Muslims south of the Pyrenees. To prevent future incursions, Holy
Roman Emperor Charlemagne created the Marca Hispanica in 790 CE, which
consisted of a series of petty kingdoms serving as buffer states
between the Frankish kingdom and Al-Andalus.
Between 878 and 988 CE, the area became a hotbed of Frankish-Muslim
conflict. However, as the Frankish monarchy and the Caliphate of
Córdoba weakened during the 11th century, the resulting impasse
allowed for a process of consolidation throughout the region's many
earldoms, resulting in their combination into the County of Barcelona,
which became the embryo of today's Catalonia. By 1070, Ramon Berenguer
I, Count of Barcelona, had subordinated other Catalan Counts and
intransigent nobles as vassals. His action brought peace to a
turbulent feudal system and sowed the seeds of Catalan identity.
According to several scholars, the term "Catalan" and "Catalonia"
emerged near the end of the 11th century and appeared in the Usatges
of 1150. Two factors fostered this identity: stable institutions and
cultural prosperity. While the temporary lack of foreign invasions
contributed to Catalonia's stability, it was not a main cause. Rather,
it provided a site for sociopolitical development. For example, after
the County of Barcelona merged with the Kingdom of Aragón, to create
the Crown of Aragon in 1137 through a dynastic union, the system was
designed to mutually check both the king's and nobility's powers,
while the small but growing numbers of free citizens and bourgeoisie
would tactically take sides with the king in order to diminish
typically feudal institutions.
By 1150, the king approved a series of pacts, called the Usatges,
which "explicitly acknowledged legal equality between burghers…and
nobility" (Woolard 17). In addition, the Catalan-Aragonese gentry
established the Corts, a representative body, comprised of nobles,
bishops and abbots that counterbalanced the King's authority. By the
end of the 13th century, "the monarch needed the consent of the Corts
to approve laws or collect revenue" (McRoberts 10). Soon after, the
Corts elected a standing body called the Diputació del General or the
Generalitat, which included the rising high bourgeoisie. The first
Catalan constitutions were promulgated by the Corts of Barcelona in
1283, following the Roman tradition of the Codex.
In the 13th century, King James I of Aragon conquered Valencia and the
Balearic Islands. Subsequent conquests expanded into the
Mediterranean, reaching Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Naples and Greece,
so by 1350 the Crown of Aragon "presided over the one of the most
extensive and powerful mercantile empires of the Mediterranean during
this period" (Woolard 16). Catalonia's economic success formed a
powerful merchant class, which wielded the Corts as its political
weapon. It also produced a smaller middle class, or menestralia, that
was "composed of artisans, shopkeepers and workshop owners" (McRoberts
11).
Over the 13th and 14th centuries, these merchants accrued so much
wealth and political sway that placed a significant check on the
Aragonese crown. By the 15th century the Aragonese monarch "was not
considered legitimate until he had sworn to respect the basic law of
the land in the presence of the Corts" (Balcells 9). This balance of
power is a classic example of pactisme, or contractualism, which seems
to be a defining feature of the Catalan political culture.
Along with political and economic success, Catalan culture flourished
in the 13th and 14th centuries. During this period, the Catalan
vernacular gradually replaced Latin as the language of culture and
government. Scholars rewrote everything from ancient Visigothic law to
religious sermons in Catalan (Woolard 14). Wealthy citizens bolstered
Catalan's literary appeal through poetry contests and history pageants
dubbed the Jocs Florals, or "Floral Games." As the kingdom expanded
southeast into Valencia and the Mediterranean, Catalan followed.
The medieval heyday of Catalan culture would not last, however. After
a bout of famine and plague hit Catalonia in the mid-14th century, the
population dropped from 50,000 to 20,000 (McRoberts 13). This
exacerbated feudal tensions, sparking serf revolts in rural areas and
political impasses in Barcelona. Financial issues and the burden of
multiple dependencies abroad further strained the region.
In 1410, the Aragonese king died without leaving an heir to the
throne. Finding no legitimate alternative, leaders of the realms
composing the Crown of Aragon agreed by means of the Compromise of
Caspe that the vacant throne should go to the Castilian Ferdinand I,
as he was among the nearest relatives of the recently extinguished
House of Barcelona through a maternal line. The new dynasty began to
assert the authority of the Crown, leading to a perception among the
nobility that their traditional privileges associated with their
position in society where at risk. From 1458 to 1479, civil wars
between King John II and local chieftains engulfed Catalonia.
During the conflict, John II, on the face of French aggression in the
Pyrenees[10] "had his heir Ferdinand married to Isabella of Castile,
the heiress to the Castilian throne, in a bid to find outside allies"
(Balcells 11). Their dynastic union, which came to be known as the
Catholic Monarchs, marked the de facto unification of the Kingdom of
Spain. At that point, however, de jure both the Castile and the Crown
of Aragon remained distinct territories, each keeping its own
traditional institutions, Parliaments and laws. This was a common
practice at this time in Western Europe as the concept of sovereignty
laid in the monarch.
With the dawn of the Age of Discoveries, led by the Crown of Castile,
the importance of the Aragonese possessions in the Mediterranean
became drastically reduced and, along the rise of barbary pirates
predating commerce in the Mediterranean, the theater of European power
shifted from the Mediterranean basin to the Atlantic Ocean. These
political and economic restrictions impacted all segments of society.
Also, because of the locally bred social conflicts, Catalonia
squandered in one century most of what it had gained in political
rights between 1070 and 1410.
Nevertheless, early political, economic and cultural advances gave
Catalonia "a mode of organization and an awareness of its own identity
which might in some ways be described as national, though the idea of
popular or national sovereignty did not yet exist" (Balcells 9). Other
scholars like Kenneth McRoberts and Katheryn Woolard hold similar
views. Both support Pierre Vilar, who contends that in 13th and 14th
centuries "the Catalan principality was perhaps the European country
to which it would be the least inexact or risky to use such seemingly
anachronistic terms as political and economic imperialism or
'nation-state'" (McRoberts 13). In other words, an array of political
and cultural forces laid the foundations of Catalan "national"
identity.
Llobera agrees with this opinion, saying, "By the mid-thirteenth
century, the first solid manifestations of national consciousness can
be observed." Indeed, 13th and 14th century Catalonia did exhibit
features of a nation-state. The role of Catalan Counts, the Corts,
Mediterranean rule and economic prosperity support this thesis. But as
Vilar points out, these analogies are only true if we acknowledge that
a 14th century nation-state is anachronistic. In other words, those
living in Catalonia before latter day nationalism possessed something
like a collective identity on which this was to be based, but this
does not automatically equate to the modern concept of nation, neither
in Catalonia nor elsewhere in similar circumstances during the Middle
Age.
The Corts and the rest of the autochthonous legal and politic
organization was finally terminated in 1716 as a result of the Spanish
War of Succession. The local population mostly took side and provided
troops and resources for Archduke Charles, the pretender who was
arguably to maintain the legal status quo. His utter defeat meant the
legal and politic termination of the autonomous parliaments in the
Crown of Aragon, as the Nueva Planta Decrees were passed and the King
Philip V of Spain of the new House of Bourbon sealed the
transformation of Spain from a de facto unified realm into a de jure
centralized state.
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