Catalan nationalism
Catalan nationalism promotes the idea that the Catalan people form a distinct nation and national identity. A related term is Catalanism, which is more related to regionalism and tends to have a wider meaning; most people who define themselves as Catalanist do not necessarily identify as Catalan nationalists.
Intellectually, modern Catalan nationalism can be said to have commenced as a political philosophy in the unsuccessful attempts to establish a federal state in Spain in the context of the First Republic. Valentí Almirall i Llozer and other intellectuals that participated in this process set up a new political ideology in the 19th century, to restore self-government, as well as to obtain recognition for the Catalan language. These demands were summarized in the so-called Bases de Manresa in 1892.
The movement had little support at first. After the Spanish–American War, in which Spain lost the last of their colonies in the Pacific and the Caribbean, these early stages of Catalanism grew in support, mostly because of the weakened Spanish international position after the war and the loss of the two main destinations for Catalan exports.
Origins of Catalan national identity
During the first centuries of the Reconquista, the Franks drove the Muslims south of the Pyrenees. To prevent future incursions, Charlemagne created in 790 CE a series of Frankish counties through the conquered territory, 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 both 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. Ramon Berenguer approved a series of pacts, called the Usatges, which "explicitly acknowledged legal equality between burghers... and nobility".
According to several scholars, the term "Catalan" and "Catalonia" emerged near the end of the 11th century and appeared in the compiled Usatges of 1173. 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 major cause. Rather, it provided a zone for sociopolitical development. For example, after the County of Barcelona signed an agreement with the Kingdom of Aragon in 1137 to create a dynastic union of both entities later known as Crown of Aragon, the system was designed to mutually check both the king's and the 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. In 1173, Catalonia was legally delimited for the first time, while, apart from the compilation of the Usages, between 1170 and 1195 the Liber feudorum maior and the Gesta Comitum Barchinonensium were compiled and written, being considered together as the three milestones of Catalan political identity.
In addition, the estates of the realm established the Corts Catalanes, a representative body of nobles, bishops, abbots and the bourgeoisie 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". Soon after, the Catalan Courts elected a standing body called the Diputació del General or the Generalitat, which included the rising upper bourgeoisie. The first Catalan constitutions were promulgated by the Catalan Courts held in 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 one of the most extensive and powerful mercantile empires of the Mediterranean during this period". 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".
Over the 13th and 14th centuries, these merchants accrued so much wealth and political sway that they were able to place a significant check on the power of 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". 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. 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, the Catalan language 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 500,000 to 200,000. 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 king died without leaving an heir to the throne. Finding no legitimate alternative, representatives of the three Iberian 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 were at risk. From 1458 to 1479, civil wars between King John II and Catalan institutions engulfed Catalonia.
During the conflict, John II, in the face of French aggression in the Pyrenees "had his heir Ferdinand married to Isabella I of Castile, the heiress to the Castilian throne, in a bid to find outside allies". Their dynastic union, which came to be known as the Catholic Monarchs, marked the de facto unification of the Monarchy of Spain. At that point, however, de jure both the Castile and the states of the Crown of Aragon remained distinct entities, each keeping its own separate jurisdictions, institutions, parliaments and legislation. This was a common practice at this time in Western Europe as the concept of sovereignty lay with the monarch.
With the dawn of the Age of Discovery, led by the Portuguese, the importance of the Aragonese possessions in the Mediterranean became drastically reduced and, alongside the rise of Barbary pirates predating commerce in the Mediterranean, the theatre 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 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". 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'". 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 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 Ages.
The Catalan Courts and the rest of the autochthonous legal and political organization of the Principality of Catalonia were finally terminated in 1716, as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Catalan institutions and most of local population took sides and provided troops and resources for Archduke Charles, the pretender, who was arguably expected to maintain and modernize the legal status quo. His utter defeat meant the legal and political termination of the autonomous parliaments in the Crown of Aragon, as the Nueva Planta decrees were passed and 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.