanya
Cerdanya
Cerdanya is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it has been one of the counties of Catalonia....
, and, briefly, even the county of Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
. The Catalan church, for its part, became independent of the bishopric of Narbonne, recovering an episcopal see at Tarragona (1118).
During the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV
Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona
Ramon Berenguer IV , sometimes called the Holy, was the Count of Barcelona who effected the union between the Kingdom of Aragon and the Principality of Catalonia into the Crown of Aragon....
(reigned 1131–1162), several events occurred that would be crucial for the future of Catalonia.
His marriage to Petronilla of Aragon implied the union of the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon
Kingdom of Aragon
The Kingdom of Aragon was a medieval and early modern kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to the modern-day autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain...
in a new state, this union later being confirmed in the 14th century by Peter IV of Aragon
Peter IV of Aragon
Peter IV, , called el Cerimoniós or el del punyalet , was the King of Aragon, King of Sardinia and Corsica , King of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona Peter IV, (Balaguer, September 5, 1319 – Barcelona, January 6, 1387), called el Cerimoniós ("the Ceremonious") or el del punyalet ("the one...
("Peter the Ceremonious"). Ramon Berenguer IV used "Aragon" as his primary title and name of his ruling house, which absorbed the House of Barcelona, abolished in 1150 for reasons of mutual convenience and by the will of the Count himself, as he relinquished his own lineage to benefit from a higher one. Thus, he took the simple title Princeps ("prince") beside his wife with her title of Regina ("queen"); and their son, now that Barcelona was incorporated into the Crown, took the title Rex ("king") of Aragon, and not Catalonia. Catalonia and Aragon, however, retained their distinct traditional rights, and Catalonia its own personality with one of the first parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
s in Europe, the Corts catalanes.
In addition, the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV saw the Catalan conquest of Lleida
Lleida
Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida, as well as the largest city in the province and it had 137,387 inhabitants , including the contiguous municipalities of Raimat and Sucs. The metro area has about 250,000 inhabitants...
and Tortosa
Tortosa
-External links:* *** * * *...
, completing the unification of all of the territory that comprises modern Catalonia. This included a territory to the south of the historic Spanish Marches, which became known as Catalunya Nova ("New Catalonia") and which was repopulated with Catalans by the end of the 12th century.
The Crown of Aragon
Over the next few centuries, Catalonia became one of the most important regions in Europe, dominating a maritime empire that extended across the western Mediterranean after the conquest of Valencia, Balearic IslandsBalearic Islands
The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...
, Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
, and the accession to Sicily of the kings of Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
.
At the end of the 12th century, a series of pacts with the kingdom of Castile delimited the zones that the two kingdoms would each attempt to conquer back Muslim-ruled territory (the "Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
"); to the east, in 1213, the defeat and death of Peter II of Aragon
Peter II of Aragon
Peter II the Catholic was the King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona from 1196 to 1213.He was the son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile...
("Peter the Catholic") in the Battle of Muret
Battle of Muret
At the Battle of Muret on 12 September 1213 the Crusading army of Simon IV de Montfort defeated the Aragonese and Catalan forces of Peter II of Aragon, at Muret near Toulouse.-Background:...
put an end to the project of consolidating Catalan power over Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
. His successor James I of Aragon
James I of Aragon
James I the Conqueror was the King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona, and Lord of Montpellier from 1213 to 1276...
did not fully consolidate his power until 1227; once he consolidated his inherited realm, he began a series of new conquests. Over the course of the next quarter-century he conquered Majorca and Valencia.
The latter became a new state, the third kingdom associated with the Crown of Aragon (or, as some historians now call it, the Catalan-Aragonese empire), with its own court and a new fuero (code of laws): the Furs de Valencia. In contrast, the Majorcan territory together with that of the counts of Cerdanya and Roussillon
Roussillon
Roussillon is one of the historical counties of the former Principality of Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales...
and the city of Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
were left as a kingdom for his son James II of Majorca
James II of Majorca
James II was King of Majorca and Lord of Montpellier from 1276 until his death. He was the second son of James I of Aragon and his wife Violant, daughter of Andrew II of Hungary...
as the Kingdom of Majorca
Kingdom of Majorca
The Kingdom of Majorca was founded by James I of Aragon, also known as James The Conqueror. After the death of his first-born son Alfonso, a will was written in 1262 which created the kingdom in order to cede it to his son James...
. This division began a period of struggle that ended with the annexation of that kingdom by the Crown of Aragon in 1344 by Peter IV "the Ceremonious".
