Usuari:Josep Esquer/History

Link a diferences (prem)

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.

As with the rest of Hispania, the area that is now Catalonia was part of the Roman Empire, it then came under Visigothic rule after collapse of the western part of the empire. In 718, the area was occupied by the Moors and became a part of Muslim ruled al-Andalus. The Frankish Empire conquered the area from the Muslims, beginning with the conquest of Roussillon in 760 and ending with the conquest of Barcelona in 801, as part of the creation of a larger buffer zone of Christian counties known as the Marca Hispanica.

In time, the counties of the region gave up their allegiance to the rulers of the Franks and their successors and became attached, as a self-governing principality under the Count of Barcelona, Ramir the monk arranged the wedding of her 3 year old daughter to Ramon Berenguer IV, giving the Kingdom of Aragon to their son Anfos who would be the first king of the House of Barcelona, with 20 catalan kings that ruled the Crown of Aragon until 1414, when the Caspe compromise gave entrance to the Trastamara dinasty. Due to the fact that the territories of the Kingdom of Aragon allowed only small boats dedicated to fluvial trafic or river crossing, Catalonian sail power, Catalan galleys and Catalan harbours, became the body for the Crown of Aragon's naval power and expansionism, that spread into Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and later into Sardinia, Sicily, Naples and, briefly, Athens. An identifiably Catalan culture developed in the later Middle Ages under the hegemony of the counts of Barcelona, in parallel with the Kingdom of Valence.

The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 laid the foundations for a unified Crown of Spain. In 1492, the Emirate 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 a considerable time, Catalonia retained its own laws as a principality of the Crown of Aragon but this came to an end when the new Bourbon dynasty secured the throne of Spain in the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714) and made the former Crown of Aragon territories into provinces of the Crown of Castile following the war. During the war, Catalonia had supported the claim of a member of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty (after breaking an oath of loyalty to the French Bourbon prince Philip of Anjou (Philip V of Spain) from 1702). Following the surrender of Catalan troops on September 11, 1714, Philip V's enacted the Nueva Planta decrees banning all the main traditional Catalan political institutions and rights and merged its administration into that of the Crown of Castile as a province. However, the Bourbon monarchy allowed for Catalonia's civil law code to be maintained. With the exception of the loyal Basque Country, the new Bourbon king, Philip V of Spain, abolished the ancient privileges of all of Spain's medieval kingdoms, including the Crown of Aragon and with it, those of the Principality of Catalonia. Following the model of France, he imposed a unifying legislation and administration across Spain, as well as introducing the French Sallic Law and founding Spain's own Royal Academy in 1714. This led to the eclipse of Catalan as a language of government and literature. Economically, Catalonia experienced commercial growth in the late 18th century when the Bourbons ended Castile's trade monopoly with Spain's American colonies. The Napoleonic occupation and war in Spain in the early 19th century began a period of political and economic turmoil. In the latter half of the 19th century, Catalonia became a center of industrialization.

In the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia several times enjoyed and lost varying degrees of autonomy like other parts of Spain until the Second Spanish Republic confirmed the autonomies of Spain's traditional autonomous regions, including the autonomy of Catalonia and the official use of its language. Like Madrid, the Basque country and much of Spain, Catalonia fought hard to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the devastating civil war of 1936–1939. With the defeat of the Spanish republic by the right wing forces of Francisco Franco, the autonomies were cancelled and regional languages like Catalan were made illegal. A great effort was made by Franco's regime to crush all regional cultures, languages and identities within Spain but without success. The Catalan language, like other regional languages, continued to be used in private.

In the years after the civil war life was difficult. With Spain devastated and cut off from international trade by boycotts, Catalonia, as a commercial and industrial center, suffered severely. The economic recovery was very slow and it was not until the mid-1950s that the economy reached the prewar levels of 1936. In 1959–1974 Spain experienced the second fastest economic expansion in the world in what became known as the Spanish Miracle and Catalonia prospered greatly from the expansion as Spain's most important industrial and tourist zone. In 1975 Franco died, bringing to an end his dictatorial regime, and in 1978 Catalonia voted overwhelmingly for the new democratic Spanish constitution that recognised Catalonia's autonomy and language.