Castile and León
Castile and León is an autonomous community of Spain. While a capital has not been explicitly declared, the seats of the executive and legislative powers are set in Valladolid by law, and for all purposes that city serves as the de facto regional capital.
Castile and León is a landlocked region in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, bordered by Portugal as well as by the Spanish autonomous communities of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, La Rioja, Aragon, Castilla–La Mancha, the Community of Madrid and Extremadura. Chiefly comprising the northern half of the Inner Plateau, it is surrounded by mountain barriers and most of the territory is drained by the Douro River, flowing west toward the Atlantic Ocean. Castile and León is the largest autonomous community in Spain by area, covering 94,216.91 km2, It is sparsely populated, with a population of around 2.4 million and a population density of about 25/km2.
The autonomous community was created in 1983 by grouping the provinces of León, Zamora, Salamanca, Ávila, Burgos, Palencia, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid.
The region contains eleven World Heritage Sites, making it the region with most UNESCO World Heritage Sites. UNESCO recognizes the Cortes of León of 1188 as the cradle of worldwide parliamentarism. The region is strongly affected by population ageing. Castile and León is the region with the worst quality of government index in Spain.
History
Several archaeological findings show that in prehistoric times these lands were already inhabited. In the Atapuerca Mountains have been found many bones of the ancestors of Homo sapiens, making these findings one of the most important to determine the history of human evolution. The most important discovery that catapulted the site to international fame was the remains of Homo heidelbergensis.Before the arrival of the Romans, it is known that the territories that make up Castile and León today were occupied by various Celtic peoples, such as Vaccaei, Autrigones, Turmodigi, the Vettones, Astures or Celtiberians. The Roman conquest resulted in warring with the local tribes. One particularly famous episode was the siege of Numantia, an old town located near the current city of Soria.
The romanization was unstoppable, and to this day great Roman works of art have remained, mainly the Aqueduct of Segovia as well as many archaeological remains such as those of the ancient Clunia, Salt mines of Poza de la Sal and the vía de la Plata pathway, which crosses the west of the community from Astorga to the capital of modern Extremadura, Mérida.
File:Toros de Guisando.jpg|thumb|left| Bulls of Guisando, in El Tiemblo, Ávila. These verracos, of Celtic origin, are found in many towns of the western half of Castile and León.
With the fall of Rome, the lands were occupied militarily by the Visigoth peoples of Germanic origin. The subsequent arrival of the Arabs was followed by a process known as the Reconquista. In the mountainous area of Asturias, a small Christian kingdom was created that opposed the Islamic presence in the Peninsula. It proclaimed itself an heir of the last Visigoth kings, who in turn had been deeply romanized. This resistance of Visigoth-Roman heritage, supported by Christianity, was becoming increasingly strong and expanding to the south, eventually establishing its court in the city of León, becoming the Kingdom of León. To encourage the repopulation of the newly reconquered lands, a number of fueros were granted by the monarchs.
In the Middle Ages, Christian pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela were popularized. The Camino de Santiago, running along the northern part of the region, was a major part of the route of pilgrimage, so it contributed to the spread of European cultural innovations throughout the peninsula. Today the Camino is still an important touristic and cultural attraction.
In 1188, the basilica of San Isidoro of León was the setting of the first parliamentary body in the history of Europe, with the participation of the Third Estate. The king who summoned it was Alfonso IX of León.
The legal basis for the kingdom was the Roman law, and because of this the kings increasingly wanted more power, like the Roman emperors. This is very clearly seen in the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X of Castile, which shows the imperial monism that the king sought. The King did not want to be a primus inter pares, but the source of the law.
File:AcueductoSegovia04.JPG|thumb|left| Aqueduct of Segovia, Roman construction.
Simultaneously, a county of this Christian kingdom of León, began to acquire autonomy and to expand. This is the primitive County of Castile, which would grow into a powerful kingdom among the Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula. The first Castilian count was Fernán González.
León and Castile continued to expand to the South, even beyond the Douro river, seeking to conquer lands under Islamic rule. That was the time of the Cantares de gesta, poems which recount the great deeds of the Christian nobles who fought against the Muslim enemy. Despite this, Christian and Muslim kings maintained diplomatic relations. One clear example is Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, paradigm of the medieval Christian knight, who fought both for Christian and Muslim kings.