Peter III of Aragon
Peter the Great was the King of Aragon of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona from 1276 to his death. He conquered Sicily and became its king in 1282. He was one of the greatest of medieval Aragonese monarchs.-Youth and succession:Peter was the eldest son of James I of Aragon and his second wife...
("the Great") included the conquest of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
and the successful defense against a French crusade; his son and successor Alfonso
Alfonso III of Aragon
Alfonso III , called the Liberal or the Free , was the King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona from 1285...
("the Generous") conquered Minorca
Minorca
Min Orca or Menorca is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to Spain. It takes its name from being smaller than the nearby island of Majorca....
; and Peter's second son James II
James II of Aragon
James II , called the Just was the King of Sicily from 1285 to 1296 and King of Aragon and Valencia and Count of Barcelona from 1291 to 1327. In 1297 he was granted the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica...
, who first acceded to the throne of Sicily and then succeeded his older brother as king of Aragon, conquered Sardinia; under James II, Catalonia reached the height of its power in the Middle Ages.
Nonetheless, the second quarter of the 14th century saw crucial changes for Catalonia, marked by a succession of natural catastrophes, demographic crises, stagnation and decline in the Catalan economy, and the rise of social tensions. The reign of Peter the Ceremonious was a time of war: the annexation of Majorca, the quelling of a rebellion in Sardinia, a rebellion by Aragonese unionists (that is, a faction who wished to extinguish local privileges in favor of a more centralized kingdom of Aragon), and, above all, war with Castile. These wars created a delicate financial situation, in a framework of demographic and economic crisis, to which was added a generation later a crisis of succession generated by the death in 1410 of Martin I
Martin I of Aragon
Martin of Aragon , called the Elder, the Humane, the Ecclesiastic, was the King of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia, and Corsica and Count of Barcelona from 1396 and King of Sicily from 1409...
without a descendant or a named successor. A two-year interregnum
Interregnum
An interregnum is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order...
progressively evolved in favor of a candidate from the Castilian Trastámara
Trastámara
The House of Trastámara was a dynasty of kings in the Iberian Peninsula, which first governed in Castile beginning in 1369 before expanding its rule into Aragón, Navarre and Naples.They were a cadet illegitimate line of the House of Burgundy....
dynasty, Ferdinand of Antequera, who after the Compromise of Caspe
Compromise of Caspe
The Compromise of Caspe made in 1412 was an act and resolution of parliamentary representatives on behalf of the Kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia and the County of Barcelona, to resolve the interregnum commenced by the death of King Martin I of Aragon in 1410 without a legitimate heir, in Caspe.The...
(1412), was named Ferdinand I of Aragon
Ferdinand I of Aragon
Ferdinand I called of Antequera and also the Just or the Honest) was king of Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica and king of Sicily, duke of Athens and Neopatria, and count of Barcelona, Roussillon and Cerdanya...
.
Ferdinand's successor, Alfonso V
Alfonso V of Aragon
Alfonso the Magnanimous KG was the King of Aragon , Valencia , Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica , and Sicily and Count of Barcelona from 1416 and King of Naples from 1442 until his death...
("the Magnanimous"), promoted a new stage of expansion, this time over the Kingdom of Naples
Kingdom of Naples
The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of...
, over which he finally gained dominion in 1443. At the same time, though, he aggravated the social crisis in Catalonia, both in the countryside and in the cities. The outcome of these conflicts was the 1462 "remença
Remença
Remença was a Catalan mode of serfdom. Those who were serfs under this mode are properlypagesos de remença ; they are often referred to simply as remences .The Rebellion of the Remences or War of the Remences was a popular revolt in late medieval Europe against...
" (serf
SERF
A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...
s') rebellion, a peasant rebellion against seignorial pressures, which led to a ten-year civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
that left the country exhausted. The remença conflict did not reach any definitive conclusion and from 1493 France formally annexed the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya, which it had occupied during the conflict. Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...
("Ferdinand the Catholic") finally resolved the major grievances of the remences with the Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe in 1486, profoundly reformed Catalan institutions, recovered without war the northern Catalan counties, and increased active involvement in Italy.
Crown of Aragon union with Crown of Castile
Ferdinand's 1469 marriage to Isabella I of CastileIsabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
brought about a dynastic union of the Crown of Aragon with Castile. In 1516 the monarchies were formally united into a single Kingdom of Spain, but each former kingdom conserved its political institutions and maintained its own courts, laws, public administration, and separate coinage of money.
When Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
"discovered" America during a Spanish-sponsored expedition, it shifted Europe's economic centre of gravity (and the focus of Spain's ambitions) from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean and undermined Catalonia's economic and political importance. Aragonese and Catalan power in the Mediterranean would continue, but efforts to achieve further Spanish conquests in Europe itself generally slackened, and the maritime expansion into the Atlantic and the conquest of Central
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
and South America was not a Catalan enterprise. Castile and Aragon were separate states until 1716, in spite of the dynastic union, and the newly established colonies in the Americas were Castilian, administered as appendages of Castile, until 1778 Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
was the only port authorized to trade in America, and until the dynastic union Catalans, as subjects of the Crown of Aragon
Crown of Aragon
The Crown of Aragon Corona d'Aragón Corona d'Aragó Corona Aragonum controlling a large portion of the present-day eastern Spain and southeastern France, as well as some of the major islands and mainland possessions stretching across the Mediterranean as far as Greece...
, had no right to trade in the Castilian-ruled Americas.
In the 16th century, the Catalan population began a demographic recuperation and some measure of economic recuperation. The reign of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
as Charles I of Spain was a harmonious period, during which Catalonia generally accepted the new structure of Spain, despite its own marginalization. As the focus of Spanish maritime power and of European rivalry shifted to the Atlantic, the Kingdom of Valencia
Kingdom of Valencia
The Kingdom of Valencia , located in the eastern shore of the Iberian Peninsula, was one of the component realms of the Crown of Aragon. When the Crown of Aragon merged by dynastic union with the Crown of Castile to form the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Valencia became a component realm of the...
became the most important kingdom of the former Aragonese confederation, eclipsing Barcelona. The reign of Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
marked the beginning of a gradual process of deterioration of Catalan economy, language, and culture. Among the most negative elements of the period were a rise in piracy along the coasts and banditry in the interior.
The Reapers' War
The Reapers' War started as an uprising of peasants in Barcelona. Conflicts had already arisen between Catalonia and the monarchy in the time of Philip II. Having exhausted the economic resources of Castile, Philip wished to avail himself of those of Catalonia; the Catalan governmental institutions and privileges were well protected by the terms of union of the kingdoms, and were jealously guarded by the Catalan oligarchy. After Philip IVPhilip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
acceped to the throne in 1621, the Count-Duke of Olivares
Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
Don Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar, Count-Duke of Olivares and Duke of San Lúcar la Mayor , was a Spanish royal favourite of Philip IV and minister. As prime minister from 1621 to 1643, he over-exerted Spain in foreign affairs and unsuccessfully attempted domestic reform...
attempted to sustain an ambitious foreign policy by taxing the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, which meant laying aside the until-then-prevailing principles of confederation
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
, in favor of centralism (often referred to in a Spanish context as unitarism). Resistance in Catalonia was especially strong, given the lack of any significant apparent regional return for the sacrifices.
When Spanish tercios (military corps) concentrated in Roussillon at the end of the 1630s, because of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
with France, the local peasants were required to lodge and provision the troops. On June 7, 1640, an uprising known as the Corpus de Sang
Corpus de Sang
The Corpus de Sang was a riot which took place in Barcelona on 7 June 1640, during Corpus Christi, which marked a turning point in the development of the Reapers' War. The riot was between a group of harvesters and some local Barcelonians, during which one harvester was badly hurt....
took the lives of various royal functionaries, not all of them Castilian. Mutinies continued; the Generalitat of Catalonia succeeded in channeling the revolt against the policies of the Count-Duke, transforming a social revolt into a political war against Castilian domination, a war for Catalan independence.
The president of the Generalitat, Pau Claris
Pau Claris i Casademunt
Pau Claris i Casademunt was a Catalan lawyer, clergyman and 94th President of Catalonia at the beginning of the Catalan Revolt. On January 16, 1641, he proclaimed the Catalan Republic under the protection of France.-Early years:Claris was born in Barcelona...
, declared a Catalan Republic under the protection of Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
. This allowed French troops to draw that much closer to the heartland of Spain. By 1652, Catalonia was again occupied by Spanish troops; war with France lasted until 1659, when the Peace of the Pyrenees ceded Roussillon, Conflent, Vallespir
Vallespir
Vallespir is a historical Catalan comarca of Northern Catalonia, part of the French Département of Pyrénées-Orientales. The capital of the comarca is Ceret, and it borders Conflent, Rosselló, Alt Empordà, Garrotxa and Ripollès...
, Capcir
Capcir
Capcir is a historical Catalan comarca of Northern Catalonia, now part of the French Département of Pyrénées-Orientales. The capital of the comarca was Formiguera, and it borders the historical comarques of Conflent and Alta Cerdanya...
, and the northern half of Cerdanya to France. These remain French territory to this day.
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish SuccessionWar of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...
