CATALONIA: FROM THE BASES OF MANRESA TO THE THEORY OF DISCONNECTION (English version)

Today traveling to Barcelona is not what it once was, in Cervantes time. The magnificent infrastructures of the AVE have made it possible to travel comfortably, listening to classical music (avoiding the conversation on the mobile of some impertinent traveler) and re-reading my lord Don Quixote (I agree with the pleasant story of the waiter of mules “Marinero soy de amor y en su piélago profundo navego sin esperanza…”), I get lost in reading, like the Manchego in his not counted second ride to Saragossa, and waiting for the second part and third definitive trip, of the hand of the cunning bachelor Sansón Carrasco, eager for new adventures towards Barcelona.

Once in the city, on the Factory site of the España Industrial (modern steam factory, owned by the Muntadas family, which in 1880 already employed more than 2,500 people and carried out the whole textile process, from the extraction of the Thread until the final embroidery, incorporating all the added value to the raw material of cotton imported from America (With the Law of Trade Relations with the Antilles of 1882, the Catalans were assured the colonial monopoly with Cuba until the defeat of 1898, Given that tariff protection was, among other things, part of the origin of the Cuban insurrection).

This trip was a return to the year 86 of the last century, when I first came to the city, a rough Aragonese emigrant, and I had to learn almost all the street, being what surprised me the urban harmony of the Ensanche and the peculiar Name of the streets. These names, proposed by the Catalan bourgeoisie, evoked from the fathers of Catalanism (Prat de la Riba, Torras i Bages, ... etc), to medieval geographical places (Entenza, Cerdenya, Sicilia, Rosselló, ...), Counts, Saints and Monarchs (Borrell, San Antoni Maria Claret or Pere IV), going through characters from the civil war, which today have been blurred with the historical memory (the "disappeared" Bisbe Irurita). One of the ones that impressed me the most, because they were not familiar to me, it was Septimania and Gala Placidia (I'll explain why).

To know how they thought the Catalan bourgeois, who had been enriched after the pre-industrial stage; And after investing its capital, introducing technological innovations, and thinking that the trade, offered good opportunities of gain, the best thing is to stay in one of the noble plants (main floor), in some of those old houses modernist of the Eixample, that are dedicated to hosting this new avalanche of foreign tourists (visit the center of Barcelona, is a guarantee to hear speak in any language, except in Catalan). The rear terrace, the main room to see the building opposite, and those who pass through the street (fucking bikes), no doubt had to forge a suspicious and distant character, and something mythomaniac, which gave rise to the birth of Catalan, as a collection Defense of the inner world, in the face of the changes brought about by progress, and before a nascent working class that came from outside (from the most humble Catalan peoples, and from the south and west of Spain), and wandering alongside the factories as laborers or aspirants to domestic service along those same streets, on non-holiday days.

Barcelona as a political, economic and cultural center, must begin to be studied from the Park of Ciudadella, headquarters of its Parlament engaged in a gradual process of sedition or disconnection of the Spanish State, and origin of the Universal Exhibition of 1888, when it began the rise of the Renaixença, Catalan breed and Catalan language as signs of identity, a proud social class enriched by the triumph in its territory of the Industrial Revolution, which in other places in Spain had not settled for different reasons. There will be other exhibitions (such as the International Exhibition of 1929, the 1992 Olympic Games and the Universal Forum of Cultures 2004), which will transform the city on the terrain that had been occupied by the Fort erected by Felipe V to avoid new and recurrent uprisings of the city, and will be a symbol of modernism, a new art that, born as a fusion of medieval and nature. You can still admire the monumental waterfall (Fonseré and Gaudí), the Arc de Triomf (Vilaseca) or the Castle of the Three Dragons (Domenech i Montaner). The Moll de la Fusta or the dilapidated International Hotel, on the Passeig of Colón, in addition to the famous monument to the discoverer (Played by Buigas and Atché, recalls that the Admiral was received in Barcelona in 1493 by the Catholic Monarchs , Five months after the attempt on King Fernando, after his historic return from the Indies).

This exhibition, financed basically with public money, recognizes Catalonia as a pioneer within Spain of the Industrial Revolution, and in many cases, as the first of the Spanish territory to introduce the new technological improvements that were emerging in the European continent: in 1818 was created the first company of diligences, in 1836 the first factory mechanized by steam, in 1848 the first railway, in 1857 the first iron ship. Moreover the first Spanish city having gas and electricity, site of textile industries like España Industrial and mechanics like the Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima

Although there were criticisms, an alliance of the local powers with the monarchy, which reminds me (already in the Atarazanas) of the triumphal entrance (frenzy of the town and artillery salutes) of Don Juan de Austria in 1571; when the Catalans were then very Spanish. Don Juan, after passing by Montserrat, embarked on the Nao Real (built in Barcelona, as the largest galley of combat of his time) and set sail with 46 Spanish galleys, to Messina to embark the bulk of the Tercios, destination to Lepanto. Curiously, Philip II would build the accesses and the esplanade of Monserrat later, in a public work comparable, by its size and complexity, to the Monastery of the Escorial.

All the magnificent Barcelona maritime seashore has been the product of public initiative to transform an industrial past of private origin, with the large accumulations of capital of the first Catalan bourgeois, in residential areas and services, in line with the new tourist dimension and Turned towards the outside of the city.
In a stroll through the old fishermen quarter of Barceloneta, in search of these tourist infrastructures and after eating some paella or fried fish, it is time to remember, next to the memory of the first choir of Anselm Clavé, one of those local legends, to the who are so fond of the Catalans, and that one of the giants of the neighborhood, the fisherman Pep Barceló, arrived from Atlantis aboard the Ictineo designed by Narcís Monturiol, to marry la noia Maria la Néta. And it's all as true, as it always could be.

But perhaps it is in the cultural plane, where the bourgeoisie begins to consolidate its ideology, and manages to integrate the town with the sung tradition. We do not know whether Anselm Clavé himself; Poet romantic, progressive politician (communist in principle) and republican, fecund composer (dance music, works for choir of voices and zarzuelas, especially in Catalan) and music director; When he founded the choir movement in Spain (he created the Fraternity Choir in 1850, in the same Barceloneta, directing the first concert of the society Euterpe Coral, on August 14) and is an impeller of an important associative movement around him, which arrived to culturally vertebrate the Catalan society (I came to found 100 more Choirs of Workers, we do not know if inspired by the work of the great organist, tenor and chapel master who, in 1569, was titular of the National Aragonese’s Church in Rome, Saint Mary of Montserrat, Tomas Luis de Vitoria, when nation meant otherwise).

The truth is that he was able to create a music lover hobby, which would flourish throughout Catalonia, creating societies like the first "Catalan Orpheon" (founded in 1891 by Lluís Millet - Uncle grandfather of Felix, his patriot and imputed last President and Amadeo Vives) and also in the rest of Spain (Burgalés Orpheon wasin 1893 and the Donostiarra Orpheon was in 1897). It is an important and emblematic landmark, since the permanent place building, the Palau of the Music, was designed by the modernist architect Domenech i Montaner, taking advantage of the cloister of a church in the Gothic quarter, and was paid by Catalan industrialists and financiers, enlightened and lovers of Music, which constituted the status of the local bourgeoisie, and which sixty years earlier had already financed the Opera and ballet theater of the Liceu.

