The territory that now constitutes the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain was first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic era. Like the rest of the Mediterranean side of the Iberian Peninsula, the area was occupied by the Iberians and several Greek and Carthaginian towns were established on the coast before the Roman conquest.
The area that is now Catalonia was the first area ofHispania conquered by the Romans. It then came under Visigothic rule after collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire. In 718, the area was occupied by the Moors and became a part of Muslim ruled al-Andalus. The Frankish Empireconquered the area from the Muslims, beginning with the conquest of Roussillon in 760 and ending with the conquest of Barcelona in 801, as part of the creation of a larger buffer zone of Christians against Islamic rule counties known as the Marca Hispanica.
In time, the christians took control of the region thanks not just to the Franks and their Spanish March but also to the Kingdom of Aragon who will govern those lands from that point onwards adminstrated by the Count of Barcelona for the King of Aragon, the Crown of Aragon. The County of Barcelona did contribute to develop further the Aragonese military most significantly their naval power and as part of the Kingdom of Aragon the Catalan language florish and expanded southwards as more territories were added to Aragon likeValencia, the Balearic Islands, and later intoSardinia, Sicily, Naples and, briefly, Athens. The kingdom of Aragon was benevolent with the language spoken by the Catalan minority and their culture developed further in the later Middle Ages. The Kings of Aragon permited Catalan to exist within their realm for what the counts of Barcelona were very grateful.
The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon andIsabella I of Castile in 1469 laid the foundations for a unified Crown of Spain. In 1492, the Emirate of Granada, the last political entity of al-Andalus in the peninsula, was conquered and the Spanish colonization of the Americas began. Political power began to shift away from the Crown of Aragon towards Castile.
For a considerable time, the Kingdom of Aragon, and its little county and port of Barcelona retained its own laws and languages (i.e.: Aragones and also Catalan). Catalonia was just a county of the Crown of Aragon but this came to an end when the new Bourbon dynasty secured the throne of Spain in the War of Spanish Succession (1702–1714) and made the former Crown of Aragon territories into provinces of the Crown of Castile following the war. During the war, Catalonia had supported the claim of a member of the Austrian branch of theHabsburg dynasty (after breaking an oath of loyalty to the French Bourbon prince Philip of Anjou (Philip V of Spain) from 1702). Following the surrender of Catalan troops on 11 September 1714, Philip V's enacted the Nueva Planta decrees banning all the main traditional Catalan political institutions and rights and merged its administration into that of the Crown of Castile as a province. However, the Bourbon monarchy allowed for Catalonia's civil law code to be maintained. With the exception of the loyal Basque Country, the new Bourbon king, Philip V of Spain, abolished the ancient privileges of all of Spain's medieval kingdoms, including the Crown of Aragon and with it, those of the Principality of Catalonia. Following the model of France, he imposed a unifying legislation and administration across Spain, as well as introducing the FrenchSallic Law and founding Spain's own Royal Academy in 1714. This led to the eclipse of Catalan as a language of government and literature. Economically, Catalonia experienced commercial growth in the late 18th century when the Bourbons ended Castile's trade monopoly with Spain's American colonies. The Napoleonic occupation and war in Spain in the early 19th century began a period of political and economic turmoil. In the latter half of the 19th century, Catalonia became a center of industrialization.
In the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia several times enjoyed and lost varying degrees of autonomy like other parts of Spain until the Second Spanish Republic confirmed the autonomies of Spain's traditional autonomous regions, including the autonomy of Catalonia and the official use of its language. Like Madrid, the Basque country and much of Spain, Catalonia fought hard to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the devastating civil war of 1936–1939. With the defeat of the Spanish Republic by the right wing forces of Francisco Franco, the autonomies were cancelled.
In the years after the civil war life was difficult. With Spain devastated and cut off from international trade by boycotts, Catalonia, as a commercial and industrial center, suffered severely. The economic recovery was very slow and it was not until the mid-1950s that the economy reached the prewar levels of 1936. In 1959–1974 Spain experienced the second fastest economic expansion in the world in what became known as the Spanish Miracle and Catalonia prospered greatly from the expansion as Spain's most important industrial and tourist zone. In 1975 Franco died, bringing to an end his dictatorial regime, and in 1978 Catalonia voted overwhelmingly for the new democratic Spanish constitution that recognised Catalonia's autonomy and language.
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