Barcelona in Focus - Discover Barcelona: Experience the Best of Barcelona - page 503

Wilfred the Hairy & Mediterranean
Expansion
It was the Romans who first etched Barcino onto Europe's map in the 3rd century BC,
though the nascent settlement long played second fiddle to their provincial capital in Tar-
ragona. The Visigoths came next, followed by the Moors, whose relatively brief occupation
was usurped when the Franks put the city under the control of local counts in 801 as a buf-
fer zone against the still Muslim-dominated caliphate to the south.
Eccentrically named Wilfred the Hairy (Count Guifré el Pelós) moulded the entity we
now know as Catalonia in the 9th century by wresting control over several neighbouring
territories and establishing Barcelona as its key city. The hirsute one founded a dynasty that
lasted nearly five centuries and developed almost independently from the Reconquista wars
that were playing out in the rest of Iberia.
The counts of Barcelona gradually expanded their territory south and, in 1137, Ramon
Berenguer IV, the Count of Barcelona, married Petronilla, heir to the throne of neighbour-
ing Aragón. Thus, the combined Crown of Aragón was created.
In the following centuries the regime became a flourishing merchant empire, seizing
Valencia and the Balearic Islands from the Muslims, and later taking territories as far flung
as Sardinia, Sicily and parts of Greece.
Santa Eulàlia
Barcelona's first patron saint, Santa Eulàlia (290-304) was martyred for her faith during
the persecutory reign of Diocletian. Her death involved 13 tortures (one for each year of
her life), including being rolled in a glass-filled barrel, having her breasts cut off and
crucifixion. Some artwork (such as a sculpture inside the Museu Frederic Marès) depicts
Eulàlia holding a tray containing her excised breasts. The cathedral ( Click here ) , which
is dedicated to her, holds her remains, as well as a cloister with 13 lily-white geese -
also symbolic of Eulàlia's tender age at martyrdom.