This article aims to address the conflict between the Catalan principality and the Hispanic Monarchy and the former’s attempt to join the French monarchy. For this, the masterpiece of John Elliot has been used above all, but a more descriptive bibliography can be accessed at the end of the article.
The historiographical problems to approach the state of the question.
However, I cannot help but say that it is sad, extremely sad, that Castile has one day ceased to be a sister to us, becoming a lady, that Castile, whom we have carried through kingdoms and provinces and, above all, an indisputable heritage of glory recognized throughout Europe, has wanted to hold us down and subjugate us like a conquered country, sitting on us with its iron foot to always have us at its feet and never, or almost never, at its side.
The most primitive Catalan historiography has tended to think that with the arrival of the 16th century, the Principality began to experience a period of slow decline. Generally this has happened because it was considered that its luster had been overshadowed by Castile, which was now the preponderant peninsular power. Both the 16th and 17th centuries have enormous historiographical gaps that even today have not been filled by anyone.
However, the revolt in Catalonia has always generated an enormous bibliography, which does not mean that this is positive or that it is exquisitely documented. Already in the 17th century, it generated an enormous written production, due to the propagandistic need of all the agents involved in the conflict: France, the Hispanic Monarchy, and, of course, the Principality. Both Gauls and Catalans will focus their justification for the change from one kingdom to another on the fact that Catalonia was closely linked to France since the time of the Frankish Kingdom of Charlemagne.
Thus, from Madrid they began to write about how rebellious and disloyal Catalonia was being without taking into account why this rebellion had taken place, while, for their part, the Catalans dedicated themselves to detailing the outrages they were carrying out the thirds settled in their territories. The French, for their part, boasted of their saving and almost heavenly attitude that they were carrying after entering the ante-Pyrenean territory. Due to this, the real facts matter so little that names are confused or not even mentioned, and much less is this conflict related to the Thirty Years’ War. Thus, we find that sticking only to these sources is a gross error because they are so biased that they are really worth very little. Instead, this has been the main source of all historiography until well into the year 1960.
Undoubtedly, the fundamental work will be “History of the separation movements of Catalonia” by Francisco Manuel de Melo, a Portuguese in the service of the Marquis de los Vélez. His work only covers up to 1641, since it was the period in which he was serving as master of the field for said nobleman. However, after a brief analysis, one realizes that its historical value is very weak, since it does not include dates of events or anything like that. Despite this lack, it will be a reference work until the arrival of John H. Elliott.
With the arrival of the 18th century, the typical historical rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment will prevail. However, there is nothing worth mentioning during this period. The event renewed its importance with the irruption of liberalism in Spain, especially with the generation born in 1820, which would pick up a clearly romantic heritage that would predominate throughout the century. These authors, of a liberal nature, will generally be led by Víctor Balaguer, who has been cited above. It will have two fundamental works, the first of them “Beauties of the History of Catalonia” and, above all, “History of Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon” with a subtitle that is a declaration of intent “Written to give it to meet the people, reminding them of the great deeds of their ancestors in patriotic virtue”. This book is a kind of Universal History of the Principality in which he collects a whole series of legends and dispenses with any critical capacity. A good example of this is his narration of Otger Cataló, considered the “first Catalan”, one of the most important legends collected by Victor Balaguery that has been screened to date, since in 2017 the film “Pàtria” by Joan Charansonnet was released, disastrous film (which has received the worst possible ratings of the year 2017 in the two most important film portals in the world: FilmAffinity and IMBD) that is fundamentally based on Victor Balaguer to create a kind of nationalist cosmogony that goes back neither more nor less than to the year 735 to date the origin of the Catalan nation.
Balaguer was a convinced liberal, so the fundamental figure for him is going to be Pau Claris. Why? Liberal history is a history of personalities, not of groups, since it extols the extreme individuality of the human being as a distinctive feature.
