History of Catalonia

History Of Catalonia

The territory that now constitutes the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain 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 later Middle Ages under the hegemony of the Counts of Barcelona. As a coastal territory of the Crown of Aragon, Catalonia became a base for Aragonese naval power and expansionism into what became (autonomous community)|Valencia]], the Balearic Islands, and lster into Sardinia and Sicily and, briefly, Athens.

The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 unified most of Iberia and laid the foundations for a unified Crown of 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 of 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.