(1705–14) resulted in the revocation of Catalonia's traditional autonomy and privileges as apunishment for their sedition. Afterwards, the government attempted to harmonise the Catalans' sense of identity as a nation within Spain. The Catalan language was withdrawn from the administrative area in varying degrees for the next two and a half centuries.
In the last decades of the 17th century, despite the persistence of intermittent violent conflict with France, the Catalan economy began to recover, not only in Barcelona, but also along the Catalan coast and even in some inland areas. However, at the end of the century, after the death of the childless Charles II
Charles II of Spain
Charles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies...
(1700), the crown of Spain went to Philip V
Philip V of Spain
Philip V was King of Spain from 15 November 1700 to 15 January 1724, when he abdicated in favor of his son Louis, and from 6 September 1724, when he assumed the throne again upon his son's death, to his death.Before his reign, Philip occupied an exalted place in the royal family of France as a...
of the House of Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
. The Grand Alliance
Grand Alliance
The Grand Alliance was a European coalition, consisting of Austria, Bavaria, Brandenburg, the Dutch Republic, England, the Holy Roman Empire, Ireland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Portugal, Savoy, Saxony, Scotland, Spain and Sweden...
of England, the United Provinces
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
(the antecedent of the Netherlands) and Austria gave military support to a rival claimant to the crown, Archduke Charles
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI was the penultimate Habsburg sovereign of the Habsburg Empire. He succeeded his elder brother, Joseph I, as Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia , Hungary and Croatia , Archduke of Austria, etc., in 1711...
. Catalonia initially accepted Philip V following prolonged negotiations between Philip V and the Catalan Cortes between 12.10.1701 and 14.1.1702, which resulted in an agreement where Catalonia retained all its previous privileges and gained a the status of free port (Puerto Franco) for Barcelona as well as the right to commerce with America, but this did not last. In 1705 the Archduke entered Barcelona, which recognized him as king in 1706; thus, this breach of an oath of loyalty had negative repercussions when Philip V eventually won the war.
The resulting war (1705–14) may have benefitted Charles's foreign allies, but was a disaster for the Catalan and Aragonese lands. By 1710 politico-administrative structures of Valencia and Aragon were destroyed and their privileges abolished. The later course of the war and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713–14) ended the possibility of Barcelona's resistance. After the fall of Barcelona (September 11, 1714), the triumphant forces systematically dismantled the Catalan institutions, in a process that culminated in the Nueva Planta decree
Nueva Planta decrees
The Nueva Planta decrees were a number of decrees signed between 1707 and 1716 by Philip V—the first Bourbon king of Spain—during and shortly after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession which he won....
(1716), which abolished the Catalan constitutions
Catalan constitutions
The Catalan constitutions were promulgated by the Corts of Barcelona . The first constitution was promulgated by the court of 1283. The last ones were promulgated by the court of 1702...
, established a new territorial and administrative structure for the whole of Spain, suppressed the Catalan universities (Barcelona University moved to Cervera) and abolished the administrative use of the Catalan language; half a century later, the Catalan language would also be banned from primary and secondary schools.
Economic recovery
Despite the difficult internal situation, Catalonia recovered significantly in the course of the 18th century. The population and the economy both grew, agricultural production increased, and trade increased (especially thanks to increased commerce with the Americas), transformations all of which (as in France) tended to undermine the Old Regime and lay the ground for the rise of industrialization, the first signs of which appeared in the 18th-century manufacture of cottonCotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
goods and other textiles. By the end of the 18th century, the popular classes began to experience the first effects of proletarianization
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
.
The Napoleonic Wars
In the 1790s, new conflicts arose on the French border, due to the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
. In 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, Catalonia was occupied by the troops of General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme
Guillaume Philibert Duhesme
Guillaume Philibert, 1st Count Duhesme was a French general during the Napoleonic Wars.-Revolution:...
. The official Spanish army had evaporated, but popular resistance against the French occupation occurred in Catalonia as in other parts of Spain, and eventually developed into the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
. Girona
Girona
Girona is a city in the northeast of Catalonia, Spain at the confluence of the rivers Ter, Onyar, Galligants and Güell, with an official population of 96,236 in January 2009. It is the capital of the province of the same name and of the comarca of the Gironès...
was besieged by the French and defended by its inhabitants under the direction of general and military governor Mariano Alvarez de Castro
Mariano Alvarez de Castro
Brigadier Mariano Álvarez de Castro was a Spanish military officer, and the military governor of Gerona during the siege by the French during the War of Spanish Independence.-Biography:...
. The French finally took the city December 10, 1809, after many deaths on both sides from hunger, epidemics, and cold; Álvarez de Castro died in prison one month later.
