The development of the extractive system

The chronological arc from the Treaty of Tordesillas to the declaration of independence of the United States of America represents the first process – on a global scale – of the distribution and exploitation of the whole world by the European monarchies. During this period, the succulent income produced by the spoils of war or by the indiscriminate plundering of the native populations was transformed into an unprecedented binge of gold and silver, which was introduced into the European economy. For this reason, the construction of the first colonial empires was based on a mercantile economy that enabled them to live up to expectations.

 

From the outset, the European monarchies were convinced that all the territories of the world belonged to them by right of conquest. In this way, cartography allowed them to gradually extend and possess ownership of land, over which they legitimised themselves as possessors in order to impose – not always by force – their model of civilisation on the native societies.

This process of cultural supremacy was based on the religious certainty of questioning the true human nature of the natives. And the firm belief in this reasoning will motivate the European monarchies to project a geography of large spaces to be Christianised. The greed of the newcomers led to numerous abuses and genocides, but also to an unprecedented demographic catastrophe, as the territories of the new world were reduced to 80% of their native population.

The progressive development of maritime techniques – such as the improvement of the compass, the construction of caravels or the updating of world maps – will allow Europeans to be able to navigate all the seas and oceans that make up the planet in just a few years. This feat will result in the division of the world into two halves, two geographical lines which, drawn between the two poles, will give them the power, signed by the papal authority, to divide the world into zones for navigation, fishing and conquest. The first line will be 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, while the second will be set at 297.5 leagues east of the Molucca’s.

The discovery of important deposits of precious metals in America – between Mexico and Peru – or the arrival on the islands of Southeast Asian species, led to the foundation or re-foundation of important American, African or Asian cities, which acquired a different territorial role in order to ensure a regular flow of wealth to Europe. The European monarchies thus began to control all trade passing through their territories in order to protect their economic gains.

From the beginning of the 16th century until the mid-18th century, the first colonial empires would maintain a strict mercantile monopoly with their colonies, and trade with people or companies that were not subjects of or related to the Crown would be prohibited. Castile, for example, regarded the English, Dutch and French, not as competitors but as enemies and the cause of acts of piracy.

 

The colonial mercantilist system

Trade with the colonies was based on the premise that the colonists had to sell their raw materials – at a low price and with high taxes – exclusively to companies designated by the Crown. At the same time, the colonists would only be able to buy consumer goods manufactured by this select group of entrepreneurs. Therefore,  monarchies will favour the unlimited enrichment of companies and individuals close to the state, since they will be denied competition. This mercantilist system will create useless needs for the natives and will seek to perpetually maintain the colonies underdeveloped – whether American, African or Asian – in order to nullify possible direct competition with the metropolis.

And to make matters worse, the senior civil servants close to the king’s council will also play a very important role in this innovative economic system, since they had the ability to speed up or delay bureaucratic procedures in order to favour one or the other. The emergence of illicit and parallel trade between colonies was therefore inevitable and led many entrepreneurs, both large and small, to seek ways of circumventing the bureaucratic controls imposed by the Crown itself.

Acting as nouveau riche, the first colonial empires – mainly Castile – will spend an indecent amount of economic resources to build their concept of civilisation. This obsession – sometimes uncontrolled – will lead them to embark on countless conflicts of all kinds, such as theological disputes, family conflicts, commercial affairs or lavish megalomaniac constructions.

“This mercantilist system will create useless needs for the natives and will seek to perpetually maintain colonies underdeveloped – both American, African and Asian – in order to nullify possible direct competitors with the metropolis”.

Financing the empire with precious metals

Coinciding with the time of greatest economic extraction from the American colonies – between the late 16th and early 17th centuries – Castile spent more than 7 million ducats to maintain its fleet in the Mediterranean during the famous Battle of Lepanto. In approximately seven years, a staggering 11.7 million ducats would be spent to finance the countless campaigns in Flanders.

To commemorate the victory in the battle of Saint-Quentin against the French troops, more than 6.5 million ducats will be spent to build the magnificent Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Thanks to the construction and launching of the Grande y Felicísima Armada, the well known Invincible Armada, 9 million ducats were sent directly to the bottom of the sea. And of course, this Catholic and universal civilisation will need to build a new capital on the banks of the Manzanares River. For the reader who is curious about the conversion, the ducat of the 16th and early 17th century would currently be equivalent to around 167.1 euros. True, the figures are… shocking!

Therefore, between 1500 and 1650, the Castilian monarchy – and by proximity, the rest of the European monarchies – lived in a veritable economic bubble generated by the massive influx of precious metals. The latest studies estimate that the Castilian Crown extracted some 17,000 tonnes of silver and 70 tonnes of gold from the American colonies. This metal binge led the state to have a distorted view of the real economy.

The paradox occurred when, despite the huge inflow of gold and silver and the collection of high taxes, they did not cover all the expenses incurred by the state. We should bear in mind that the Castilian Crown would only use this extraordinary wealth to finance all the delusions of grandeur of the Castilian elites, which in most cases would come into direct conflict with the real needs of the population. For this reason, when the oligarchies of a country were more interested in working for lavishness than for the real possibilities offered by the reinvestment of capital, all this leads to the destruction of the productive fabric itself.