The didactic role of the Choirs was double. On the one hand, it was articulated to the workers and popular classes, in the music of heard (many did not know how to read and less knew the written music), they taught songs and arrangements in the language they knew from the rural world (Catalan, which even those who did not know it, being of Castilian or Galician speaking emigrants, in its oral form, was very easy to learn), and attracted towards Catalan in general to the popular bases, mainly relatives and friends went to the concerts. The integration into Catalan fomentation societies was another achievement of the ruling classes. The great Catalan family, without class conflicts and united by the language and social customs, the ancestral land and the resurgence of an old nation.

This choral ideology, homogenized with the language, is present in the Palau of the Music, a jewel of Catalan modernism and a palpitate of its identitarian pretensions, in its aesthetics and symbology. When one sees the images of the Palau, the continuous allusions to Sant Jordi, or another of the top works of Domenech i Montaner, the Hospital of Sant Pau, is sufficient to realize that the modernist aesthetic had a subtle political and social message, which the same architect shaped in the called bases of Manresa, and graphically in the omnipresent mythological figure of Saint George, in fight with the Dragon.

To begin to know Saint George, present in all corners of the city, you must know that in fact Jorge was a Roman citizen of Cappadocia (now Turkey), son of an officer of the legions and raised in the Christian faith by his mother, becoming Tribune and martyr during the persecutions of Diocletian, and later Christian saint, who is attributed in the golden legend, the death of a dragon (the orthodox locates the event in Beirut, in Lebanon, where he is patron saint Of the city) to rescue his beloved (by hurting the beast, blood spurted in the form of rose petals).

The Carolingian Franks venerated their arm in the monastery of Prüm (Black Forest, for a relic donated by Lotario I), and there is a poem in high German language (attributed to the first known poet Otfrido of Wissenbourg, that lived in the Abbey of Fulda To the middle century IX) that narrates the martyrdom of the saintman.

Saint George embodies virtue, and the dragon, evil. He is one of the most venerated saints of the different Christian beliefs (patron of England, Russia, Hungary, Georgia, Lithuania, Malta and the Crown of Aragon or Provence mainly), even of other different beliefs (in Palestine they call the Christian Arab). Patron of soldiers and knights, prisoners, scouts and armies, was emblem of the Crusaders and Military Orders (Teutonic Order, Templars, Calatrava or Alfama).

In Catalonia, his veneration came for the Kingdom of Aragon, specifically for the reconquest of Huesca, in the battle of Alcoraz, on November 15, 1096, given that the Aragonese fighters attributed to the intercession of the saint, the achievement of defeat a combined Christian-Muslim army, that came to raise the siege. It was St. George, according to the testimony of a Franco-German crusader, who fought with the Aragonese, who appeared in the battle whose outcome allowed the subsequent Muslim takeover of the city.

In gratitude to the great feat of his army (the Aragonese monarch ended up making the Count of Najera, Garcia Ordonez a prisoner), King Pedro I appointed him not only a patron of cavalry but also the nobility of the whole Kingdom of Aragon Later (quotation from the Costumari Català by Joan Amades). This patronage extended to the later Corona de Aragón, when they incorporated to the same the Catalan counties.

In Catalonia the feast of Saint George's Day was also widespread in the mid-15th century. In 1456 the patronage was officialized when declaring the Catalan Courts on April 23 as a holiday. This holiday symbolically has become on the day of lovers: the lover gives the beloved a red rose, the dragon's blood. Later, the custom was made that, in return, women would give a book to their loved ones (it would be good to read Eduardo Mendoza, with his work The city of prodigies, to better know the intrahistory of the city), since Commemorates the death of the great fathers of both English and Spanish letters in 1616, Sir William Shakespeare and Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

All the Ciutat Vella, the Jewry, the medieval Palau of the Generalitat or the Chapel of Saint Jordi or Saint Jaime Square, in which are found the foundations of the first Church of Barcelona dedicated to Sant Jaume from 985, and that outside Demolished to build the current City Hall. In this site, says the tradition that preached Jacobo, Jacob, Yago, Iago, Jaime (Jaume in Catalan), Thiago, Santiago or Diego, Apostle of Jesus Christ, buried in Santiago of Compostela and patron of the Spanish nation.

But let's go to the supposed Catalan nation: Has there ever been a Catalan nation?, is it a myth?, or perhaps a sophism, that seeks to sell some kind of territorial advantage?

In addition to Hispania, which probably comes from the Phoenician word "I-span-ya" ("Land of metals"), and that was the denomination that the Romans put to the Roman province that occupied almost all of the Iberian Peninsula.

It is perhaps a rhetorical question, but we have to delve into history to know what we are talking about, and start asking about those settlers from Focea who in 575 BC. That colonized Ampurias. No one doubts the legitimacy of the pre-Roman peoples (Laietan or Ilergetes), the presence of the Barca (not to be confused with the omnipresent and sodding football) in Barcelona, or that Aníbal crossed with his elephants the river Llobregat, which belonged to the Roman empire (important Roman remains of the forum, with well preserved temple columns in the center of the city, rest of domus and sillares of the first wall, reveal that Augustus founded the colony Iulia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino in the first century BC ), Belonging to the Roman province Tarraconense (from the Latin Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis), whose convents comprised all the north of Hispania, and already linked to the textile industry, the garum and the wine trade. In Barcino also appears an important Christian community emphasizes the baptistery of century IV AD, where they received the baptism the first Christians; The episcopal room or reception hall of the bishop of the fifth century AD, the Episcopal palace of the sixth century AD, and a church on the cross floor, also from the sixth century, surrounded by a cemetery, and then the Visigoths. Here I want to echo Gala Placidia and Septimania land.

Gala Placida, was born in Constantinople, daughter of the Roman Emperor Teodosio I the Great (another Hispanic, born in Cauca, now Coca in Segovia), but had a rather adventurous life. She was brought to Italy by courtier intrigues, when her father died, she was part of the retinue of Alaric, after the Gothic looting of Rome in 410 (he made the great Tesaurus, which the Arabs would take away from them in Toledo, when the Spanish-Visigoth Empire collapsed). When the great Alaric died, his brother-in-law Ataulfo, who moved his army to Septimania, succeeded him, and in his capital Narbonne, he married Gala Placidia. They reside in Barcino, where he has a son, Theodosius, who died and is buried in the City (he will return to the King's death in Rome, after various vicissitudes, he will be empress and mother of emperors, and as such, he will face Attila, king Of the Huns, and is buried in the Byzantine Ravenna). The Visigoth dominions comprised the part of Gaul not occupied by the Franks, who would expel them from the line of the Loire (Aquitaine) and would dispossess of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse in 507, and of Gascony in 531, which had to settle for The strip of coastal land between the Rhone and the Pyrenees or region of Septimania, which comprises the present Languedoc and Roussillon.