Between 1812 and 1813, Catalonia was directly annexed to France itself, and organized as four (later two) départements.
French dominion in parts of Catalonia lasted until 1814, when the British General Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
signed the armistice
Armistice
An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...
by which the French left Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
and the other strongholds that they had managed to keep until the last.
The Carlist wars
The reign of Ferdinand VII (reigned 1808–33) saw several Catalan uprisings and after his death the conflict over the succession between the absolutistAbsolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government in which the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, his or her power not being limited by a constitution or by the law. An absolute monarch thus wields unrestricted political power over the...
"Carlist
Carlism
Carlism is a traditionalist and legitimist political movement in Spain seeking the establishment of a separate line of the Bourbon family on the Spanish throne. This line descended from Infante Carlos, Count of Molina , and was founded due to dispute over the succession laws and widespread...
" partisans of Infante Carlos
Infante Carlos, Count of Molina
The Infante Carlos of Spain was the second surviving son of King Charles IV of Spain and of his wife, Maria Luisa of Parma. As Carlos V he was the first of the Carlist claimants to the throne of Spain...
and the liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
partisans of Isabella II
Isabella II of Spain
Isabella II was the only female monarch of Spain in modern times. She came to the throne as an infant, but her succession was disputed by the Carlists, who refused to recognise a female sovereign, leading to the Carlist Wars. After a troubled reign, she was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of...
led to the First Carlist War
First Carlist War
The First Carlist War was a civil war in Spain from 1833-1839.-Historical background:At the beginning of the 18th century, Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, promulgated the Salic Law, which declared illegal the inheritance of the Spanish crown by women...
, which lasted until 1840 and was especially virulent in the Catalan territory. As with the Basques
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
, many of the Catalans fought on the Carlist side, not because they supported absolute monarchy, but because they hoped that restoration of the Old Regime would mean restoration of their fueros and recovery of regional autonomy.
The victory of the liberals over the absolutists led to a "bourgeois revolution" during the reign of Isabella II. The reign of Isabella II was marked by corruption, administrative inefficiency, centralism, and political and social tensions. The liberals soon divided into "moderates" and "progressives", and in Catalonia a republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
current began to develop; also, inevitably, Catalans generally favored a more federal Spain.
In September 1868, Spain's continuing economic crisis triggered the September Revolution or La Gloriosa, beginning the so-called Sexenio Revolucionario, the "six revolutionary years" (1868–1873). Among the most notable events of this period were the government of General Joan Prim and his assassination, the federalist revolt of 1869, the rise of Amadeo to the monarchy, the proclamation of the First Spanish Republic
First Spanish Republic
The First Spanish Republic was the political regime that existed in Spain between the parliamentary proclamation on 11 February 1873 and 29 December 1874 when General Arsenio Martínez-Campos's pronunciamento marked the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration in Spain...
, the outbreak of the Third Carlist War
Third Carlist War
The Third Carlist War was the last Carlist War in Spain. It is very often referred to as the Second Carlist War, as the 'second' had been small in scale and almost trivial in political consequence....
and the spread of the ideas of the First International.
Industrialization
The second third of the 19th century saw a Catalan cultural renaissance, a cultural movement to recover Catalan language and culture after a long period of decay. This became politically important to Spain as a whole, because in the latter half of the 19th century, Catalonia became a centre of Spain's industrialization. An increasingly industrial Catalonia had to contend with a grave shortage of energy resources and the weakness of the domestic Spanish market. They were helped out by protectionistProtectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...
policies, which reduced the competition from foreign products. As in so much of Europe, the popular classes were molded into an industrial proletariat, living and working in inhuman conditions.
Catalan nationalism and the workers movement
In 1874, a coup by General Martínez Campos in SaguntoSagunto
Sagunto or Sagunt is an ancient city in Eastern Spain, in the modern fertile comarca of Camp de Morvedre in the province of Valencia. It is located in a hilly site, c. 30 km north of Valencia, close to the Costa del Azahar on the Mediterranean Sea...
led to a restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in the person of Alfonso XII
Alfonso XII of Spain
Alfonso XII was king of Spain, reigning from 1874 to 1885, after a coup d'état restored the monarchy and ended the ephemeral First Spanish Republic.-Early life and paternity:Alfonso was the son of Queen Isabella II of Spain, and...
. A period of political stability, of repression of the workers movement, and of a slow growth in Catalan nationalist identity extended to the early years of the 20th century, when once again political opposition broke to the fore, especially republicanism and Catalan nationalism
Catalan nationalism
Catalan nationalism or Catalanism , is a political movement advocating for either further political autonomy or full independence of Catalonia....
