haslo
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Pardon my long post, but I'm pasting something I wrote about Barcelona after visiting there last summer. It delves a bit into the question you just asked.
"In the year 237 BC, an ambitious Northern African general set out from his home to conquer the fabled lands of the Iberian Peninsula. He was the leader of Carthage, a powerful city-state, which was just recovering from the defeats of the First Punic War against Rome. The lands of Iberia offered two things he wanted. A strategic position to attack the Romans from behind and a host of magnificent harbor locations to establish lucrative trade. By 230 BC he found a perfect spot for a city and started a settlement there. His name was Hamilcar Barca, or "Hamilcar the Lightning." And though you may have never heard of him, you do know the name of his son, Hannibal.
So Hannibal's father founded Barcelona in 230 BC. Its location on the southeastern part of Spain made it a perfect trading port and Barcelona flourished both in the ancient and medieval times. Nearly two hundred years after Hannibal, Julius Caesar apparently fell in love with this place and bestowed on it the name of Julia Augusta Faventia in recognition of the support given to him in his struggle with Pompey. After the fall of Rome, Visigoths and other "barbarians" ruled this land until the Muslims came in the VII century. It is as early as this time that the area around Barcelona started to gain its own identity. It is hard to talk about nations at that time, but nonetheless the people there begun to call themselves Catalan, the proud inhabitants of Catalunya. The Catalans were an enterprising bunch and used their excellent location to dominate the Mediterranean trade, making the XII century Barcelona into a mini-empire ruling Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, parts of southern France and even parts of Greece. Catalunya's golden age lasted for about 200 years before things started to unravel. First the plague struck in the late XIV century, and then the Catalans failed to get in on the most important political deal of their time. In the heart of Iberia, two kingdoms were joining forces to create the new and powerful Spanish state. These were Castile and Aragón, whose imperial desires first overpowered and then drained Barcelona to finance their excursions to the New World. Catalans rebelled in 1462 and fought until 1473, when the city was sacked, devastated and plundered. As punishment, the entire Catalunya was annexed into the Spanish kingdom and Barcelona never saw the riches of Americas that benefited Castile.
From then on, the disaffected Catalans have joined the Poles and the Irish in the ranks of the ever-oppressed and yet unyielding peoples of Europe. And just like us Poles and the Irish chaps, they were quite unlucky. In the early 1700's, Catalunya saw its chance of freedom by backing England and Austria against Felipe V, the French contender for the Spanish throne. They chose the wrong side and were again besieged and conquered in 1714. Catalan language was banned and Felipe built a huge fort, the Ciutadella, to watch over his ungrateful subjects. The Catalan culture continued to be suppressed during the next century and by 1830's the Catalan language almost disappeared. By that time, however, the Romantic Movement swept through Europe, with its rejection of stern authority and a longing for freer expression among people. The Romantic poets and writers of the time succeeded in rescuing the vanishing language and in fact elevated it to new heights during the period of Catalan Renaixença, or Renaissance. According to the latest census, there are 10,416,328 people who can understand Catalan today, with 7 million of them able to speak it as well.
At the turn of the XX century, Barcelona struggled with the typical issues of the time. The industrial revolution brought a population explosion to the city and the new worker-class demographic struggled with Marxism, Communism and outright anarchy. Opposition to the centrist government in Madrid provided a vital unifying force for the politics of the time and for a brief time in the 1930's, Catalan nationalists actually declared themselves an autonomous republic. Then came the dark years again. The political turmoil in Spain led to the Civil War and the subsequent assumption of power by General Franco. Catalan national identity was crushed once more and until Franco's death in 1975, it was completely suppressed. The people of Catalunya, though, knew how to keep their spirit alive and after 1975, Catalan language flourished again. Only nine years after Franco's death, they secured the bid for the Olympic Games and in 1992, they celebrated their heritage with one of the best Olympiads ever. During the Olympics, the Catalans took countless measures to let the world know that these were not Spanish Games. These Games belonged to Barcelona.
Today, Catalunya continues to be influenced by the hopes of full anatomy from Madrid. Relative economic prosperity, as well as full support for Catalan language and culture, long quelled the violence and relegated these issues to political arena. These undercurrents are strong, but they have no chance of success, as the unified European Continent has no place for such regional separatist ideas. And so for now, the years of grievance and struggle have been confined to a soccer field, and get played out in the annual rivalry between F.C. Barcelona and Real Madrid. And you thought New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox had a history together... Long live Barca!"
Again, I apologize for the long post...couldn't help myself :). |
SFdude
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The Spanish Crown was created in 1492, supposedly, to be a partnership between the Kingdoms of Aragon (based in Barcelona) and Castille (based in Toledo, then Madrid)... but in reality, the Castillians have always dominated the politics of the unified country, at the expense of the Catalans who used to rule Aragon.
The situation is very similar to that of the 'United Kingdom' (where the Kingdom of Scotland was legally 'second-class' to the Kingdom of England for centuries, until the new Scottish Parliament met in 1997). If Madrid is serious about reconciliation with the Catalans, it will have to do something like what the Blair government did in the UK. |
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