Once the Roman Empire disappears, the Visigoths occupy not only the Iberian peninsula but also preserve the north of the Pyrenees to the Rhone (Septimania), in an empire that reached from Narbonne to Tarifa, and with the unexpected arrival of the Arabs, In aid of one of its factions in its frequent internal revolts (the King Wamba had to enter into the hostile territory of the basques, in an occasion to subdue to Count Paul, obstinate rebel in the Septimania), this visigoda nobility, that without mixing too much With the Roman Hispanic population, if he had adopted the institutions and customs of the Romans, he chose three different strategies: to hide in inaccessible and hidden places with his cattle and servants (Asturias-Pelayo is elected King in 718-, or the Bay of Biscay, The Banu Gomez in Palencia, and in the Pyrenees, or to convert to Islam -Banu Quasi, lords of the Ebro Valley-, to conserve their land and latifundia, or to flee en masse to the other side of the Pyrenees in search of security: Mass exodus of Hispano-Goths produced towards Septimania. They survived only a few years, but after falling Barcino in 718, and destroying the Muslims the Imperial Tarraco, Narbona fell in 720, being its port a berth for the Arab fleet, which facilitated its incursions throughout France. The Franks (after Charles Martel, the butler of the Frankish Merovingian monarchs and founder of the Carolingian dynasty), after annihilating a column commanded by Córdoba's own Vali, Abderraman Al-Gafiqi, in 732 in Poitiers, became aware That they must end the Arab threat of the Septimania, and for this they use the Visigoths (exiles of Hispania especially: Extremadura, Andalusia, Toledo and Levantines, who spoke a dialectal Romance languedoques) that still remained in it. They do this by urging the Gothic Counts of Nimes, Magalona, Agde and Beziers to reject the sovereignty of the Vali of Cordova in 752 and declare their loyalty to the Frankish king, but it will not be until 759, when Narbonne falls, and the county is granted to Goth Miló, who already exerted like count during the Muslim dominion. The region of Roussillon was taken by the Franks in 760. In 767, after the fight against Wifredo of Aquitaine, the Albi, Rouergue, Gevaudan and Toulouse were conquered by the Franks.

In 777 the valíes of Barcelona, Sulayman ben al-Arabi, and Huesca, Abu Taur, offered their submission to the Emperor Frank Charlemagne, and so did Husayn, vali of Saragossa. Everything was a trick, for when Charlemagne's army, under the command of one of his twelve paladins, his nephew Rololando, Orlando or Roldan, invaded the superior mark in 778, Husayn refused to submit to vassalage and the Frankish troops had to retire by Roncesvalles , Where the basques (tribal allies of the Navarrese and enemies of the francs by then), harassed them and they came to annihilate to the rear of the Frank army.

The Frankish Emperor Carlomagno, desisting to attack the south, took care of reinforcing Septimania, which was so devastated and depopulated, with its inhabitants refugees in the Pyrenean mountains, who made concessions of lands that would become fiefs of Visigoth and other refugees, In addition to found several monasteries, to counter the Arianism that was still professed by the Hispano-Goths, and behind the Pyrenees, to the south in a land that was of no one, Charlemagne established the Hispanic Mark as the border of his empire.

Septimania was known as Gothia after the reign of Charlemagne, and his son Ludovico Pio reconquered Barcelona in 801 (after the first Franks stifled a rebellion over the Basques, who provided troops for the attack on the city of Count William of Toulouse), incorporating Later to the Hispanic Brand in the 813 Pamplona, Vitoria and all the Basque Country.

The noble Frank Bernardo of Gothia (also known as Bernardo of Septimania) was the first Marquess or sovereign of the Mark from 826 to 832. The period is characterized by its turbulence, and the traditional disagreements of the Goths of the Septimania, that would take to His beheaded in 844. Everything arises with his election as Count of Barcelona in 826, which led to a general uprising of the feudal lords of the Catalan counties, who considered this designation as an intrusion of Frankish power in their domains and properties. A pact between Carlos the Bald and the rebels Goths Counts (among them Wilfredo the Velloso), precipitated a later uprising of Count Bernardo, that in the end propitiated its execution.

At this time, a feudal fragmentation characteristic of the time appears, based on harsh conditions on the enslaved serfs (and if it is a differential fact, by how feudalism was lived in the western Pyrenees, so far from the lords or in the own behetrías Castilian, and we have a good recreation, with the character of Bernat Estanyol, a servant of the land, and later port stevedore, in the well-known novel The Cathedral of the Sea, Ildefonso Falcones), and the emergence of the culture of the Languedoc. A dialect of the Occitan language of Septimania, which on the basis of romance, would give way to the Catalan language, spoken in the mountainous areas of the southern mark, both in Roussillon and in the peninsular slope. In this turbulent period of dismemberment of the empire of Charlemagne and its dynastic struggles, a noble Hispanic-goth appears, Wilfred the Pillos, born in Septimania (Conflent), as one of those who helped Carlos the Bald to subdue Bernardo, and receives Of the Frank King in 878 the County of Barcelona, Osona, Gerona and Besalú; while his brother Miró de Conflent, stays with Roselló. At the same time the counties of Narbona, Besiers and Agde, are separated from the Visigothic Septimania.

Much earlier, in Navarre in 803, Iñigo Arista expelled from Pamplona the Franks (becoming the First King of Navarre), and in Aragon in 820 Count Aznar Galindez broke with the pacts of the Marca Hispánica Franca, and allied with the Navarreses (and the Banu Qasi of the Ebro Valley, blood relatives with the Basque-Navarre dynasty of the Iñiguez), who made him Count of Cerdanya and Urgel.

Feudatory of the Carolingian monarchs, the great virtue of Wilfred was to consolidate the southern Pyrenean territory, intervening less and less in the Frank affairs (I take a passive attitude before the demands of aid, before the frequent and devastating Norman attacks), and managed to leave in Inheritance to their children the counties (in the past, they were snatched by fight or by mere murder, the famous Gothic morbid), once it died in 897, defending Barcelona of the attack of the Banu Qasi (lineage of Hispanic-Visigoths counts Islamized).

The Muslim attacks on Barcelona did not cease, and in 985 the troops of Almanzor destroyed practically all the city, since the Franks could not help the Mark. Borrell II initiated the reconstruction, and the independence of the frank power (self-proclaimed by the grace of God, Count of Iberia and Marquess of the Goths, since there was not a supposed Catalan nation still), based on his diplomatic gifts with the Papacy, with the And even yielding vassalage to the own Caliph of Cordoba (a truce with the Caliphate that lasted until the year 1000), which did not prevent him from minting his own coin, giving way to the flourishing period of the province, and according to the Catalans, the beginning of Catalan identity or singularity. Let us say that Borrell is the last to use the pompous title of "Duke of Gothia" (Dux Gothicae) or Marquis of Gotalania, land of Goths and Alans, and its territory is reduced by the loss of imperial Tarraco, capital of the Romanic Hispania, being the counts lords feudal, of small territories (similarities with the Galician feudalism, and different to the Franks, where the lords had great possessions).

