Report series about the Spanish feeling of Catalonia through history
BCN Content Factory offers both chaptered report and a complete report of the history of Catalonia in Spain. In order to do it, we contacted with the sources: history professors and documentation that support the journalistic work. The chapters offered partially or totally are the following ones:
Chapter1. Barcelona capital of the first Hispanic project.Year 415. Hispania, the roman province, is severed from the imperium and assigned to Ataulfo and Gala Placidia, who moved to the Barcino’s court. This was the birth of Spain as an independent political unit and as a federation to Rome. This is the remote origin of the common history of Catalonia and Spain, that started more than 1.600 years ago.
Chapter2. Barcelona and Aragon counts.
. This chapter aims to give a proper explanation of the politics of the Catalan counties (which had existed as so previously as many documents show) but not as a unified Catalonia as the nationalists aim to show. The tensions and territorial and social fights can be appreciated in two different moments: the Caspe Commitment, that was the moment when the Catalan Oligarchy sold the Count tittle of Urgell to have this way a foreign King, unfamiliar to everything, and this way more puppet to bring the people down; and Juan II’s civil war against the Generalitat, which in nowadays words would be the oligarch and oppressor institution. The King was the figure that protected the more vulnerable people in contraposition to the actions of the Generalitat, which defended the interests and social privileges.
Chapter 3. The Hispanic vocation of the medieval Catalonia.. To set off the national construction myth, this chapter shows the rivalries among the Catalan counties, as well as the Hispanic vocation of the diverse kingdoms which composed the peninsula and which was the reconstruction of the Gothic Kingdom. Moreover, this chapter emphasizes the use of the word Spain to refer the people that inhabited in the Peninsula.
Chapter4. The Catholic Kings. They represented the unity in themselves and their heritage; they accomplished the unification of the independent kingdoms under a single person. What they achieved was what was looked for during more than 800 years of reconquers and marriages. This is not the moment of the birth of Spain as a single and unified state, but it wasn’t necessary because in practice Spain was already considered as a whole. That wasn’t the moment for unifications like the one aimed, because even France wasn’t a unified state. Spain was again just one under the Christian crown and the participation of the Aragonese crown.
Chapter 5. The Catalans in America This chapter aims to demystify the aimed Catalan exclusion from America. The reception of the first travel of Columbus was held in Barcelona, and even tough this travel didn’t count with Catalans, the second one did it. As a testimonies of all this story there were Pere Margarit (Girona’s bishop), Bernat Boyl (Monsterrat prior’s), Miquel Ballester or the chronicle writer Ramon Pané. The third trip counted with Jaume Ferrer de Balmes, the project of exploration of Terranova by Joan d’Agramunt, as well as the Catalan presence of the first colonization of Santo Domingo. From 1520on, and after having overcome the suggestion of the African market, there are multiple symptoms of the avidity of the Catalan commerce with America. Carlos Martínez Shaw has nuanced that the Catalans intervened with greater or weaker intensity in the Indian race from the moment where the American market started to run, in spite of the surveillance of the Sevillian monopoly. The XVIII century brought us a lot of Catalan and Mallorquin conquerors: Fra Juniper Serra, Gaspar de Portolá (Puebla de los Ángeles Governor), Pere Fages (Californias Governor), Miguel Constansó, Joan Pérez, Fra Crespi, Palou, Font, Pere Prat de Montpellier, Soler, Alberni, Moragues, Romeu, Jorba, Picó, Rivera i Montcada, José de Gálvez (General visitor), Juan Pujol (Catalan voluntary), Salvador Fidalgo (North East coast explorer). In the mid XVIII century, they were able to coincide in the new Spain different groups of Catalan explorers, among which some personalities of the royal government stand out, some traders, Franciscan friars and the military contingent under the arrange of experienced officials which would be the Franc Company of Catalan Voluntaries under the management of the Captain Callis.
