The Catalan Question: From Charlemagne to Puigdemont
But the situation radically changes on September 1213...
Even he doesn’t directly participate in the Albigensian Crusade, Philip II (Philip Augustus), the king of the Franks, styled himself king of France from 1190 onward, allowed his vassals to carry it out and bring the Southern France under the influence of the French crown. On 12 September 1213, at Muret, near Toulouse, the Crusaders defeated the Catharist, Aragonese and Catalan forces of Count of Toulouse and his ally, Peter II of Aragon.
The battle played a significant role in ending the Aragonese interests in territories north of the Pyrenees Mountains. Later, by the Treaty of Corbeil (1258), James I of Aragon, Peter’s son and heir, renounced his claims to the Aragonese territories in the south of France, thus abandoning the policy that the Crown of Aragon had hitherto pursued across the Pyrenees.
In exchange for the abandon of the Aragonese rights in Languedoc, the king of France himself abandoned the ancient Frankish claims of suzerainty over Catalonia, Rosselló (Roussillon) and the other Carolingian possessions in the south of Pyrenees.
After the forced retreat from Languedoc and Provence, the kings of Aragon continued the Reconquista and their expansion eastwards, across the sea, and southwards, along the Mediterranean coast.
The Balearic Islands became a Christian dominion in the first part of the 13th Century and, following the conquest, James I of Aragon created a Kingdom of Mallorca (Majorca) in 1231. In 1279, after a short period of independence, this kingdom was united with the Crown of Aragon.
In the south, a similar scenario: the Aragonese king occupied the territories of the newly established kingdom of Valencia (1238) and united this state too with the Crown of Aragon.
After the conquest, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian kingdom have known a large influx of Catalan-speaking colonists from the Principality of Catalonia and the Catalan language (known later as Valencian in the Valencian kingdom) has been accepted as the official language of these new political entities. This fact explains why the Balearic Archipelago and Valencia became gradually some of the Catalan countries of the Catalan nationalist imaginary.
With a high degree of autonomy during the 12th-15th Centuries, the Principality of Catalonia and the other Aragonese dominions had to experience a certain political involution after the union between the Crowns of Aragon and Castile and the birth of the Spanish state.
At the beginning of the 18th Century, as a result of the Spanish War of Succession, the Crown of Aragon ceased to exist and the autonomy of its dominions was swept away by the centralist laws issued by the King of Spain (the Nueva Planta decrees, 1707-1716).
In fact, following the surrender of the Catalans on September 11, 1714, Catalonia became effectively an ordinary region of a centralist Spanish state.
A century later, the situation would radically change again, after the French conquest of Spain. In 1812, the territories of the ancient Carolingian Catalan counties were annexed by the French Empire. After this short-lived and ambiguous initiative, Catalonia became Spanish again in 1814...
Often described by the Catalan nationalists as a nation without state or a stateless nation, Catalonia is one of the most prosperous regions in Spain. Accepted as a “nationality” by the Spanish state, Catalonia is an autonomous community with its own language, history and symbols, and its own Government and Parliament. Historically, the Catalans have expressed a strong sense of collective identity, which seems to be able to compete with the Spanish national identity. In fact, the genesis and the development of a strong Catalan identity represent a real challenge for a multinational Spanish society ruled by a Castilian-speaking political elite. If for this elite, Catalonia, as a distinct cultural community, is just a part of a Spain defined as a “nation of nations”, for the Catalans the things are very different. For a vast majority of the Catalans, Catalonia is without doubt a nation. A distinct nation. In this case, as a former Catalan Prime Minister (Pasqual Maragall) suggested, the Spanish state would contain four nations: a Spanish nation, associated to the Castilian-speaking majority, a Galician nation, a Basque nation and, of course, a Catalan nation. Now, the problem is whether the Spanish state provide a suitable framework for dealing with the defense and protection of a Catalan identity in a multinational European Union. For a Catalan nationalist, the question could be even more simple: If, for example, Malta, Luxembourg, Croatia, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus can be independent states and full members of the European Union, why not Catalonia? In this context, the independentists’ victory in the September 2015 Catalan regional elections, billed as a de facto referendum on Catalonia’s relationship with the Spanish state, seems to indicate that Catalonia is no more just a “common” nation without state, but a nation in search of its own state...
For a better understanding of this “Catalan question”, let’s put the things on the map...
<<<< http://edmaps.com/html/catalonia_in_seven_maps.html