In 1010, his son Raimundo Borrell, with the irremediable decomposition of the once powerful Caliphate of Cordoba in taifas, obtained a great victory and booty near Cordoba along with his allies Ermengol I of Urgell, Bernat de Besalú and Wadih, a Muslim general of The Middle Brand that helps them, intervening in the civil war between the Muslims Cordobians, which also involved the Count of Castile, and the African Berbers themselves.

The less active role of the Catalan counts in the reconquest, except for the previous episode, was motivated by the internal problems (I will not entertain with the rebellions of the veguers in the days of Ramon Berenguer I, the very feudalism that shaped the Catalan character , Or the struggles between his twin sons, one of them Ramón Berenguer II, called Head of Burlap, who was defeated by the Cid Campeador in Almenar), which could well be contrasted with the attitude of the Aragonese King Alfonso the Battler (very controversial his Figure, however great leader, a little frivolous in recent TV series, has not been given due importance in a historical novel often politically correct, but will always have the great Jerónimo Zurita, who wrote as a ride from Osca took my town and the castle, among his troops of gascones, that acted of way so expeditious that they depopulated it totally). King Alfonso, educated in the Pyrenees (Monastery of Siresa), and connoisseur of both sides of the same, was an extraordinary military leader-monarch, comparable only with Frederic Barbarouse or Richard Lion Heart (he weighed not to go, as they to the Crusades, since he had the Almoravids as he says, at the door of his house), with a stable army of Aragonese, Navarrese, Gasconian (Aquitanians, Basques, Béarnans, and Bigorreans), even Normans, who would accompany him In much of their battles, on both sides of the Pyrenees, and even in Castile itself (their exploits are recalled in Villadangos or in the Castle of Montrouse), after their failed marriage to Queen Urraca I of Castile and Leon, the Daredevil -Raymond of Burgundy widow, and daughter of Alfonso VI the Emperor, not to confuse with the sister of the King of Castile and Leon, Urraca Fernandez (using Mozarabic terminology), both with a name of pure Castilian origin (with root éuscara), and Which constituted a premature attempt to unify the peninsular monarchies, as in the days of the Goths, and which had the opposition of a confrontational nobility (Castilian, Leonese and Galician), the refusal of the influential French clergy, or the intrigues of the bishop of Santiago Diego Gelmírez, ending in the subsequent civil war, which resulted in the unionist failure and the first independence of Portugal.

The failure to unify the monarchies meant that Alfonso set the objective of directing the reconquest towards the southeast, with a view to the capture of Tortosa and thereby give the kingdom an outlet to the Mediterranean. In 1123 he faced the Count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer III, for the city of Lleida, since the Muslim governor had agreed with the Catalans his influence on the city and Tortosa, in exchange for several territories and castles. Had to mediate various prelates and barons Catalans and Aragonese to avoid war, when they reached a mutual commitment to refrain from taking any action against Lleida, which remained in Muslim hands. The Almoravid people in 1124, in the battle of Corbins, would cut any attempt of reconquest of these cities, which would be recovered later, in time of Ramiro II of Aragon, by his son-in-law the Count Catalan Ramón Berenguer IV.

The death of the Battler, his confused testament in favor of the Military Orders of the Holy Sepulcher (Temple and Hospital), gave the excuse to the Navarreses to separate of Aragon, when choosing its own monarch, whereas in Aragon, was chosen by The successor legitimacy, naming the brother of Alfonso, Ramiro II, who was Bishop of Rhoda-Barbastre like King. Ramiro, who did not want the power, looked for different marriage alliances, as soon as he had his heir Petronila, but opted to reinforce against his western rivals, his traditional Castilian rivals and the new ones of the splintered Navarrese Pyrenean, to opt By the Mediterranean exit, marrying his daughter of 1 year with the Count of Barcelona. The role of Ramon Berenguer IV from the betrothal celebrated in 1137, was the administrator of the House of Aragon, as regent of the Kingdom of Aragon, with executive functions (princeps and domineering), but the count was never king. King Ramiro II continued to be lord, father and king, and exercised sovereignty over his Counts, including his son-in-law, titular of the Catalan counties, until he abdicated the crown in favor of his heir (Queen of all Aragon, but subject To the criterion of its husband, custom of all gothian that was not applied in Castile). In return, King Monge, renounced the Government, which was exercised by the Prince of Aragon Ramon Berenguer. Fruit of this alliance, and counting on the non-navarras soldiers of the battalion (among them, the feared Almogavars, recruited after the taking of the place of Tauste, and quarters in the Castellar, like forces of shock for the reconquest of Saragossa, after the Battle of the Romareda, like mercenaries between the shepherds of the muslims of the Somontano and mountaineers of the Pyrenees, whose captains denominated Adalides, and they would be the ancestors of the Spanish Tercios, in the Aragonese expansion by all the Mediterranean), the Reconquista in Catalonia is restarted again . In fact, a Norman knight Robert Bordet, who had served under the orders of Alfonso I of Aragon in the aforementioned capture of Saragossa, takes Tarragona in 1129, like vassal prince of the Archbishop Saint Oleguer. Lleida in 1149, with a command of Christian troops of the prince of Aragon Ramón Berenguer IV and of the Count Ermengol VI of Urgel (great champion of the Christian kings, called the Castellano in Lleida, that was in the taking of Almería and is named in the “Cantares de Gesta”, was grandson by the maternal part of the Count of Castile Pere Ansúrez), also prominent with King Alfonso and the Bearneses in the siege of Saragossa.

Ramon Berenguer IV, was the son of Ramon Berenguer III (has an imposing equestrian statue on the Laietana route) and Dulce de Provence. He had a twin brother Berenguer Ramón, who succeeds the mother in Provence, while Barcelona County corresponds to the first. His task of government was to agree with everyone. With the military orders, giving them territories and prebendas, in compensation for the testament of the Bataller. With the monarch of Castile and Leon Alfonso VII, is made vassal to isolate to Navarre and to secure for Aragon the distribution in the reconquest of the lands of Valencia, Denia and Murcia (time of great expeditions, and of the participation in the epic take of Almería). In Occitania, he intervenes to safeguard the rights of his nephew, at the death of his twin brother, joining successively with the English (great friend of Henry II Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine) or with the Ghibellines, declaring himself vassal of Frederic I Barbarouse, to avoid friction With the Sacrum Germanic Empire, and that his nephew conserved the Provence.