, but also class-based politics reflecting social tensions.
The following decades saw the rise of the political Catalanism still prevalent today: the first formulations of the modern Catalan national identity can be seen in Valentí Almirall. In 1901 Enric Prat de la Riba
Enric Prat de la Riba
Enric Prat de la Riba i Sarrà was a Catalan politician. He became a member of the Centre Escolar Catalanista, where one of the earliest definitions of Catalan nationalism was formulated....
and Francesc Cambó
Francesc Cambó
Francesc Cambó i Batlle was a conservative Catalan politician, founder and leader of the autonomist party Lliga Regionalista. He was minister in several Spanish governments...
formed the Regionalist League
Regionalist League
Regionalist League was a political party of Catalonia, Spain, that appeared thanks to the triumph of the candidacy of the "four presidents" in 1901...
, which led to the electoral coalition Solidaritat Catalana.
Catalan nationalism, under the leadership of Prat de la Riba, achieved in 1913 a victory in obtaining partial self-government for the "Commonwealth" (Catalan: Mancomunitat; Spanish: Mancomunidad), a grouping of the four Catalan provinces, presided over first by Prat de la Riba, and later by Josep Puig i Cadafalch
Josep Puig i Cadafalch
Josep Puig i Cadafalch was a Spanish Catalan Modernista architect who designed many significant buildings in Barcelona...
; this was later suppressed in March 1925, during the 1923-1930 dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera
Miguel Primo de Rivera
Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, 22nd Count of Sobremonte, Knight of Calatrava was a Spanish dictator, aristocrat, and a military official who was appointed Prime Minister by the King and who for seven years was a dictator, ending the turno system of alternating...
.
The Catalan workers movement at the turn of the twentieth century consisted of three tendencies: syndicalism
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, and anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, part of the last openly embracing "propaganda of the deed" as advocated by Alejandro Lerroux
Alejandro Lerroux
Alejandro Lerroux y García was a Spanish politician who was the leader of the Radical Republican Party during the Second Spanish Republic...
. Along with Asturias
Asturias
The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...
, Catalonia in general and Barcelona in particular was a center of radical labor agitation, marked by numerous general strikes, assassinations (especially in the late 1910s), and the rise of the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
(National Confederation of Labour, CNT). The escalating violence between Catalan workers and the Catalan bourgeoisie led the latter to embrace the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, despite his centralizing tendencies. (See also Anarchism in Spain
Anarchism in Spain
Anarchism has historically gained more support and influence in Spain than anywhere else, especially before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939....
.)
Republic and civil war
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
made great efforts to create a united front under Francesc Macià. The Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia, or ERC) represented a break with the electoral abstentionism that, until then had been characteristic of the Catalan workers. Advocating socialism and Catalan independence, the party achieved a spectacular victory in the municipal elections of April 12, 1931, which preceded the April 14 proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
. The Catalan Generalitat was revived, and a September 1932 statute of autonomy for Catalonia gave a strong, though not absolute, grant of self-government. A similar statute granted automomy to the Basque Country
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....
.
Under its two presidents, Francesc Macià (1931–1933) and Lluís Companys (1934–1939), the republican Generalitat carried out a considerable task, despite the serious economic crisis, its social repercussions and the political vicissitudes of the period, including its suspension in 1934, due to an uprising in Barcelona in October that year. As for the workers' movement, there was the CNT crisis with the break-away faction in the 1930s and the formation of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ' onMouseout='HidePop("13034")' href="/topics/Poum">POUM
Poum
Poum is a commune in the North Province of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. The town of Poum is located in the far northwest, located on the southern part of Banare Bay, with Mouac Island just offshore....
) and Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia , was formed on July 23, 1936 through the unification of four left-wing groups; the Catalan Federation of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , the Partit Comunista de Catalunya , the Unió Socialista de Catalunya and the...
(Catalan: Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, PSUC).
After the electoral victory of the left in the Spanish national elections of February 1936 came the July 1936 armed insurrection that led to the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. The defeat of the initial military rebellion in Catalonia placed Catalonia firmly in the Republican camp. During the war, there were two rival powers in Catalonia: the de jure power of the Generalitat and the de facto power of the armed popular militias
Anarchist Catalonia
Anarchist Catalonia was the part of Catalonia controlled by the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo during the Spanish Civil War.-Anarchists enter government:...
. Violent confrontations between the workers' parties culminated in the defeat of the CNT-FAI and POUM, against whom the PSUC unleashed strong repression. The local situation resolved itself progressively in favor of the Generalitat, but at the same time the Generalitat was losing its autonomous power within republican Spain.