This stage will end at the end of the 19th century, where it will return to a history centered on the archives. If Víctor Balaguer was considered one of the fathers of the Renaissance Catalan, the successors of this one are going to take the witness and they are going to continue in a clear line of ironclad Catalanism. Within this framework, figures such as Josep Coroleu and Josep Pella i Forgas cannot be ignored, who will carry the wand in the studies of the Revolt of 1640. Always, of course, with a marked ideological character in which this confrontation is considered as the precedent of the fight of the Catalan people against the ruthless Castilian centralism. Other authors will see the facts in a more Castilian way, even within Catalanism, as is the case of Pujol i Camps.
For his part, the important statesman and historian Cánovas del Castillo will theorize on the matter, taking into account issues as close as the rebellion of the canton of Cartagena during the First Republic. Cánovas will begin in a position in which he considers Olivares to be the culprit of everything, who had been considered a tyrant by the liberals of the time, to slowly oscillate towards a position of understanding of his policies.
We must jump to the post-war period that began in the 40s of the last century to see how the bias changes ideologically. We are talking about a moment in which the Hispanic Monarchy was generated and almost divinized. This is due to the huge ideological war that was waged in the Spanish Civil War. The figure of “Spain” will be magnified and the “Spanish Empire” will be considered as the maximum possible expression of the ideals of the moment. Thus, with the Franco regime, authors such as José María Pemán will proliferate, who will consider the revolt as an attack on the unity of the homeland.
Something that will change in the 50’s with the arrival of one of the most important historians of Catalonia in this period: Jaume Vicens Vives. This will give way to a new social and economic history collected from the “Annales” school.
As we have seen before, no one had dared to frame the Revolt of Catalonia in its European context. This author will be the first to talk about it, also comparing it with Cromwell’s England or the France of the Fronde. He is going to give it a more social approach based on the different classes and their interaction in the period of the revolt.
Another very prominent historian is Josep Sanabre, an author who will carry out exquisite documentation and who will try to leave behind the enormous subjectivity that had prevailed until now. As has been mentioned, until now no work had been created that was really rigorously useful for working on it. Most were biased and highly biased. However, Sanabre is going to carry out a very good activity, trying to demystify characters like Pau Claris, who had previously been raised almost as a fatherland.
However, to whom we really owe a general overview of the period is John H. Elliott, an Anglo-Saxon author whose work “The Revolt of the Catalans” is the most complete existing work on the subject. As the author himself tells in the prologue of the first edition, for him the Revolt constitutes the great struggle between the centralist aspirations of the monarchs and the traditional rights of the subjects, from which the Modern State will emerge.
Undoubtedly, Elliott’s contribution, on which much of this study is based, is impeccable. If, in addition, you update yourself with the latest patriotic readings by authors such as Xavier Torres, you have a great starting point to investigate the subject. This current understands patriotism as something without a nation, of a purely constitutional and pactist nature in which the “defense of the homeland” consists of the defense of private jurisdictions to thus defend collective freedoms. However, they are not the only sources that help to lay the foundations for today’s historiography. There are authors such as Eva Serra, who despite her marked nationalist spirit have helped to elaborate and explore the demographic evolution of the Principality. Despite this, what this nationalist character really does is show a confrontation between the Castilian centralist absolutism and the Catalan State that was, according to these authors, in the European institutional vanguard.
But, fundamentally we will focus on the works of Elliott and Torres. Thus, as we will see below, during the 17th century a series of terms were used that refer to the defense of these constitutions.
Nation, land and homeland: modern polysemy
There are a series of features typical of medieval and modern times of which we are firm heirs today. One of them is the existence of multiple collective identities. The estate identity intersects with others, such as the community to which one belongs or the religious brotherhood, these being only a small sample of the multiple identities with which one lived at the time. That said, since the 19th century the term nation has been spoken of as something that pre-existed the existence of nationalism. This in principle is not possible, since the nation is really a creation of the nationalists themselves. However, the Catalan historian Xavier Torres speaks of nations without nationalism.
Now, the Catalans of the time, apart from living in the principality and considering themselves as members of a common group, were also linked to the Hispanic Monarchy, or as some texts of the time call it; the Monarchy of Spain. Now, this term did not explain the reality of the situation. Assuming that the concept of absolutism is not as it had been studied for decades, to speak of centralization in the modern world would be a serious mistake. That is why many authors are going to start coining other terms, such as monarchies composed of domain politicum et regale. These…