 | History of Catalonia: Encyclopedia II - History of Catalonia - Catalonia Aragon and Castile
History of Catalonia - Catalonia Aragon and Castile
History of Catalonia - 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 Besalú, part of the county of Empúries, all of the county of Cerdagne, 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 Petronila 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 parliaments 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.
History of Catalonia - The Aragonese-Catalan Empire
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 Sea after the conquest of Valencia, Balearic Islands, 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, 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 Cerdagne 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. There 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 Castillian 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" (serfs') 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 Cerdagne, 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.
History of Catalonia - Crown of Aragon union with Crown of Castile
Ferdinand's 1479 marriage to Isabella of Castile 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.
The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in a Spanish-sponsored expedition shifted Europe's economic centre of gravity (and the focus of Spain's ambitions) from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and undermined Catalonia's economic and political importance. Aragonese and Catalan power in the Mediterranean would continue, but the maritime expansion into the Atlantic and the conquest of Central and South America was essentially not a Catalan enterprise (even prohibited in doing so by Castille), and efforts to achieve further Spanish conquests in Europe itself generally slackened.
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.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Catalonia Aragon and Castile", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
