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A history of Barcelona and
Catalunya
C
atalan cultural identity can be traced back as far as the ninth century.
From the quilt of independent counties of the eastern Pyrenees, a
powerful dynastic entity, dominated by Barcelona, and commonly
known as the Crown of Aragón, developed over the next six hundred
years. Its merger with Castile-León in the late 1400s led to eventual inclu-
sion in the new Spanish Empire of the sixteenth century – and marked the
decline of Catalan independence and its eventual subjugation to Madrid. It
has rarely been a willing subject, which goes some way to explaining how
ingrained are the Catalan notions of social and cultural divorce from the rest
of the country.
Early civilizations and invasions
In the very earliest times, the area which is now Catalunya saw much the
same population movements and invasions as the rest of the Iberian peninsula.
During the
Upper Paleolithic
period (35,000–10,000 BC) cave-dwelling
hunter-gatherers lived in parts of the Pyrenees, and
dolmens
, or stone burial
chambers, from around 5000 BC still survive. No habitations from this period
have been discovered but it can be conjectured that huts of some sort were
erected, and farming had certainly begun. By the start of the
Bronze Age
(around 2000 BC), the Pyrenean people had begun to move into fortified
villages in the coastal lowlands.
The first of a succession of
invasions
of the region began sometime after
1000 BC, when the Celtic “urnfield people” crossed the Pyrenees into the
region, settling in the river valleys. These people lived side by side with indi-
genous Iberians, and the two groups are commonly, if erroneously, referred to
as
Celtiberians
.
Meanwhile, on the coast, the
Greeks
had established trading posts at Roses
and Empúries by around 550 BC. Two centuries later, though, the coast (and
the rest of the peninsula) had been conquered by the North African
Cartha-
ginians
, who founded Barcino (later Barcelona) in around 230 BC, on a low
hill where the cathedral now stands. The Carthaginians’ famous commander,
Hannibal, went on to cross the Pyrenees in 214 BC and attempted to invade
Italy. But the result of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) – much of which
was fought in Catalunya – was to expel the Carthaginians from the Iberian
peninsula in favour of the Romans, who made their new base at the former
Carthaginian stronghold of Tarragona.
Roman Catalunya
The
Roman colonization
of the Iberian peninsula was far more intense
than anything previously experienced and met with great resistance from the
Celtic and Iberian tribes. It was almost two centuries before the conquest was
complete, by which time Spain had become the most important centre of the
Roman Empire after Italy.Tarragona (known as Tarraco) was made a provincial
capital; fine monuments were built, the remains of which can still be seen in
and around the city, and an infrastructure of roads, bridges and aqueducts came
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A history of Barcelona and Catalunya