Catalonia: Medieval Monarchs Testifying for Democracy, Nation, and Europe

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, the present-day Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia, which its inhabitants still perceive as a ‘nation’ today, tracked its ‘national’ roots back to medieval times. A powerful narrative was constructed around a putative ‘national’ dynasty founded by the ninth- and tenth-century counts of Barcelona, Guifré el Pelòs and Borrell II. These counts stood for the birth of Catalonian national glory and independence, as did their descendants King Jaume I (1208-76), who made the Crown of Aragon an influential maritime power, and King Martí I (1356-1410), whose death represented the end of the dynasty. This chapter shows that the narrative tie between a presumed Catalonian nation and the medieval counts and kings continues to be popular in Catalonia even today.

But the narratives today differ significantly from their nineteenth-century predecessors. Nowadays, these narratives are combined with other identitarian elements influenced by current flows of migration and globalization and by ideas of European identity. The monarchs are now conceptualized as political rulers who knew how to form and govern peaceful and multicultural societies. Thus the chapter highlights how Catalonian nationalist narratives have changed in tune with the transnational horizons of European and world politics.