From his son Alfonso II of Aragon, called the Chaste, born in Osca (and buried in the sacked Monastery of Sigena, of which we will talk later), to the monarchs of the dynasty Trastámara, after the Commitment of Caspe (there were 6 candidates, and nine Compromisers, three for each territory, representative of their Provincial Councils) who chose in agreement the King of Aragon), there are several constants that will persist in medieval politics in Aragon: constant interventionism in the northern slope of the Pyrenees (French Midi or the Septimania Hispanic-goth), and the military expansion (led by Aragonese in particular, in the Valencia conquest, in spite of the attempts of Prospero de Bofarull i Mascaró, Catalan Director of the Archives of the Crown of Aragon, who in 1847 forged original documents, demonstrating that the Catalans led the conquest, and never were) and commercial (driven by the Catalans, and afterwards by the Mallorcans, who used Catalan as language deal with foreigners, in their rivalry with Genoese and Venetians, and who branded them Of greedy and stingy, because they used the high liquidity of their companies for the Mediterranean, to grant loans onerous and burdensome) and the need to organize administratively the territory in Deputations, with internal customs between the kingdoms, to get Collidas or Taxes of the General People or of the Provincial Councils of the Realms, destined to pay for these companies. In the medieval world, monarchs only collected us, and the different estates (clergy, nobility or cities) established taxes (taxes, charges, rents and levies) that could be perpetual, others were annual, others temporary depending on the season year or any other circumstance (Door handle and Rights of passage), other contingent according to the causal condition of the moment (financing of wars or cams), and finally, are the personal taxes that are paid once to redeem some penalty or excuse yourself from any obligation. There were also exemptions, waivers, and privileges.

From all these historical tastings, and other objective testimonies, it follows that there was never a Catalan nation, not even a kind of confederation of late medieval states united by dynastic interests. With the fall of the Roman Empire (which if it was a state with citizens and laws), the Visigoths who dominated Hispania, partially assimilate Roman institutions, and then comes feudalism, which is a kind of polyarchy, or cluster of different economic corporations , Stately, military, ecclesiastical, etc. Who share power with the monarch, the cusp of sovereignty and last resort, who receives the temporal power of God, and plays a secondary role, since it requires the support of its vassals and feudatories, to receive taxes or aid for war . With a totally decentralized power, the parish was the fundamental cell, the monarch should ask for help and agree with his subjects for any company, establishing Constitutions, privileges, uses or privileges (interesting to see the Great Book of the Feuds of Alfonso II the Chaste, In the Archive of the Crown or its more than 3,500 deposited documents). In Catalonia there was a Hispanic-Visigothic County, a Principality with the regency of Ramon Berenguer IV, and a King with his legitimate successors. A single Crown, which was carried by a single King, and a feudal administrative organization that encompassed several kingdoms, with their foral rights, which were increased with the reconquest, and which were managed by Deputation (curiously resurrected thanks to the Autonomous State) In view of the geographical proximity, gathered in only one Cortes (always in the Templar Monzon) and expanded with the Mediterranean expansion (As would say the Admiral Roger de Lauria, who as Roger de Flor, were born in the Aragonese possessions of southern Italy, no Pez will dare to rise over the sea, if he does not bear the Sign of the King of Aragon, the Aragonese bars of the shield, which Sancho Ramirez in 1068 would adopt as his own, the papal teaching, to attract Christians in the defense of his kingdom, Trip to Rome to render vassalage to Pope Alexander II). The Royal Chancellery was always close to where the economic, financial and commercial power was, that is to say in the port city of Barcelona, and the languages used by the government were Latin, Provencal or Limousin, Aragonese, Valencian and Catalan.

In Catalonia, conflicts with the monarch were frequent, and had much to do with the tax collection and the demands in Cortes to the different territories of human or material personnel for their companies. Rebellions, since the time of the Visigoths (Wamba in person had to subdue the rebellious Count Paul) or in times of the legitimate King John II, when the rebellion of the Constable Peter of Portugal took place (visiting the building of the Archives of the Crown of Aragon, there is a window with the motto Paine pour Joie, not exactly in Catalan), that was proclaimed King, against the opinion of the Council of Aragon, Valencia and Sicilia. Indeed, the Archives, in the middle of the Gothic quarter, does not have divulgatory exhibitions, which show that its origin (Monastery of Sigena), and of a great variety of languages that were used in the Kingdom, besides those of the Chancellery: Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Occitan, Castilian, Arabic, Greek, even Aranese or Patuese. It contains a testimony of the sagacious Aragonese diplomacy, or ability to relate strongly defending its interests, and of great transcendence for the discovery of America, which are the capitulations of Santa Fe, a document signed by the Catholic Monarchs on April 17, 1492 and Christopher Columbus, collected by the Secretary of the Crown of Aragon, Joan de Coloma (born in the town of Borja), in a very correct Castilian o Spanish idiom.

The truth is that contrary to what many Catalans believe, America was not forbidden to any of the citizens of the Crown of Aragon, according to a black legend invented by Catalan, who interpreted one of the clauses of the Testament of Isabel the Catholic as (He forbade the foreigners, alluding to the ambitious Flemings, who came with Philip the Fair, to make a fortune), in all the trips there was some Calabrian, Murcian or Oscensian (the priest of Zaidín Bernardo Boil or Buil , The first apostolic vicar of the Indies, I accompany Columbus on his second voyage), or to say of the Franciscan Majorcan Fray Junípero Serra. The relative size of the Aragonese population and the interests of the Mediterranean led the Catalans not to intervene or to make it late in the business of the colonies, specifically in the exploitation and defense of the last overseas provinces, since the metropolis Colonial period of the last epoch was none other than Barcelona, a city in which were found such important companies as the Transatlantic Company, monopolizing the official maritime transport between Barcelona and Manila, the Bank Hispano Colonial or the General Tobacco Company of the Philippines. And it was a Catalan politician Victor Balaguer, Minister of Development and Overseas, who distinguished himself by his extreme defense of the Spanish presence in the Philippine Islands, even at the cost of an absurd war against a far superior power, the United States of America.

But perhaps the most serious episode of rebellion and secession of the Aragonese Crown came at the time of the monarch of the house of Austria Philip IV in Aragon, when in the middle of the financial crisis and in the framework of the war of the 30 years against France, among others, the Count-Duke of Olivares convinces the King, to initiate a combined offensive: an attack by the north from Flanders and the other from the Pyrenees. The key to this project was the simultaneous action of all the peninsular kingdoms (including Portugal) thanks to the Union of Arms (a project of fiscal reform, which affected the Portuguese more, since they contributed little, but required naval protection Of all its coasts including Brazil) in defense of the Spanish Nation. But the peripheral territories of Spain refused to participate in such a company, especially the Portuguese, Catalan and Andalusian. The endless War of the 30 years blew half of Europe, and finally exhausted the Spanish Empire, which is plunged into a process of internal disintegration and external decay. France in 1635, attacked Spain through Roussillon and the Basque Provinces; The Viceroy of Catalonia had no income and could not maintain the troops of the Spanish army. The Catalans refused to pay new taxes, to recruit a cam of 6,000 men called for "Consell de Cent" and to maintain the army, being the Spanish army defeated in the Languedoc (Leuceta). The subsequent war of attrition, with non-Spanish mercenary foreigners in the Tercios, who did not get along well with the population, and who stole the victuals of the milieu in which they lived, forcing haciendas and people to collect their nonexistent pay. Catalan Constitutions (accommodation, salt, vinegar, fire, bed, table and food for horses) were not respected because the economic crisis had wrought havoc on the population, Catalan institutions and the Royal Treasury.

