Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
HISTORY
Catalan cultural identity can be traced back as far as the ninth century. From the quilt
of independent counties of the eastern Pyrenees, a powerful dynastic entity, dominated
by Barcelona, and commonly known as the Crown of Aragón, developed over the next
six hundred years. Its merger with Castile-León in the late 1400s led to eventual inclu-
sion in the new Spanish empire of the sixteenth century - and marked the decline of
CatalanindependenceanditseventualsubjugationtoMadrid.Ithasrarelybeenawill-
ing subject, which goes some way to explaining how ingrained are the Catalan notions
of social and cultural divorce from the rest of the country.
Early civilizations
During the
Upper Paleolithic
period (35,000-10,000 BC), cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers
lived in parts of the Pyrenees, and
dolmens
, or stone burial chambers, from around 5000
BC still survive. No habitations from this period have been discovered but it can be conjec-
tured that huts of some sort were erected, and farming had certainly begun. By the start of
the
Bronze Age
(around 2000 BC), the Pyrenean people had begun to move into fortified
villages in the coastal lowlands.
The first of a succession of
invasions
of the region began sometime after 1000 BC, when
the Celtic “urnfield people” crossed the Pyrenees into the region, settling in the river valleys.
These people lived side by side with indigenous Iberians, and the two groups are commonly,
if erroneously, referred to as
Celtiberians
.
Foundation of Barcelona
On the coast, the
Greeks
had established trading posts at Roses and Empúries by around 550
BC. Two centuries later, though, the coast (and the rest of the peninsula) had been conquered
by the North African
Carthaginians
, who founded
Barcino
(later Barcelona) in around 230
BC, probably on the heights of Montjuïc. The Carthaginians' famous commander, Hannibal,
went on to cross the Pyrenees in 214 BC and attempted to invade Italy. But the result of the
Second Punic War (218-201 BC) - much of which was fought in Catalunya - was to expel
the Carthaginians from the Iberian peninsula in favour of the
Romans
, who made their new
base at the former Carthaginian stronghold of Tarraco (Tarragona).