 

Indebtedness of the Castilian Crown

By the mid-17th century, the Castilian Crown was in debt to the tune of more than 100 million ducats. This gigantic debt forced them to declare successive suspensions of payments. To plug this hole, the Crown was forced to issue a large amount of public debt, which would end up in the hands of the main European banks, such as the German banks – the Fuggers and the Welsers – and the Genoese banks of the Spínola, Centurione, Balbi, Strata and, above all, Gio Luca Pallavicino. The Crown will pay the Welsers by granting them the exploitation of the mines in Mexico and the right of conquest over extensive territories in what are now Venezuela and Colombia. For their part, the Fuggers will obtain all the commercial concessions over the territories of Chile and Peru. Today, they are some of the most powerful families of the continent. And, all the luxourious palaces of the strada nuova de Genova, principal artery of luxury in the city, still today, they constitute the biggest concentration of aristocratic residences in all of Europe.

Faced with the successive financial crises that the Castilian Crown began to suffer, many European businessmen living in the American colonies preferred not to ship their precious metals to Castilian ports – a monopoly granted in Cádiz and Seville – for fear of the massive confiscations decreed by the Crown. They, therefore, sought to invest their assets in other emerging sectors of the colonial economy at the end of the 17th century, such as agriculture, livestock and manufacturing production.

The Castilian Crown was therefore forced to look for new and regular sources of income. For this reason, it set in motion the ambitious plan of the king’s minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, known as the Unión de Armas, which would require each kingdom that formed part of the Hispanic Monarchy – that is, mainly Portugal and the Crown of Aragon – to contribute a certain amount of money and soldiers.

“By the middle of the 17th century, the Castilian Crown would have an economic debt of more than 100 million ducats. This gigantic debt forced them to declare successive suspensions of payments”.

Relaxing the trade monopoly

Portugal, which had been part of the Hispanic Monarchy since the end of the 16th century, refused to grant any further economic contribution, given that Castile exploited its colonies, which led to a war that lasted more than 28 years. Finally, with the economic support of England and Holland, Portugal managed to free itself from the control of the Habsburgs, but the price it had to pay involved the cession of important territories in Brazil and the change of ownership of the colonies of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Cape Town, Goa, Bombay, Macao and Nagasaki, among others.

As for the Crown of Aragon, the Castilian oligarchy did not gauge the situation correctly when it accepted that King Philip IV would swear the Catalan constitutions, a sine qua non condition for obtaining the desired funds. Ignorance of the laws regulating the king’s functions within the Catalan territories would be the focus of important institutional discussions, given that the king – within the Principality – was obliged by law to explain the use of the resources granted. For their part, the Catalans were more interested in having their proposals for new Catalan constitutions approved and grievances addressed than in engaging in absurd wars.

But at the genesis of the institutional debate – between Castile and the Principality – we find a much deeper problem. If, since the end of the 16th century, Castile had moved towards a political system of an absolutist nature, where power resided in a single person, who decided without being accountable to any parliament, the opposite was true in the Principality, where the General Courts of Catalonia were the legislative body representing all strata of society, including the king.

The constant inflow of precious metals into the Castilian economy would remain stable until the mid-18th century, but only a very small percentage would remain within the Castilian economic system since the rest would continue to be used to pay off the monstrous debt of the State. Historiography estimates that it was not until 1820 that the Spanish state recovered from this huge expenditure, largely due to the fact that it had annexed the productive economy of the whole of the peninsular Mediterranean strip at the beginning of the 18th century.

The system of privileges and monopolies developed by the Bourbon trade policy continued to fail, and new agents had to be introduced to guarantee the viability of trade with America. Therefore, with the Royal Decree of Free Trade of 2 February 1778, the monopoly of Cádiz and Seville was definitively broken and Catalonia’s direct trade with America was favoured, which provided a new way of doing business. Funnily enough, today, 34% of Spain’s GDP continues to be contributed by the productive economy of the entire Mediterranean peninsular strip. Therefore, nothing happens by chance…

 

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The Epiphany is the best known celebration of the Christmas cycle. And, instead, only the Gospel of St. Matthew gives specific news of the Three Wise Men, but in a rather enigmatic way. It does not even specify the names, the number or the exact origin. So, what is the true story of the biblical Magi? 

 

Let’s start by taking a good look at how St. Matthew introduces the Magi in his Gospel. First, he assures us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the time of King Herod, and then he relates the appearance of the Magi as follows: “Shortly afterward there came to Jerusalem wise men from the East who asked ‘Where is the King of the Jews, who has just been born? We have seen his star there in the East and have come to prostrate ourselves before him’.”