Chapter6. The reapers war. In this chapter it is aimed to attempt the address of modernization of Spain in hands of Olivares in contraposition with the feudal and privileged institutions of Catalonia. Try the "uprising" of the reapers from the social perspective to complement the national vision of some authors and the Catalan independence movement. In this sense we will treat the figure of Pau Claris not as a leader of the Catalans, but rather as someone who worked on their own incorporation of Catalonia to France. It should be noted the consequences for Catalonia that joining France, the noble exile to Castile and the situation of the French Roussillon after its incorporation into the Frankish kingdom.
Chapter7. Succession war. The succession war has two different approaches that disassemble the independence myth. The first one is the fact that choosing the option of the Austria’s household didn’t mean the confrontation with Spain, but instead it meant the implication of Catalonia in the construction of a monarchy and of the future of Spain, from which Catalonia could have more profit than with the Borbon household. In fact, the Phoenix can be understood as one of the first Catalan regeneration attempts from an economic point of view, not political, of his implication in the Hispanic monarchy. Until the arrival of the Austriacist fleet the Barcelona-Vic coalition wasn’t created to support the Austrian party. This means that it had more than a component of bet in justification to Bourbon absolutism, whose appeal is not in the pamphlets of the early years. It is also important mean the civil war which happened within Catalonia itself, with different territories fighting each other for their own interests. Must be deepened, meanwhile, on the concept of "war to the death" caused the final phase of the war and warn as this strategy was not unanimous among the different members of the Saló de Cent. In fact, Casanovas, he was against this option.
Chapter 8. The borbonic XVIII century. The consequences of the defeat in the succession war were tough for the Austrian crown defenders and the “war to death”. The immediate posterior texts of 1714 justified the position that the authors defended (principally Feliu de la Peña) and were the ones that, in a great measure, took the reference from the nationalist historiography. After the first years and in a very curious way the references to the defeat started to disappear, as well as the references to the Catalan situation that didn’t arose again until the XIX century. It was due to the Catalan economic growth of the XVIII century, which was one of the most prosperous centuries of its history. To this, they contributed a lot of the measures taken by the Borbonic administration as the fading of internal boundaries and duties. Catalonia had the American doors opened after having the Mediterranean ones closed which permitted a commercial boom unparalleled (thanks to free trade decrees of Carlos III) and its entry to the industrialization equity. Additionally, in this period can be dismantled much of the nationalist myths, such as language: the decline of the use Catalan as language began long before 1714 and is part of a process faced by many European languages, in which local elites prefer to express themselves as languages "with an European dimension" and the local language reserved for the private sphere.
Chapter 9. The independence war. The independence war supposed a greater implication of Catalonia in the Spanish politics and displayed the full integration of the Catalans in Spain to uphold the king and homeland further from the Francophobic to which the nationalists allude. The important thing in this chapter is to highlight the Catalan patriots who fought (as Baiget General) against the invaders, as well as the symbolisms that they brought with them, as the embroidery that the Spanish women did. Counterpoising the mythology of the succession war with the reality of the independence war disassembles the Catalan nationalism. The same way, is important to counterpoise the siege of 1714 with the others in other Catalan cities during the independence war. Girona (1808-1809), Roses (1808), Lleida (1810), Tortosa (1810-1811) or Tarragona (1811). In this sense, in this chapter the report will try to allude the ostracism of the nationalists, the myths of the history of Catalonia which had a clear Spanish connotation, like the case of the Bruc battle.