The refusal to pay the high taxes caused the Catalan peasants to manifest themselves in the streets of Barcelona against the Viceroy, with the presence of rioters who encouraged a real insurrection, which led to the Corpus of blood, killing the pages to the Viceroy Count of Santa Coloma, while the altercations were succeeded until on January 16, 1641, the provisional Junta de Brazos (Courts without King) accepted the proposal of Pau Claris (President of the General Council of Catalonia), to put To Catalonia under the protection of the king of France in the form of a republican government of the Catalan territory, but submitted to the French monarchy, being invested King Luis XIII, Count of Barcelona. French ships and troops were let in, and the Franco-Catalan combined army defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Montjuic. The consequences of this rebellion, unlike in the case of Portugal, would achieve independence (by refusing to enlist 6,000 soldiers, to go to Catalonia, and assassinate Secretary Vasconcelos, with the participation of the local aristocracy, and complicity of Military and Portuguese Clergy), after the peace of Westphalia, was that Spanish military resources could concentrate on recovering the principality, a fact which helped that the treatment of the French troops was even worse than suffered by mercenaries of the Tercios. It takes Barcelona, and the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659) is signed with France, and the result of the betrayal is that the historical Aragonese possessions of the Roussillon, the Conflent, the Vallespir and the Cerdanya passed to the French Crown (Louis XIV). That yes, repealing the Catalan Fueros in those territories and prohibiting openly to speak the Catalan.

This bad French experience so recently had to support the Catalans, in the War of Succession, the austracist side or the Archduke of Habsburg against the House of Bourbon reigning in France, which would lead to the throne to Philip V (the IV of Aragon ). Barcelona would capitulate again on September 11, 1714, and the new centralist monarchy would apply the Decrees of Nueva Planta (Aragon and Valencia in 1707, Catalonia in 1716), which would suppose the abolition of Catalan civil institutions and liberties from the Middle Ages , And the territorial and administrative structure of the extensive and populated Castile (the major territory and with 80% of the population) were extended to the various territories of the Crown of Aragon (except the Arán Valley), in that sense The cadastre, and other taxes, by which the monarchy finally achieved its objectives of economic control, without having to ask the Cortes, and centralized all the Catalan universities in Cervera, as a reward for their fidelity and to better control the Cultivated elites, a situation that lasted until 1842. However, Catalan civil law (like the Aragonese) was respected by the monarch.

With the Borbons, one speaks of the Kingdom of Spain, since with the Catholic Kings the foreign policy, the royal treasury and the Army were unified, but the different kingdoms did not, since the privileges and privileges of each one of territories were respected.

Despite this centralizing circumstance, throughout the eighteenth century Catalonia achieved a remarkable and remarkable economic recovery, centered on a very important demographic growth, a considerable increase of the agricultural production and a commercial reactivation (especially thanks to the trade with America, when they leave To look at the Mediterranean, and they ask for it thanks to the increase of the population from 1778). The accumulation of capital, preindustrialization, the cotton and textile industry, the war of independence, the fall of the old regime and proletarianization, will mark the future of a prosperous Catalonia, linked to Europe, and much more advanced than the rest of Spain (it is worth reading the Failure of the Industrial Revolution in Spain by Jordi Nadal i Oller), and that it will consolidate in the Universal Exhibition of 1888.

A visit to the modernist buildings of the Casaramona textile factory by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, the place of Caixaforum as a modern art center or the old asylum for the blind by Josep Domènech i Estapà, site of the Cosmocaixa like a museum of science (with the submarine in front the entrance, the planetarium and the Amazonian flooded forest, are impressive), are a good way to remember that old splendor. I also have a pleasant memory of the delicious fideua of the restaurant of the Cosmocaixa, for its quality and good price.

This will be the Golden Age of Barcelona, and will have many derivatives that affect the Spanish nation (already settled as such, after the Cortes of Cadiz, when elaborating a Constitution of liberal court in 1812, and finished the contests of Carlism). The apogee of the Catalan bourgeoisie, which examines the past and Paris, as a model to build their houses in the Eixample, modernism as a movement of synthesis of technological optimism and futurism (embodied in the novels of Frenchman Jules Verne, which should have inspired Its Nautilus in the Ictineo of the great Catalan Monturiol), the generalization of Catalan (in principle a dialect of the Occitan spoken in the rural milieu, but that normalizes, and it extends like nexus of union between the new bourgeoisie and a popular classes, with Which seeks an everyday familiarity based on religiosity and customs), and the birth of political Catalanism, which is reflected in the bases of Manresa (the choice of the city is not accidental, there took refuge the Consell del Cent of Barcelona, when they had to flee from the absolutist tyranny of Louis XIV, after having given the county illegitimately to his father) and interventionism in Spanish economic policy, for protectionist purposes and defense of their territorial interests.

The background to this unique Catalan perspective was the Memorial de Greuges (in Catalan) or Memorial of Grievances (in English), whose name was popularly known as the Memory in defense of the moral and material interests of Catalonia and the Catalans, sent to King Alfonso XII of Spain in 1885, trying to recover medieval dialectic, from the old claims (greuges) of his Medieval Cortes. The textile protectionist treaty against the English fabrics, or the nostalgia for the suppression of Foral rights, mixed with the mistaken idea of a decadence of Catalonia from the union of the Catholic Kings, the promulgation of the decrees of the new plant of Felipe V, and The consequent loss of privileges. The idea still maintained today by a good part of the population, including reputed intellectuals, that Spain lives on Catalan prosperity, and that this would be much larger with much more autonomy or with the return to the times of the Hispanic Mark.

But they are the bases of Manresa of 1892, those that outline an autonomist project, as an aid to Borbon centralism. The Bases intend a autonomist project, in principle no one dared to make it independent, but if pancatalanista (in the belief that because he was Catalan, he was in favor of economic progress, due to his own idiosyncrasy to profit in business), traditional and corporatist. Structured in seventeen articles, they propose the possibility of modernizing foral civil law, the exclusive official status of Catalan, the reserve for natural persons from public offices including the military, the county as a basic administrative entity, exclusive internal sovereignty, , A higher court would ultimately extend the municipal powers, voluntary military service (in practice would be the first to apply, especially in the colonial wars, for 1500 pesetas, few and poor Catalans were recruited) order body Public and currency and a teaching sensitive to Catalan specificity (in the hands of a low clergy who spoke and taught in Catalan).

The political pancatalanism was born and the differential fact of the superiority of the own, especially after the loss of the last transatlantic colonies, because the Catalan nation (other than Castilian, to which a losing Spain of the war was reduced) was the meeting of the towns that speak, pray and sing in a language that until then of rural scope, but that united them to its glorious past. Its territory includes: Catalonia, with the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne; The part of Aragon of Ribagorza and the speaking south speaking band, the Kingdom of Valencia; And the Kingdom of Mallorca. The ideological mutation, under the protection of the Roman religious cult to the flora goddess, was sublimated with the troubadours (medieval origin of the languedoc) floral games pancatalanistas of the first Sunday of May, under the motto Patria, Fides and Love. The support of the intellectuals and Catalan politicians, disillusioned with the colonial disaster (victimism is another feature of the differential fact), an autochthonous literature and culture, brought about the systematization of the Catalan dialect until then (1492 are too many years for the publication of Castilian Grammar of Nebrija), printed literary production, and a new way of understanding the country (conceiving that it had to do more with the Franks, than with the Goths), and even to live the religion, since in the hands of the clergy was the diffusion Cultural of the same, by means of the private education, to monopolize this the deficiencies of the State. The games also achieve a consistency of opposing ideologies, republicans, conservatives and younger generations succumb to the magical enchantment of the Catalan fact as a thesis, and putting distances with a decadent Spanish nation, is invented the myth of Castilian as antithesis, from which they arrive to believe that they have nothing to do, and synthesis would be nationalism.

