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hundred years of continuity, there were six claimants to the throne, and in 1412
nine specially appointed counsellors elevated Ferdinand (Ferran) de Antequera,
son of a Catalan princess, to the vacant throne.
Ferdinand ruled for only four years, but his reign and that of his son, Alfons,
and grandson, John (Joan) II, spelled the end for Catalunya’s influence in the
Mediterranean. The Castilian rulers were soon in dispute with the Consell
de Cent; illegal taxes were imposed, funds belonging to the Generalitat were
appropriated, and most damagingly non-Catalans started to be appointed to key
positions in the Church, state offices and the armed forces. In 1469 John’s son,
Prince Ferdinand (Ferran), who was born in Aragón, married Isabel of Castile,
a union that would eventually finish off Catalan independence.
Both came into their inheritances quickly, Isabel taking Castile in 1474 and
the Catalan-Aragónese crown coming to Ferdinand in 1479. The two largest
kingdoms in Spain were thus united, the ruling pair becoming known as “
Los
Reyes Católicos
” (“Els Reis Catòlicos” in Catalan), the Catholic monarchs.
Their energies were devoted to the reconquest and unification of Spain: they
finally took back Granada from the Moors in 1492, and initiated a wave of
Christian fervour at whose heart was the
Inquisition
.
Also in 1492, the final shift in Catalunya’s outlook occurred with the
triumphal return of
Christopher Columbus
from the New World, to be
received in Barcelona by Ferdinand and Isabel. As trade routes shifted away
from the Mediterranean, this was no longer such a profitable market. Castile,
like Portugal, looked to the Americas for trade and conquest, and the explora-
tion and exploitation of the New World was spearheaded by the Andalucían
city of Seville. Meanwhile, Ferdinand gave the Supreme Council of Aragón
control over Catalan affairs in 1494. The Aragónese nobility, who had always
resented the success of the Catalan maritime adventures, now saw the chance
to complete their control of Catalunya by taking over its ecclesiastical insti-
tutions – with Catalan monks being thrown out of the great monasteries of
Poblet and Montserrat.
Habsburg and Bourbon rule
Charles I, a
Habsburg
, came to the throne in 1516 as a beneficiary of the
marriage alliances made by the Catholic monarchs. Five years later he was
elected emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire
(as Charles V), inheriting not
only Castile, Aragón and Catalunya, but also Flanders, the Netherlands, Artois,
the Franche-Comté and all the American colonies.With such responsibilities,
it became inevitable that attention would be diverted from Spain, whose chief
The Inquisition in Catalunya
The Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel, shared in the religious bigotry of their
contemporaries, although Isabel, under the influence of her personal confessor,
Tomás de Torquemada, was the more reactionary of the two. In Catalunya, the Inqui-
sition was established in 1487, and aimed to purify the Catholic faith by rooting out
heresy. It was directed mainly at the secret
Jews
, most of whom had been converted
by force (after the pogrom of 1391) to Christianity. It was suspected that their
descendants, known as
New Christians
, continued to practise their old faith in
secrecy, and in 1492, an edict forced some seventy thousand Jews to flee the
country. The Jewish population in Barcelona was completely eradicated in this way,
while communities elsewhere – principally in Girona, Tarragona and Lleida – were
massively reduced, and those who remained were forced to convert to Christianity.
CONTEXTS
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A history of Barcelona and Catalunya