THE MOST RECENT OUTBURST IN THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SPAIN AND CATALONIA, CONTRARY TO WHAT MIGHT BE IMAGINED, HAS HISTORICAL ROOTS, INDEED, ROOTS OLDER THAN THE ACTUAL FORMATION OF SPAIN AS A NATION-STATE, NOW STRUCTURED AS A CONSTITUTIONAL PARLIAMENTARY MONARCHY. IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE REASONS FOR THE SPLIT BETWEEN MADRID AND BARCELONA, THE MAIN CITIES IN THIS POLARISATION, WE NEED A HISTORICAL RETROSPECTIVE OF THIS CONFLICT.
The geostrategic location of Catalonia lies at the origins of its own history and the history of its differentiation with the other peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. Heading back into the dawn of human civilisation, the first Iberian peoples did not have any mutual interconnections, hence these times perhaps represent the period when the peninsula, even at the pinnacle of its own isolation, experienced the greatest level of territorial unity. The Iberian peoples, even without any means of communication, common language or any other type of administrative structures, did at that time have truly similar natures, whether in terms of the way they organised themselves in groups or what we know about their respective styles of life.
From the Iberian peoples to the great empires
This correspondingly constitutes the reality of the Iberian Peninsula through to its first colonisation carried out by Greece, then the world’s undisputed superpower. They arrived on the peninsula precisely through Catalonia, settling in Ampurias, a city they founded in 575 B.C. and whose ruins still stand today. Arriving primarily from Phocaea, the Greek legacy survives in the form of the archaeological remains found in Spain, particularly strong in areas surrounding port entranceways pretty much across all of Catalonia, with a particular incidence in the province of Girona, in the comarca of Alt Empordà, bordering naturally upon the Mediterranean coastline. The mountainous layout of the Pyrenees made the sea the only open border and connection to the Mediterranean and, in contrast to the Atlantic means of access to the rest of the peninsula, would also prove determinant to developments in the history of this region. Arriving with the Greeks was the commercial trading activities that began to turn the Mediterranean into what would over time become a region with intense ongoing trading activities, deeply intertwined with the economic development of Europe. This is the period when the still primitive Iberian peoples began setting down roots anchored in the production of wine, cereals and olive oil, which served not only for their own consumption but also as the means for trading and subsequently leveraged by the introduction of the first coins.
Two centuries on from the arrival of the Greeks, in 318 B.C., there came the Romans and thus the advent of the great engineering skills that had already been consolidated in this period. They went onto build roads, bridges and various other constructions, all based upon the footprint first made by the Greeks and correspondingly expanding out of Ampurias. The Romans stayed in these lands for double the length of time of the Greeks and over the course of seven centuries of occupying the region founded the major cities of contemporary Catalonia: Gironda, today Girona; Barcina, today Barcelona; Tarraco, today Tarragona.
The means of communication established through the building of cobbled roads and bridges played a fundamental role not only in the development of commercial exchanges but also in bringing about bonds, hitherto impossible, between the peoples residing in the different counties. The local populations collectively benefitted from the road network that spanned the Catalan region that also served as a tool for standardising the language, Latin, which would become the foundation for the development of Catalan.
In the 5th century, faced with the decadence of the Roman Empire, the territory would be occupied by the Visigoths, who invaded from the north of Europe and took over control of the entire peninsula throughout three centuries prior to the arrival of the Moors from northern Africa. In a short period of time, this Arabian people occupied all of the peninsula, however, both the Asturias, for geographic reasons, and generally for the entire region of Catalonia, put up great resistance and would only be conquered and settled at a later date and were more swiftly taken during the Christian re-conquest, thus reinforcing bonds and the local regional identity.