But the bases of Manresa, origin of the entire choral nationalist movement, have a marked conservative, corporatist and traditional character (it is not identified with the Krausist ideas, much of the liberal intelligentsia of the time), article 51, which establishes Who "have only the right to appoint and be appointed citizens of the family" for the popular arm, since the Cortes will have a status character, or in article 39 that says: Being the religion of the Catalans the Catholic, apostolic and Roman (Full coincidence with Basque nationalism, closely related to the traditionalism of Carlist).

One of the leaders of the movement, the great architect and modernist master, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, will enable the great nationalist dragon, diving in the intrahistory of the Hospital of Sant Pau (impressive sculptures of the Aragonese Pablo Gargallo), an heiress sanitary complex of the old (mid-ninth century) and hispanic-goth hospital of the Holy Cross and Santa Eulalia, which rose up in the outskirts of the expansion, when there were only the initial works of the Holy Family, and in which the bourgeoisie had not yet begun to build their houses, of course, inspired by the mansions of the modern city of Paris (urbanism literally copied from Bordeaux).

But I could not stop visiting, something that was pending (how fool I was Gloria, not accepting your invitation in his day, when he was still familiar), and was to visit Casa Batlló, on Paseo de Gracia. The remodeling made by the Reusense Antonio Gaudí (I want to talk about Prim, and the Catalans who never denied Spain, which are many and more brilliant), undoubtedly the most brilliant and innovative of modernist architects, shows us A style itself perfected by original structural solutions, inspired by organic forms of nature, with volumes devoid of rationalist rigidities. Colors, mosaics, plastic ideas give you the feeling of being in the bowels of a whale, in the cabins of the Nautilus, or in the belly of that premonitory great dragon that crowns the cryptic façade. The blue of the sea, the Mediterranean nature and the luminous sky of the city, are a source of continuous surprises. I could not leave without trying a good escalibada of cod scalping and a butifarra with mongetas, accompanied by a good wine of the Penedés, to recover the historical memory of charnego in Barcelona (as were the lunches in Charleston).

But despite the choirs and floral games, the strong feeling of ownership of the bourgeoisie, inherited from institutions that were forged in the harsh feudal era, continues to fear the socialist and democratic movements, which delegitimizes this same as the creation of the Capitalism, and this causes the movement to close around an inbred economic oligarchy, which in the political arena will pursue, after defeat in the war against the US and the loss of the last overseas possessions of 1898, and the capital of Barcelona As a colonial metropolis, in the demand for an asymmetric or favorable treatment with respect to the rest of the country, in the form of budgetary compensations and tariff protection, in addition to increasing demands for autonomy. The popular movements of the proletariat will seek their own way to impose their revolutionary ideas, and there are times when they are allied when they are not in open war, as happened in the Tragic Week of Barcelona 1909.

The veto power of the Catalans, in economic decisions, came at the end of World War I, when Minister Santiago Alba decides to recompose the Spanish hacienda reality with a higher tax burden, centered on the industrial sector that had obtained hight benefits derived from the Spanish neutrality, not so much the salaried ones. The reaction of the leader of the Regionalist Lliga of Francesc Cambó, was immediate. And it is linked to an almost revolutionary action then to refuse to pay, or the stagnation of caskets. But Cambo sought the solution as a representative of Catalan interests, first met in the Basque Country with Ramon de la Sota (oligarch linked to the Traditionalist Communion and the Company of Jesus, predecessor of the PNV, and head of the Basque business world enriched with the And in various industrial, mining, maritime and financial variants), then in Cantabria with the second Marquis of Comillas (Claudio Lopez Bru, born in Barcelona, with a very high link with the Company of Jesus, and owner Of the Transatlantic Company, but also of part of coal mining in Asturias). The influence of the Marquis on Alfonso XIII, was known and Cambó approaches to the mining Asturias to agree with the Krausistas, of the Reform Party, that directed Melquiades Álvarez, and finally finally to Madrid to agree with Antonio Maura. (Alba's political enemy was Maura). He ended up being minister and arbiter of the legislation on economy, which became a script in line with the links with the desires of Catalonia (of his oligarchy, while in the street flourished the anarchism and the terrorist tendencies of the Single Union).

With Cambo the modern bases of capitalism are laid to the Spanish one, on the one hand a Tariff Law that generated a very high protection for the Catalan industry, with an added administrative aid that completed the first advantage. On the other hand, the law of banking order (criticized by the Professor of Economics Flores de Lemus), with a kind of complement or rescue with public money from Spain, which avoided the bankruptcy of the Bank of Barcelona, treating it as a simple suspension of payments, maintaining it In private hands and safeguarding the interests of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

This asymmetry that introduced the industrial periphery, in the Spanish market, was very favorable in the flow of income towards Catalonia. Despite the attempts of distinguished Catalan economists (the most solvent, no doubt, Ramón Trías Fargas) to say the opposite, it is currently demonstrated that it was not Catalonia that financed the rest of Spain, but the other way around.

In order to understand politics in Catalonia, we must not forget the Spanish civil war of 1936 (nor of its precedents, in which the Catalans, the war of independence, and the three Carlist wars also intervened). The failure of the military uprising led to the fact that the unstable situation between the supporters of the popular classes and the oligarchy had already been confronted in the tragic week, exploded with an occupation of official institutions (the Generalitat and the Republican government) on the one hand , And the creation of the popular armed militias Antifascist of Catalonia (anarchists and communists of diverse estates). It proclaims a social revolution, establishing a regime of terror that kills almost 10,000 people, targeting mainly with Catholic religious (in numbers of about 2,500), doctors, journalists and moderate officials related to the Catalan League, who distinguished themselves by going to mass to Catholic Temples (the destruction of cultural heritage is also significant and a witness the case of the grandfather current President Puigdemont). The desire to win the civil war, and to keep its members out of account adjustments, makes the anarchists enter the government of the Generalitat, with those of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Pact of government companies with the FAI -CNT). Esquerra was a party, linked to the petty bourgeoisie, not socialist but of the left, that advocated the independence of Catalonia, and that manages to establish a repressive and genocidal regime, against those who disagreed on their ideas.

