Your guide to the history of Catalonia

Introduction to the book Catalonia: understanding its history, present and desires for the future

The purpose of the book is to help the reader understand the history of Catalonia, by highlighting key aspects. It also aims to show the potential – and viability – of the nation as a sovereign state, in an objective way.

The reality is that Catalonia’s history is a series of “successes”, “declines” and “recoveries”. By means of its “successes” and “recoveries”, the nation has made signicant contributions to humanity and has survived until today.

Its history can be divided into the following periods of time: firstly the “Prolegomena”, from prehistory to the Muslim invasion. Then came “the genesis and consolidation of identity” from the beginning of the reconquest to Peter I the Catholic. Then the first decline took place with the Battle of Muret and the ruin of the incipient Occitan-Catalan state and following this, the first recovery, embodied by the conquest of Mallorca and Valencia and Mediterranean expansion. We then move on to the second decline, a long period including the destruction wreaked by the last epidemic of the Black Death, the Catalan Revolt (with separation of the territories of Roussillon and part of Cerdanya) and the War of the Spanish Succession (with the loss of national freedoms), to naturally move on to the second recovery, which included all of the promising Catalan Renaissance period, a nineteenth century cultural movement promoting revitalisation of the Catalan language and culture which was destroyed by the third decline, a period covering the whole Franco period when the harshest persecution of history was experienced by the people and culture. We then reach the last quarter of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century, the third recovery. This phase began with the progressive restoration of self-government institutions which continues today.

The people must now make their own history.

Indeed, this is a key time, as positive consolidation of the European Union and greater respect for individual and collective rights are creating a more promising context.

In the geographical region there is a axis of economic development, which includes all of the north-western Mediterranean. Within this band, Catalonia and the Occitan-Catalan area will continue to be increasingly significant.

In this new millennium, the possibility of initiating a third recovery is within our grasp; this will represent a definitive success and cancel the effect of the previous declines permanently.

Achieving this is down to nothing more than us and the effort we put in.

Through this summary, we wish to pay tribute to the great historian Ferran Soldevila. We hope that reading it will help us, as Catalans, to reflect and decide to make this third recovery truly effective. For those from the rest of the world, we hope it will help you understand more easily the desires of our people.