From internal prosperity to war with the Moors
With the advance of the Frank Empire of Charles the Great, the re-conquest of Catalonia from the Moors came about in what would later become known as the March on Barcelona. As the Franks and Charles the Great also had other priorities, they did not take on the ruling of Catalonia, instead preferring to nominate local lords and mapping and distributing the regions around the major cities. This implemented the counties of Catalonia, the first to develop their own autonomous institutions even if closely linked to the Frank Empire. This process nevertheless only took place in the northern half of Catalonia, that which adjoins the border with contemporary France, with the southern section under the rule of the Moors for a longer period of time. In northern Catalonia, the different counties developed connections between each other, not only family based through marriage but also in other dimensions of life in society, including commercial exchanges, political treaties, among other aspects to the administrative management of the “Catalan countries”. It is at this point in time that Barcelona emerged as the great metropolis for the region following its selection by the different countries as the seat to host the institutions designed for the shared ruling of these territories.
With the progressive decline of the Frank Empire, Catalonia shed its bonds and strengthened the administrative mechanisms that had already begun development as well as compiling the “Usatges”, the first document to bring together the codes and social customs of the region, an embryonic form of a future Civil Code of Catalonia. In the 12th century, more specifically in 1137, with the weakening of the Moorish Empire, Ramon Berenger IV, the Count of Barcelona, married the Princess of Aragon to form the kingdom of Aragon and Catalonia even while the languages, rules and systems remained autonomous of each other. The 13th century saw the beginning of an expansionist period with the Kingdom of Aragon and Catalonia attempting unsuccessfully to advance through the Pyrenees before Pedro I, the conquistador, marched southwards and defeated the Moors in the region of Valencia and the Balearic islands, rendering the Catalonia of this period one of the great commercial and trading powers of Europe.
The first institutions and codes of Catalonia
In this period of great development, the old Usatges underwent development that gave way to more rules and institutions. There came the “Concell de Cents”, the “Corts Generals”, the “Consulat del Mar”, and, a few decades later but already into the 14th century, the Generalitat, an embryonic form of autonomous government, which has become such a common reference point in the most recent conflict between the Catalan autonomous government and the central government of Madrid. With the advent of the 15th century, internal tensions grew despite ongoing external success. The conflict between the nobility, commercial bourgeois and peasants worsened and requiring the king to step in and mediate in a process that ended up guaranteeing some progress in the living standards of the most disadvantaged members of society. In the late 15th century, the entire kingdom of Spain experienced substantial change with the consolidation of the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Navarra, which, in sum, followed in the earlier footsteps of the Catalan County. That which today constitutes the greatest obstacle to the independence of Catalonia, as we now perceive it, has less than five centuries of history as a project of state. That is, if we only reach back as far as the March on Barcelona to date the original appearance of Catalan national feeling. The times were only to become more difficult for Catalonia following the marriage of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and Isabella, Princess of Castile,
which established a situation of two kingdoms with the same monarchs. Certainly, each kingdom was to initially retain
its own language and institutions and system of governance, something that was strengthened by the development of two distinct expansionist strategies. The Kingdom of Castile embarked on the Atlantic expansion, advancing towards South America, while the Kingdom of Aragon and Catalonia headed towards Europe, occupying Sardinia, Sicily and Naples. Furthermore, with the 17th century and its Thirty Year War, the Count Duke of Olivares, the right hand man to the then king, to gain greater means and capacity in this war, for the first time sought to centralise all of the Iberian kingdoms, occupying Portugal for three generations and unifying by force and strength the three kingdoms that today make up Spain.
This is the time of the well-known war of the Segadores (Reapers’ War), an uprising of the Catalan peasantry against the king that would last for over a decade and that still today provides a reference point in the self-declared anthem of the Catalan republic, the Segadores. This rebellion also did bring some conquests, especially and most importantly for those rebelling: maintaining the statute of autonomy of the Catalan institutions and avoiding assimilation by Castile.
Unification by force
In the 18th century, despite the already many centuries defending their own institutions and autonomy, the Catalans would lose everything in the War of Succession. The then king, Charles II, died without any heirs and two figures emerged to dispute the succession.
In the dispute between the House of Bourbon and the House of Hapsburg, the former was more centralist and defended strengthening the unity of the peninsula while the latter, with more arguments to convince the Catalans, gave a guarantee not only to maintain the existing autonomous institutions but indeed to strengthen them.
On 11 September 1714, a date on which today is celebrated the National Day of Catalonia, the House of Hapsburg and the Catalans lost the war and, following the fall of Barcelona, all traces of the Catalan identity are destroyed or abolished, including the language which was subject to prohibition. For the first time in its history, Catalonia was totally dependent on Madrid.