The military forces of the Generalitat were concentrated on two fronts: Aragon and Majorca. The latter was an utter disaster. The Aragon front resisted firmly until 1937, when the occupation of Lérida and Balaguer
Balaguer
Balaguer is the capital of the comarca of Noguera, in the province of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain.It is located by the river Segre, a tributary to the Ebre....
destabilized it. Finally, Franco's troops broke the republican territory in two by occupying Vinaròs
Vinaròs
Vinaròs is a town and municipality in eastern Spain, in the province of Castelló and part of the autonomous Valencian Community. The town is on the Gulf of Valencia coast of the western Mediterranean Sea, Vinaròs is a fishing harbour and tourist destination....
, isolating Catalonia from the rest of republican Spain. The defeat of the Republican armies in the Battle of the Ebro
Battle of the Ebro
The Battle of the Ebro was the longest and bloodiest battle of the Spanish Civil War...
led in 1938 and 1939 to the occupation of Catalonia by Franco's forces, who abolished Catalan autonomy and brought in a dictatorial regime, which took strong measures against Catalan nationalism and Catalan culture. Only forty years later, after Franco's death (1975) and the adoption of a democratic constitution in Spain (1978), did Catalonia recover its autonomy and reconstitute the Generalitat (1979).
George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
served with the POUM in Catalonia from December 1936 until June 1937. His memoir of that time, Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...
, was first published in 1938 and foreshadowed the causes of Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It remains one of the most widely read books on the Spanish Civil War.
Franco's dictatorship
As in the rest of Spain, the Franco era (1939–1975) in Catalonia saw the annulment of democratic liberties, the prohibition and persecution of parties, the rise of thoroughgoing censorship, and the banning of all leftist institutions. In Catalonia, it also meant the annulment of the statute of autonomy, the banning of many specifically Catalan institutions, and the complete suppression of the Catalan-language press, although the publication of Catalan books was allowed from 1941. During the first years, all resistance was energetically suppressed, the prisons filled up with political prisoners, and thousands of Catalans went into exile. In addition, 4000 Catalans were executed between 1938 and 1953, among them the former president of the Generalitat Lluís Companys i JoverLluís Companys i Jover
Lluís Companys i Jover was the 123rd President of Catalonia, Spain from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.He was a lawyer and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia political party...
.
After an initial period in which Spain tried to build an autarky
Autarky
Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky...
, in the 1960s the economy entered a stage of agricultural modernization, increasing industrialization and the start of mass tourism. Catalonia was on the receiving end of migration within Spain, which especially accelerated the growth of Barcelona and its surrounding area. Working-class opposition to Franco began to appear, usually clandestinely, and most notably in the form of the Comisiones Obreras
Workers' Commissions
The Workers' Commissions since the 1970s has become the largest trade union in Spain. It has more than one million members and is the most successful union in labor elections, competing with the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores , with the syndicalist Confederación General del Trabajo ...
("Workers Commissions"), a return of trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
organizing, and the revival of the PSUC. In the 1970s democratic forces united under the banner of the Assemblea de Catalunya ("Catalan Assembly").
Democracy restored
Franco's death initiated a period that came to be known as the "democratic transition", during which democratic liberties were restored, culminating in the Spanish Constitution of 1978Spanish Constitution of 1978
-Structure of the State:The Constitution recognizes the existence of nationalities and regions . Preliminary Title As a result, Spain is now composed entirely of 17 Autonomous Communities and two autonomous cities with varying degrees of autonomy, to the extent that, even though the Constitution...
. This constitution recognized the existence of multiple national communities within the Spanish state, which proposed the division of the country into autonomous communities
Autonomous communities of Spain
An autonomous community In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian .*Galician .*Basque . The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "nationalities and regions" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".Political power in Spain is...
. The first general elections in 1977 restored a provisional Generalitat, headed by Josep Tarradellas and including representatives of the various leading forces of the time. In 1979, the statute of autonomy was finally approved delegating more automomy in matters of education and culture than the 1932 statute, but less in terms of the systems of justice and public order. In it, Catalonia is defined as a "nationality", Catalan is recognized as Catalonia's own language, and became co-official with Spanish. New elections under this statute gave the Catalan presidency to Jordi Pujol
Jordi Pujol i Soley
Jordi Pujol i Soley is a Catalan politician who was the leader of the party Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya from 1974 to 2003, and President of the Generalitat de Catalunya from 1980 to 2003.-Early life:...