The origin of the definitive dynastic unification of the kingdoms of Castile and León, which had been separated for just seven decades, was in 1194. Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso IX of León signed in Tordehumos the treaty that pacified the area of Tierra de Campos and laid the foundation for a future reunification of the kingdoms, consolidated in 1230 with Ferdinand III the Saint. This agreement is called the Treaty of Tordehumos.
File:Leon.jpg|thumb| Pantheon of kings of the Romanesque Basilica of San Isidoro of León where Alfonso IX convened the Cortes of León of 1188, the first parliamentary body of the history of Europe, with presence of Third Estate. In the same basilica is the Chalice of Doña Urraca, which some researchers assimilate with the Holy Grail.
During the Late Middle Ages there was an economic and political crisis produced by a series of bad harvests and by disputes between nobles and the Crown for power, as well as between different contenders for the throne. In the Cortes of Valladolid of 1295, Ferdinand IV is recognized as king. The painting María de Molina presents her son Fernando IV in the Cortes of Valladolid of 1295 presides today the Spanish Congress of Deputies along with a painting of the Cortes of Cádiz, emphasizing the parliamentarian importance that has all the development of Cortes in Castile and León, despite its subsequent decline. The Crown was becoming more authoritarian and the nobility more dependent on it.
The Reconquista continued advancing from the thriving Crown of Castile to the south, and culminated with the Granada War against the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian peninsula, the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, which surrendered on 2 January 1492.
File:Casas del Tratado de Tordesillas.jpg|thumb|In Tordesillas queen Isabella I of Castile signed the Treaty of Tordesillas. Her daughter queen Joanna of Castile was imprisoned in a convent of the city by her father first, by her son later, and was praised by the comuneros in their Revolt.
Antecedents of the autonomy
In June 1978, Castile and León obtained the pre-autonomy, through the creation of General council of Castile and León by Royal Decree-Law 20/1978, of 13 June.In times of the First Spanish Republic, the federal republicans conceived the project to create a federated state of eleven provinces in the valley of the Spanish Douro, that would also have included the provinces of Santander and Logroño. Very few years before, in 1869, as part of a manifesto, federal republicans representatives of the 17 provinces of Albacete, Ávila, Burgos, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, León, Logroño, Madrid, Palencia, Salamanca, Santander, Segovia, Soria, Toledo, Valladolid and Zamora proposed in the so-called Castilian Federal Pact the conformation of an entity formed by two different "states": the state of Old Castile -that is presently built for the current Castilian-Leonese provinces and the provinces of Logroño and Santander-, and the state of New Castile -which conforms to the current provinces of Castile-La Mancha plus the province of Madrid-. The end of the Republic, at the beginning of 1874, thwarted the initiative.
In 1921, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the Battle of Villalar, the Santander City Council advocated the creation of a Castilian and Leonese Commonwealth of eleven provinces, an idea that would be maintained in later years. At the end of 1931 and beginning of 1932, from León, Eugenio Merino elaborated a text in which the base of a Castilian-Leonese regionalism was put. The text was published in the Diario de León newspaper.
During the Second Spanish Republic, especially in 1936, there was a great regionalist activity favorable to a region of eleven provinces, and even bases for the Statute of Autonomy were elaborated. The Diario de León advocated for the formalization of this initiative and the constitution of an autonomous region with these words:
The end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of Franco regime ended the aspirations of the autonomy for the region. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset collected this scheme in his publications.
After the death of Francisco Franco, regionalist, autonomist and nationalist organizations as Regional Alliance of Castile and León, Regional Institute of Castile and León or the Autonomous Nationalist Party of Castile and León. Later after the extinction of these formations arose in 1993 Regionalist Unity of Castile and León.
At the same time, others of Leonesist character arose, such as the Leonese Autonomous Group or Regionalist Party of the Leonese Country, which advocated the creation of a Leonese autonomous community, composed of provinces of León, Salamanca and Zamora. The popular and political support that maintained the uniprovincial autonomy in León became very important in that city.