The history seems to be repeated in part, and we witness the paradox of a deserted Churches in Catalonia, with a clergy in many cases delivered to the separatist process, and with a canization of politics and society (many Catalans of the fourth generation Of bourgeois patriots, does not have much attachment to property and justify occupation, corruption when it benefits Catalonia, does not seem to be wrong the principles of communism and aspires to be an official of the Generalitat or the new Catalan State). When we ascended to the mountain of Montjuic (originally a county watchtower that reported arrivals to the port of the ships, then it was a citadel, a prison and today a museum surrendered to nationalism), we asked in a municipal information booth by the garden of the Water lilies and the Albéniz mansion. The young receptionist, tells us very sure that there is no water lily in Montjuic, when it is less than 50 meters. Perhaps it is a problem of linguistic immersion, it is said the same in Catalan, the truth is we prefer to stay with Barcelona once pampered gardens (with that monument to the sardana, which most resembles a Spanish-Castilian wheel, even with the Use of the flabiol or Iberian dulzaina, which reveals that cultural differences are only apparent), the Font del Gat (Enric Morera's song, I'll take the version of the Catalan diva Nuria Feliu, now also conspicuous independence and anti-Spanish, The song actually speaks of when the Catalans were somewhat humbler) and the Olympic Campus, which helped to know Spain thanks to Catalonia. When passing through the National Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), again come to my memory the paintings of the Chapter Room of the double monastery of Hospitallers of Villanueva de Sigena, which was Archivo, Corte and Royal Pantheon of the Crown of Aragon, and were Expelled as booty of war by the Generalitat (in the hands of the Republican Esquerra alliance with the CUP of that time, the Anarchists of the CNT), and the principle that respect for judicial sentences, is only complied with if they are favorable. Again memories of the civil war, how Villanueva came to a column of Barcelona militiamen, ready to kill the nuns (a relative of my grandmother, in the Local Committee, send notice of their intentions), finding no one, burned civilized the Convent. A few days later, they arrived from the Generalitat with the intention of protecting, preserving and transferring to Barcelona the valuable paintings of the arches, since the roof had been burned by the Anarchist hordes.

Catalan separatism, which is barely inclined to dialogue, unless of course to assume its theses and postulates, is currently putting into practice and with public money, the theory of disconnection (provisionally exhausted the imperative way of convening a unilateral referendum, and tacitly tolerated The process, before a pusillanimity we do not know if calculated or not, of the high estates of the State, that do not dare to suspend the autonomy by the article 155, after a decade of indecisiones avoiding to counter the supremacist nationalism, and always in tow of the Events, we have sentences made to measure, as in the Middle Ages, which exculpates the former President and his Govern, of more than three possible crimes, as if it were a simple administrative fault, decriminalizing his return to the Consell Executiu, which differs radically from the egalitarian French republican justice applied to former premier Francois Fillon), with the strategic support of internationally recognized Catalan economists (more anti-Spanish than economists, it seems), grouped in the collective Wilson or even with the moral support of Nobel laureate Josep Stiglitz, argues The return to that kind of medieval entelechy of which the non-obedience to the Franks (now Spanish State, as if it were a novel of cavalry more named with vehemence by Don Quixote), and with the firm intention of not paying more taxes to The Spanish Tax Agency, installing an Express Customs in Aragonese Monegros, and with the sovereign legitimacy that comes from relative majorities of democracy or street demonstrations, presuppose the existence of Catalonia as a European State.

It would be a question of imitating the separation of Navarre from Aragon when the Battaler died, or that of Portugal in the time of Felipe IV, arguing that economically it would go very well and that legality is something that can be avoided relatively, When it is not in the interests of the citizens of Catalonia to judge a few judicious politicians. It is not certain that this was so, in fact the Portuguese have progressed historically below Spain, while the Navarreses, thanks to the privileged Regional Tax Regime, which was also generously offered to the Catalans in the transition, along with the usual coffee for all, Enjoy public resources that make them more competitive (although the arrival of the Basque nationalists to power, may compensate them, with retrograde measures of absurd ideas).

In the end, to put a Customs, where it never was as such, for people and goods, and to leave the great Spanish market, when your main client is the neighboring province of Zaragoza (to which they export double that to Germany), thinking That you are going to continue selling without problems and collecting taxes, as if nothing had happened, in a zone of free trade, is improper of any rational behavior. Not to mention the finances of the new Catalan state, whose titles are now junk bonds (and that holds them 80%, generously and patiently the Kingdom of Spain, through the FLA) and does not have sufficient own resources (despite that, in their delirium, in summer activate their Tax Agency or deactivate the Spanish, but not the Social Security, true black hole of the superb secessionist) to afford the luxury of a State of its own, unless it applies the policies of confiscation of private property, typical of a Revolutionary state, as outlined in 1936, the last wish of the anti-system members of the separatists.

This disconnection would be more active euthanasia, on the current autonomous state, which was established in our country by express desire of the Catalans, and to fit the provincial regimes, in the current Spanish Constitution, and far exceeds the federal model of The most effective modern states. And it is to prove that its new nation (of uncertain geographical map, we do not know if with Països Catalans, and taking apparently the fifth part of the PIB or the fourth part of tourism, recognized by the socialists of the PSC and all the anti-Spanish left), is Something positive for the Catalans, a community punished by the scourge of corruption (303 cases awaiting trial, double Andalusia itself, a community that is responsible for much of immigration and past Catalan prosperity), dependent on public spending and Less competitive. A disconnection with reality, as the State does not assume its responsibilities, which has already established a dynamic of hatred, which will perpetuate the grievance for several generations (the legacy of moderate nationalism, which 7 years ago finally removed the mask), and with a growing dependence on the public that can be lethal for the generation of future wealth, both in Catalonia itself and in an expectant, vilified, little-rested and stupefied Spain. If the Catalans were pioneers in the Industrial Revolution, and imposed the autonomous state in the current Constitution as a substitute of the charter, to maintain the medieval and identity essences of the different differential facts of Spain, and a mediated judiciary (the asymmetry also in the Legal is manifesting in surprising judicial sentences between Spaniards), with the disconnection are showing to Europe average, that ending a state is easier than consolidating a supranational one.

These uncanny and grotesque Catalan events, characteristic of Cervantes characters (trying to dialogue with a Catalan independentista, who believe in the novels of their ancestors' cavalry, recalls Don Quixote's dialogue with the canon, about the truth of the exploits of Wilfredo el Velloso , Rafael de Casanova or the validity of the Bases of Manresa), it is as if we were to activate a machine of pending apaciguada por la autoridad de Agramante y la prudencia del rey Sobrino, males de la patria que sin duda más de algún político nacionalista catalán,  transmutado en Don Quijote achacaría a algún terrible encantamiento de Estado: ¿Qué caballero andante independentista pagó pecho, alcabala, chapín de la reina, moneda forera, portazgo ni barca? ¿Qué sastre le llevó hechura de vestido que le hiciese? ¿Qué castellano parlante le acogió en su castillo que le hiciese pagar el escote a un buen catalán?

No será que todo esto, es obra de algún Cide embelesador, falsario y quimerista, que quiere simplemente menoscabar la fama de la nación más antigua de Europa con el fin de no devolver los cien ducados de los impuestos del que llegare a ser muy honorable Gobernador de barataria  Don Sancho Panza, que dice la crónica gasto  en pro de su persona y de la de su mujer e hijos los susodichos fondos: no se ponga a juzgar lo blanco por negro y lo negro por blanco, que cada uno es como Dios lo hizo, aún peor muchas veces.