Chapter 10. The Spanish Vanguard: political and military implication of the Catalans in the Spain of the XIX century. The writing of the Cadiz’s Constitution and the whole XIX century has a special signification for Catalonia due to many different reasons. Not only because the independence war showed that Catalonia fought for Spain and had a complete conscience of belonging to the nation, but for the conception of nation that was born in Cádiz. In contradistinction to the romantic Catalan nationalism, which bases the existence of the nation in the medieval and romantic concept and the privileges and institutions of the Antique Régime, the Spanish nation bases its existence (not its historical existence) in the revolutionary concept of the Constitution as France also did. This is the basic difference between modern state and older nation. It is important to foreground this aspect that differentiates clearly the two concepts. In this sense, the way that Catalonia lived this period must be highlighted: the Catalan implication in the Cádiz Constitution (with the participation of 17 deputies) and the Catalan political movements as national and exemplified movements in the carlism as an identity sign of Lleida and Tarragona, Morocco and Cuba. In this chapter is necessary to remind the active participation of the Catalans in the defense of Spain. As the first issue it would be fine to analyze the activity of the Catalan trope in the Morocco war, with the figure of Prim General with the sword and Spanish flag on the hands and his famous harangue to the greening of the Spanish glories and to represent the Catalan honor and glory of Palestine, Greece and Constantinople, which illustrates the interrelation between the Catalan and Spanish history. The Catalan implication was fundamental to the Wad-Ras battle and Tetuán. In fact, one of the most relevant symbols of national sovereignty, as the lions of the court, are the Moroccan canonry. The same sense is given to the Catalan voluntaries that fought in Cuba and fought for the honor of Spain and to maintain the integrity of the territory under the shadow of the glorious red-columned flag.
Chapter 11. The ‘Renaixença’ and the regenerationist project. In this period the bases of what the nationalism would be were written: culturally differentiated nation and the defense of the privileges against the monarchical absolutism. This has been used subsequently to justify the regeneration of Spain, and the search for political and national emancipation. Anyway it would be useful to highlight the different allusions that the authors do concerning the topic: “¿Spanish? Yes! More than you! Cheers Spain!”, words of Joan Maragall or what Cambó said: “I’m a Catalan nationalist, but I don’t think Spain to be an artificial thing, or only a political entity, I think that Spain is an alive thing that has always been alive” and the reflection of Prat de la Riba: “Thus, the Catalan nationalism, which has never wanted the separation, which has always believed in the fraternal union of the Iberic nationalities inside of the federative organization” and the program which guarded la Lliga Regionalista on “Catalonia and the Big Spain”.
Chapter 12. The Catalans and the transformation of the XXth Century of Spain.The fact that the Franquist regime was an alien and imposed due to the war against Catalonia regime has to be demystified. The most reliable historiography on the Civil war and the Franquism has disassembled the revisionist thesis. One of the documents that can’t be avoided to read is the “History of Franquism in Catalonia” written by Martín Marín. The author threshes the roots and the consolidation of the Catalan Franquism “forged during the Civil War with the ones who contributed to victory, of the Franco’s fighters and members of the fifth column- and completed in the immediate postwar with all the ones who helped to stand up to the building of the Franco administration and its institutions”. Tens of thousands of people-mayors, councilors, provincial deputies, delegates and union political services that had not been brought "from outside" nor had acted "by force". Another fundamental reading is “The Franco Catalans” written by Ignasi Riera, which includes the biography of 141 Catalans (politicians, businessman, journalists and religious people) which developed their political activity during the Franquism. In this book we are told that the regime of Catalonia wasn’t just fed with local Falangists, Carlists or Monarquics, but also from la Lliga politicians and historic right-winged political persons. There are mythic quotes as the one of mr. Valls i Taberner on his article “The false way”, which resumes the ideology of a lot of man of la Lliga who turned into Franquism: “the Catalanism is now a corpse, who has never to be let unburied if we think in the good of Catalonia”. Or the quote of Ramon de Abadal I Castelló: “as Catalans, we affirm that our land want to follow united to the other peoples of Spain by the fraternal love and by the feeling of the community of destiny (…) we greet to our brothers who fight in the lines of the freedom army”. Thus, it is not true that the Franquism in Catalonia was a matter of a few. The last item that is treated in the chapter is the transition in Catalonia and its posterior development. Catalonia had a very active role in the political transition of Spain as in the outcome of the constitution and the political structure and territorial distribution of the nation which responded the aims of autonomy of lots of Catalans and the regeneration of the Catalanist tradition. The transition supposed a covenant in the purest style of the Catalan pactist political tradition and its posterior evolution in skills and resources, all agreed with the Government, which supposed a profound evolution of decentralization and pacts which would have been signed by any Catalan nationalist and its collective ideology from the Middle Ages until now. It is the independence project, therefore, breaking the traditional Catalanism and Catalan spirit forged through the centuries.
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