, a position he would hold until 2003. During this time he also led Convergència i Unió (Convergence and Unity, CiU) a center-right Catalan nationalist electoral coalition consisting of his own Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya
Democratic Convergence of Catalonia
The Democratic Convergence of Catalonia is a political party in Catalonia, Spain. Together with Democratic Union of Catalonia, it forms part of the Convergence and Union coalition. It is affiliated with the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party and with the Liberal International...
(Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, CDC) and the smaller and more conservative Unió Democràtica de Catalunya
Democratic Union of Catalonia
The Democratic Union of Catalonia is a political party in Catalonia, Spain. Together with the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, it is part of the Convergence and Union coalition.It describes itself as Catalan nationalist and Christian Democrat....
(Democratic Union of Catalonia).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the institutions of Catalan autonomy continued to develop, among them an autonomous police force, the creation of the comarcal
Comarques of Catalonia
This is a list of the comarques of Catalonia . A comarca is roughly equivalent to a US "county" or a UK "district". However, in the context of Catalonia, the term "county" can be a bit misleading, because in medieval Catalonia, the most important rulers were counts, notably the Counts of Barcelona...
administrations (roughly equivalent to United States "counties" or United Kingdom "shire
Shire
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and in Australia. In parts of Australia, a shire is an administrative unit, but it is not synonymous with "county" there, which is a land registration unit. Individually, or as a suffix in Scotland and in the far...
s" or "counties", but distinct from the historical Catalan counties) and a supreme court in the form of the Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya.
Catalonia's Law of Linguistic Normalization promoted Catalan-language media. The Catalan government provides subsidies to various means of promoting Catalan culture, including (for example) the making of Catalan-language films or the subtitling of foreign-language films in Catalan.
In 1992 Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics
1992 Summer Olympics
The 1992 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event celebrated in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in 1986 to separate the Summer and Winter Games, which had been held in the same...
, which brought international attention to Catalonia. During the 1990s, the absence of absolute majorities in the Spanish parliament
Cortes Generales
The Cortes Generales is the legislature of Spain. It is a bicameral parliament, composed of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate . The Cortes has power to enact any law and to amend the constitution...
made governments reliant on support from the various nationalist parties (Catalan, Basque, Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
, etc.) which was leveraged by CiU, to gain broaden the scope of Catalan autonomy during the last government of Felipe González
Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez is a Spanish socialist politician. He was the General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party from 1974 to 1997. To date, he remains the longest-serving Prime Minister of Spain, after having served four successive mandates from 1982 to 1996.-Early life:Felipe was...
(1993–1996) and the first of José María Aznar
José María Aznar
José María Alfredo Aznar López served as the Prime Minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004. He is on the board of directors of News Corporation.-Early life:...
(1996–2000).
In November 2003, elections to the Generalitat gave the plurality, but not the majority of seats to CiU. Three other parties (Socialists' Party of Catalonia
Socialists' Party of Catalonia
The Socialists' Party of Catalonia is a social-democratic political party in Catalonia, Spain resulting from the merge of two parties PSC Reagrupament led by Josep Pallach i Carolà and PSC Comgres. It is the Catalan referent of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , and its Aranese section is...
–Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...
, PSC-PSOE, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Initiative for Catalonia Greens
Initiative for Catalonia Greens
Initiative for Catalonia Greens is a political party in Catalonia, Spain. It was formed as a merger of Iniciativa per Catalunya and Els Verds. IC had been an alliance led by Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya and was the equivalent of Izquierda Unida in Catalonia...
(ICV)) united to take the government, making Pasqual Maragall, (PSC-PSOE) the new president.
This government proved unstable, especially on the issue of reforming the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia
Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia
The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia provides Catalonia's basic institutional regulations. It defines the rights and obligations of the citizens of Catalonia , the political institutions of the Catalan nationality, their competences and relations with the rest of Spain, and the financing of the...
, and new elections were held in autumn 2006. The result was again a plurality, but not a majority, for CiU, and PSC-PSOE, ERC and ICV again formed a coalition.
On 16 September 2005, the ICANN
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly...
officially approved the domain.cat
.cat
.cat is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language and culture. Its policy has been developed by ICANN and Fundació puntCAT...
, the first domain for a language community.
External links
- Museum of the History of Catalonia
- The Spirit of Catalonia. 1946 book by Oxford Professor Dr. Josep TruetaJosep TruetaJosep Trueta i Raspall was a Catalan medical doctor.As a Catalan nationalist, he was forced into exile to England after the Spanish Civil War, during which he had been the chief of trauma services for the city of Barcelona. During World War II, he helped to organize medical emergency services there...
- The Spanish March at Convergence
- Videos of the "Jornades d'Història i Censura", 2011, Barcelona
- Web of Institut Nova Història