The recorded history of the lands of what today is known as Catalonia begins with the development of the Iberian peoples while several Greek colonies were established on the coast before the Roman conquest. It was the first area of Hispania conquered by the Romans. It then came under Visigothic rule after the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire. In 718, the area was occupied by the Umayyad Caliphate and became a part of Muslim-ruled al-Andalus. The Frankish Empire conquered the northern half of the area from the Muslims, ending with the conquest of Barcelona in 801, as part of the creation of a larger buffer zone of Christian counties against Islamic rule historiographically known as the Marca Hispanica. In the 10th century, the County of Barcelona became progressively independent from Frankish rule.
In 1137, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona betrothed the heiress of the Kingdom of Aragon, Petronilla, establishing the dynastic union of the County of Barcelona with Aragon, resulting in a composite monarchy later known as Crown of Aragon, while the County of Barcelona and the other Catalan counties merged into a state, the Principality of Catalonia,Sesma Muñoz, José Angel. La Corona de Aragón. Una introducción crítica. Zaragoza: Caja de la Inmaculada, 2000 (Colección Mariano de Pano y Ruata – Dir. Guillermo Fatás Cabeza). . which developed an institutional system (Catalan Courts, constitutions, Generalitat) that limited the power of the kings. Catalonia sponsored and contributed to the expansion of the Crown's trade and military, most significantly their navy. The Catalan language flourished and expanded as more territories were added to the Crown of Aragon, including Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and Athens. The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages, the end of the reign of House of Barcelona, serf and urban conflicts and a civil war (1462–1472) weakened the role of the Principality within the Crown and internationally.
In 1516, Charles V became monarch of both the crowns of Aragon and Castile, creating a personal union in which every state kept their own laws, jurisdiction, institutions, borders and currency. In 1492 the Spanish colonization of the Americas began, political power began to shift away towards Castile. Tensions between Catalan institutions and the Monarchy, alongside the economic crisis and the peasants' revolts, caused the Reapers' War (1640–1652), in which a Catalan Republic was briefly established. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), the northern parts of Catalonia, mostly the Roussillon, were ceded to France. The status of separate state of the Principality of Catalonia came to an end after the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in which the Crown of Aragon supported the claim of the Archduke Charles of Habsburg. Following Catalan capitulation on 11 September 1714, the king Philip V of Bourbon, inspired by the model of France imposed a unifying administration across Spain, enacting the Nueva Planta decrees, which suppressed Catalan political institutions and public law, and merged it into Castile as a province. These led to the eclipse of Catalan as a language of government and literature. During the second half of the 17th and the 18th centuries Catalonia experienced economic growth, reinforced in the late 18th century when Cádiz's trade monopoly with American colonies ended.
In the 19th century Catalonia was severely affected by the Napoleonic and Carlist Wars. The Napoleonic occupation and subsequent war in Spain began a period of political and economic turmoil. In the second third of the century, Catalonia became a center of industrialization. As wealth from the industrial expansion grew, Catalonia saw a cultural renaissance coupled with incipient nationalism while several workers movements (particularly anarchism) appeared.
In the 20th century, Catalonia enjoyed and lost varying degrees of autonomy. The Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939) established Catalan self-government and the official use of the Catalan language. Like much of Spain, Catalonia (which, in turn, expererienced a revolutionary process) fought to defend the Republic in the Civil War of 1936–1939. The Republican defeat established the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which unleashed a harsh repression and suppressed the autonomy. With Spain devastated and cut off from international trade and the autarkic politics of the regime, Catalonia, as an industrial center, suffered severely; the economic recovery was slow. Between 1959 and 1974 Spain experienced the second-fastest economic expansion in the world known as the Spanish Miracle, and Catalonia prospered as Spain's most important industrial and tourist area. In 1975 Franco died, bringing his regime to an end, and the new democratic Spanish constitution of 1978 recognised Catalonia's autonomy and language. It regained considerable self-government in internal affairs and today remains one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain. Since the 2010s there have been growing calls for Catalan independence.
Prehistory
The first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were at the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic. The oldest known trace of human occupation is a mandible found in Banyoles, described by some sources as pre-Neanderthal some 200,000 years old; other sources suggest it to be only about one third that old. Some of the most important prehistoric remains were found in the caves of Mollet (Serinyà, Pla de l'Estany), the Cau del Duc in the Montgrí mountain ("cau" meaning "cave" or "lair"), the remains at Forn d'en Sugranyes (Reus) and the shelters Romaní and Agut (Capellades), while those of the Upper Paleolithic are found at Reclau Viver, the cave of Arbreda and la Bora Gran d'en Carreres, in Serinyà, or the Cau de les Goges, in Sant Julià de Ramis. From the next prehistoric era, the Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic, important remains survive, the greater part dated between 8000 BC and 5000 BC, such as those of Sant Gregori (Falset) and el Filador (Margalef de Montsant).García-Argüelles, P.; Nadal, J.; Fullola, J.M (2005). El abrigo del filador (Margalef de Montsant, Tarragona) y su contextualización cultural y cronológica en el nordeste peninsular, Trabajos de Prehistoria 62, num. 1, 2005, pp. 65–83.
