Catalonia - History

History

Like some other parts in the rest of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula, Catalonia was colonised by Ancient Greeks, who settled around the Roses area. Both Greeks and Carthaginians (who, in the course of the Second Punic War, briefly ruled the territory) interacted with the main Iberian substratum. After the Carthaginian defeat by Rome, it became, along with the rest of Hispania, part of the Roman Empire, Tarraco being one of the main Roman posts in the Iberian Peninsula.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the area now known as Catalonia was conquered by the Visigoths and was ruled as part of the Visigothic Kingdom for almost two and a half centuries. In the 8th century, it came under Moorish Al-Andalus control. Still, after the defeat of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi's troops at Tours in 732, the Franks conquered former Visigoth states which had been captured by the Muslims or had become allied with them in what today is the northernmost part of Catalonia. Charlemagne created in 795 what came to be known as the Marca Hispanica, a buffer zone beyond the province of Septimania made up of locally administered separate counties that served as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Empire.

In the Middle Ages, these counties in the northeastern edge of the Iberian Peninsula became the basis for Catalonia as the Muslim kingdoms were driven back. The counts of Barcelona were Frankish vassals nominated by the emperor and then the king of France, to whom they were feudatories (801–987).

In 987, the count of Barcelona did not recognise the French king Hugh Capet and his new dynasty, which put Catalonia effectively beyond Frankish rule. In 1137, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona married Queen Petronilla of Aragon, establishing the dynastic union of the County of Barcelona with the Kingdom of Aragon that was to create the Crown of Aragon. It was in the 12th century that a Catalan literature began to emerge.

In 1258, by means of the Treaty of Corbeil, the king of France finally formally relinquished his feudal lordship over the Catalan counties, the Principality of Catalonia, to James I of Aragon, a descendant of Ramon Berenguer IV. This Treaty transformed the region's de facto union with Aragon into a de jure one. As a coastal territory of the Crown of Aragon, Catalonia, Barcelona in particular, became the base of Aragonese maritime power in the Mediterranean, helping expand the power and influence of the Aragononese Crown by trade and conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia, the Balearic Islands and later Sardinia, Sicily, Corsica, Naples and Athens.

The domains of the Aragonese Crown were severely hit by the Black Death and by later outbreaks of the plague. According to John Huxtable Elliott, "Between 1347 and 1497 the Principality had lost 37% of its inhabitants, and was reduced to a population of something like 300,000."

In 1410, King Martin I died without surviving descendants. As a result, by the Pact of Caspe, Ferdinand of Antequera from the Castilian dynasty of Trastámara received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon.

His grandson, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Queen Isabella I of Castile married in 1469, becoming the Catholic Monarchs; subsequently, this event was seen as the dawn of the Kingdom of Spain. At that point, though united by marriage, the Crowns of Castile and Aragon maintained distinct territories, each keeping its own traditional institutions, parliaments and laws. Castile commissioned the expeditions to the Americas, and benefited from the colonial riches. Political power gradually shifted away from the Aragonese court to the court of the Spanish Crown.

By virtue of descent from his maternal grandparents, Ferdinand II and Isabella I, in 1516 Charles I (Carlos I) became the first king to rule Castile-León and Aragon simultaneously in his own right. Following the death of his paternal (Habsburg) grandfather, Maximilian I, he was also elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519 as Charles V

Until 1716, Catalonia, as part of the Crown of Aragon, continued to retain its own usages and laws, but these gradually eroded in the course of the transition from feudalism to a modern state, fueled by the kings' struggle to have more centralized territories. Over the next few centuries, Catalonia was generally on the losing side of a series of local conflicts that led steadily to more centralization of power in Spain, like the Reapers' War (1640–52). In 1659 the Spanish Crown surrendered the Roussillon territory to the Kingdom of France. Now this territory is the Department of Pyrénées-Orientales, and also is named Northern Catalonia (Catalunya Nord).

The most significant conflict was the War of the Spanish Succession, which began when the childless Charles II of Spain, the last Spanish Habsburg, died without an heir in 1700. Charles II had chosen Philip V, from the French dynasty, the Bourbons. Catalonia, like the other territories that formed the Crown of Aragon, mostly rose up in support of the Austrian Habsburg pretender Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor in his claim for the Spanish throne as Charles III of Spain. The fight between the houses of Bourbon and Habsburg for the Spanish throne split Spain and Europe.

The fall of Barcelona on 11 September 1714 militarily ended the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne, which became legal fact in the Treaty of Utrecht. Feeling that he had been betrayed, the new Bourbon king introduced the Nueva Planta decrees that incorporated the territories of the Crown of Aragon, including Catalonia, as provinces under the Crown of Castile in 1716, terminating their seperate institutions and rights, within a united administration of Spain.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Catalonia became an industrial center; to this day it remains one of the most industrialised parts of Spain. In the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia gained and lost varying degrees of autonomy several times, receiving its first statute of autonomy during the Second Spanish Republic (1931). This period was marked by political unrest and the preeminence of the Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The Anarchists had been active throughout the early 20th century, achieving the first eight-hour workday in the Europe in 1919.

After the defeat of the Republic in the civil war, which brought General Francisco Franco to power, his regime suppressed any kind of public activities associated with Catalan nationalism, Anarchism, Socialism, Democracy or Communism, including the publication of books on those subjects or simply discussion of them in open meetings. As part of this suppression, the use of Catalan in government-run institutions and during public events was banned. The President of Catalonia at the time, Lluís Companys, was tortured and executed for the crime of 'military rebellion' by the Franco regime.

During later stages of the Franco regime, certain folkloric and religious celebrations in Catalan resumed and were tolerated. Use of Catalan in the mass media had been forbidden, but was permitted from the early 1950s in the theatre. Publishing in Catalan continued throughout the dictatorship.

After Franco's death in 1975 and the adoption of a democratic Spanish Constitution in 1978, Catalonia recovered political and cultural autonomy. Today, Catalonia is one of the most economically dynamic regions of Spain. The Catalan capital and largest city, Barcelona, is a major international cultural centre and a major tourist destination.