With the 19th century and the industrial revolution, Catalonia again turned in a performance above the average prevailing across the peninsula, whether in the industrial, agricultural or commercial sectors, with such success again stimulating a sense of national identity and now with its social basis not only incorporating rural workers but also the industrial proletariat. This marked the emergence of Catalanism as a political movement. With the Carlist wars, that pitched Queen Isabel against the brother of the deceased monarch in the Bourbon lineage, the Catalans again took the side of whoever would guarantee their autonomy and thus fighting against Isabel on the side of Carlos. However, the Carlists were to lose and once again leaving the Catalans stripped of their autonomy and dependent on Madrid.
From the Republic to Franco
Despite these successive defeats, with the declaration of the Republic of Spain in the early 20th century, the autonomy aspirations received recognition by the new regime in 1932, which enacted the “Estatut d’Autonomia”, a first outline of a putative Constitution of the Catalan Republic.
THE SELF-DECLARED ANTHEM OF CATALONIA
This act, however, would only remain in effect until the 1936 arrival of Franco, when he crushed the Republic and led a fascist dictatorship, anchored on the Falange and that was to last four decades, through to 1975. With Franco, the prohibition and repression of the Catalan language returned along with the suspension of all the mechanisms striving for national identity and, correspondingly, with all of the government administration returning into the hands of Madrid. With the death of Franco and the beginning of a transition to democracy, autonomy was recovered, especially through the free election of autonomous governments that nevertheless lack the power of decision over whether or not to opt for independence, an act considered by Madrid as equivalent to the end of Spain. However, there was also the return of the Generalitat, the Estatut d’Autonomia, a factor that proved sufficient to satisfy the Catalans throughout the first decades.
The conflict in modernity
With the 21st century came successive economic crises, the series of corruption scandals in central government and the rise in the tax burden on Catalonia that all did much to harm the capacity of Madrid and formed a ‘cocktail’ of reasons that led to a new pro-independence wave that rose to its pinnacle in the most recent period of conflict.
On 1 October, following pro-independence parties, from the right to the left, having attained a majority, the Puigdemont government, a coalition of parties from the Catalan right and left wings, organised a referendum, which Madrid deemed illegal, in which 2,286,217 citizens voted of whom 90% opted in favour of independence against a backdrop of both sides exchanging allegations over the legitimacy of the referendum. Spain declared there was the coercion of voters in an illegal process while Catalonia accused Madrid of having sabotaged a popular consultation through recourse to force and deeming the result of the referendum entirely legitimate. One week on from the referendum, the regional president declared the suspension of independence in order to open a period of negotiation but with Madrid in the meanwhile triggering article 155 suspending the autonomous institutions, rendering the government illegal and seeking to arrest a number of its members. On the other side, Puigdemont inclusively, took up exile in Brussels where he remains at the time of writing.
“The optimism of freewill or scepticism of reason?”
The sentence comes from the essayist Romain Rolland and closely suits one way of considering the next period in this conflict whether from the point of view of Barcelona or Madrid. Without venturing any risky, sweeping prognoses, the truth is that the facts placed on the table in themselves reveal there are few feasible scenarios.
From the Madrid side, all the cards are placed on the outcome of the next autonomous regional elections, held early in a process in which, even before the results come out, the capital is a partially a winner as the overwhelming majority of Catalan political parties have announced they shall participate.
From the Catalonia side, there are efforts to take the path that had not been the previous option and at the international level – the choice of Brussels as the first place of exile by Puigdemont is hardly innocent – so that there might be countries beyond Corsica, Scotland and Venezuela recognising its legitimacy. Furthermore, and in parallel, there is the need to guarantee a majority of pro-independence members of parliament following the autonomous elections called by Madrid, able to engage in campaigning for another referendum process.
With the terrain clearly tilting in favour of Spain, Catalan independence shall probably experience another defeat in the latest round of this centuries old confrontation. However, just as victory shall probably go to the unity of Spain, there is also certainty that independence tensions shall remain a reality on the political chessboard of Spain.