The Neolithic era began in Catalonia around 4500 BC, although the population was slower to develop fixed settlements than in other places, thanks to the abundance of woods, which allowed the continuation of a fundamentally hunter-gatherer culture. The most important Neolithic remains in Catalonia are the Cave of Fontmajor (l'Espluga de Francolí), The Cave of Toll (Morà), the caves Gran and Freda (Montserrat), the shelters of Cogul and Ulldecona, or La Draga, an early Neolithic village which dates from the end of the 6th millennium BC.Tarrus, Josep. “La Draga (Banyoles, Catalonia), an Early Neolithic Lakeside Village in Mediterranean Europe.” CATALAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, vol. 1, 2008, pp. 17–33.
The Chalcolithic or Eneolithic period developed in Catalonia between 2500 and 1800 BC, with the beginning of the construction of copper objects. The Bronze Age occurred between 1800 and 700 BC. There are few remnants of this era, but there were some known settlements in the low Segre zone. The Bronze Age coincided with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans through the Urnfield Culture, whose successive waves of migration began around 1200 BC, and they were responsible for the creation of the first proto-urban settlements.J. Maluquer de Motes: "Late Bronze and Early Iron in the valley of the Ebro" (The Europea Community in Later Prehistory. Studies in honour of C. F. C. Hawkes; Routledge & Kegan 1971, pp. 107–120) Around the middle of the 7th century BC, the Iron Age arrived in Catalonia.
Ancient history Rise of the Iberian culture
An iron-using culture first appeared in eastern Iberia in the 8th century BC. By the 5th century BC, the Iron Age Iberian civilization had become consolidated on the eastern side of the Iberian Peninsula. What is now the Catalan territory was home to several distinct tribes of Iberians: the Indigetes in Empordà, the Ceretani in Cerdanya and the Airenosins in the Val d'Aran. Some urban agglomerations became relevant, including Ilerda (Lleida) inland, Hibera (perhaps Amposta or Tortosa) or Indika (Ullastret). The settlement of Castellet de Banyoles in Tivissa was one of the most important ancient Iberian settlements. This, situated in the northeast of the peninsula, was discovered in 1912. Also, the 'Treasure of Tivissa', a unique collection of silver Iberian votive offerings was found here in 1927.
Iberian society was divided into different classes, including kings or chieftains, nobles, priests, artisans and slaves. Iberian aristocracy, often called a "senate" by the ancient sources, met in a council of nobles. Kings or chieftains would maintain their forces through a system of obligation or vassalage that the Romans termed "fides".
The Iberians adopted wine and olives from the Greeks; Horse breeding was of particular importance to the Iberian nobility. Mining was a major contributor to the economy, from which fine metalwork and high-quality iron weapons could be produced.
The Iberian language was a Paleohispanic language. The oldest inscriptions are dated from the end of the 5th century BC, and the most recent of the end of the first century BC, even at the beginning of the 1st century AD, after being gradually replaced by Latin. In its different variants, the Iberian language was spoken in a broad coastal strip stretching from southern Languedoc to Alicante.
Greeks arrived to the Iberian coasts by the late 7th century BC. The trading colony of Empúries (in Greek Emporion, meaning "market", in Latin Emporiae), was founded on the northern coast of current Catalonia by the Greek city of Phocaea in the 6th century BC. Situated on the coastal commercial route between Massalia (Marseille) and Tartessos in the far south of Hispania, the city became a center of economic and commercial activity. Another known Greek colony was Rhode (Roses), located on the coast at the northern end of the Gulf of Roses.
Roman times (200 B.C–400 A.D)
Romanization brought a second, distinct stage in the ancient history of Catalonia. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus arrived in Empúries in 218 BC, with the objective of cutting off the sources of provisions of Hannibal's Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War. After the Carthaginian defeat, and the defeat of various Iberian tribes who rose up against Roman rule, 195 BC saw the effective completion of the Roman conquest of the territory that later became Catalonia. Romanization of the region began in earnest. The various tribes were absorbed into a common Roman culture and lost many distinct characteristics, including differences of language. Most local leaders were later admitted into the Roman aristocratic class.
Most of what is now Catalonia first became part of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior; after 27 BC, they became part of Tarraconensis, whose capital was Tarraco (now Tarragona). Other important cities of the Roman period are Ilerda (Lleida), Dertosa (Tortosa), Gerunda (Girona) as well as the ports of Empuriæ (former Emporion) and Barcino (Barcelona). As for the rest of Hispania, Latin law was granted to all cities under the reign of Vespasian (69-79 AD), while Roman citizenship was permitted to all free men of the Empire by the Edict of Caracalla in 212 AD (Tarraco, the capital, was already a colony of Roman law since 45 BC). It was a rich agricultural province (olive oil, vine, wheat), and the first centuries of the Empire saw the construction of roads (the most important being the Via Augusta, parallel to Mediterranean coastline) and infrastructure like aqueducts.