In fact, St. Matthew tells us in the Gospel that “the news greatly troubled King Herod, and with him all Jerusalem.” So Herod let the Magi go, but asked them to inform him of the exact place where the child was born before returning to their villages, so that he too could go and worship him. But it seems that the magi did not keep the word given to Herod…

The Gospel says that the wise men continue on their way, always following the star, until it stops just at the point where Jesus is. Then, St. Matthew narrates: “And when they entered the house, they saw the child with Mary, […] they fell down before him and opened the chests they were carrying to offer him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And as a dream warned them that they were not to see Herod again, they returned to their own country by another way.” After this, they are never spoken of again.

The mess that surrounds the story

If we carefully analyze the Gospel narrative of St. Matthew, we quickly realize that at no time are we told that there were three characters, but, instead, we are told that “some magi” left three gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh). Nor is the exact point of the meeting specified. And most surprising of all: at no time is the kingly status of these characters specified.

If we look for more canonical information —the official one— about these characters, nowhere do we find more information. Even so, if we go to the other Gospel that narrates the birth and infancy of Jesus, that of St. Luke, nowhere are the Magi mentioned, nor the slaughter of the innocents, nor the flight into Egypt. On the other hand, St. Luke does provide details about the annunciation, the transfer of Joseph and pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to be registered in the census ordered by the Roman Emperor Augustus, the adoration of the shepherds and the birth of Jesus in a stable. 

Therefore, the New Testament offers very different versions of Christmas that, with the maturation of the passing of the centuries, with intentional contributions and biased interpretations, have ended up shaping the fantastic and braided story that we know. We must not lose sight of the fact that along the way new characters were added, such as the ox and the mule, which Pope Benedict XVI has publicly rejected, or the fourth wise man and other inventions.

“If the original Greek word was translated from an Old Persian word, ‘maguusha’, then the meaning would be: priest.”

Does Magi mean magicians?

Then, The question that the initial story suggests to us is: why does Matthew make these curious characters appear? The important fact to keep in mind is that the original Gospel of St. Matthew was written in Greek, a manuscript of which has not reached us until our days. We only have the version translated into Latin by St. Jerom, but already in the fourth century.

If we continue analyzing the text, the key to everything lies in the word “magi”. Is this the word used in the original text written in Greek? And then another rather disturbing question arises: what did it mean to be a “magi” in the context in which the gospel is written?

Historical etymology offers us two possibilities. If the original word written was Greek “μάγο”, it would be used with a pejorative connotation. An expression aimed at defining sorcerers, dream interpreters, enchanters, practitioners of dark rites and, even, charlatans. It seems that this is not the case! On the other hand, if the original Greek word was translated from an Old Persian word, “maguusha”, then the meaning would be: priest. Surely, the most likely!

Therefore, if we follow this etymological path, we find in the Babylonian past a religious caste of Persian priests known as “magi” with a recognized prestige in astrological knowledge and followers of the Zoroastrian religion. To understand the historical etymology even better, we must keep in mind that the Jewish presence in Persia was very notable from the time of Nebuchadnezzar (6th century B.C.), when the Babylonian ruler conquered Judah and enslaved the Jews. 

These Hebrew communities, who awaited the Messiah, would surely have influenced the Persian astrological tradition. In the 6th century A.D., these magi —now named and numbered— were depicted in the Persian style —mainly in their clothing— in the well-known mosaic of St. Apollinaris the New in the basilica of Ravenna (Italy).

“The textual analysis places us in front of a purely propagandistic story: to demonstrate that Christianity was broad, integrating cultures and universal.”

The legend consolidates with the biblical canon

Whether the visit of the Magi happened or not, we arrive at the Council of Nicaea in 325, when the official discourse of the Church was institutionalized and it was agreed that only four official gospels —Matthew, Luke, John and Mark— would mark the discourse of dogma. The rest of the texts, more than 70, will be considered apocryphal, that is to say, unreliable, since they are based on suppositions that cannot be contrasted.

It is curious because all these texts were written at the same time as the four canonical gospels. What is evident is that, with the passing of the centuries, theology, liturgy and Christian tradition were forged, complemented by other writings that filled the gaps left by the official texts. It was in this process that the story of the Persian magi took shape.

If we avoid the fantastic and we are absolutely rational, the textual analysis places us before a purely propagandistic story. The incipient and modern Christian discourse that emerged from Nicaea had the need to demonstrate that its radius of action was broad, integrating cultures and endowed with a universal dimension. The story of the Magi fulfilled this message and —no less important— allowed linking the prophecies of the Old Testament with the New Testament, since it demonstrated that the sacred scriptures were not mistaken in the fact that “all kings coming from everywhere will prostrate themselves before him.”

Nor is it by chance that the number of the magi was set at three: because it is the number of the divinity par excellence, of the Holy Trinity; because it is the reflection of the three ages of the human being, youth, maturity and old age; because they are the three continents known at that time, Europe, Asia and Africa; and because they are the three dimensions of time, past, present and future.

The pieces that build history

It was from then on that a special iconography began to be created, with diverse meanings. Soon the authentic reality of the characters from the East ceased to be relevant and the ritual symbolism of the Middle Ages became important. The Carolingian world turned them into kings. The story goes that Frederick I Barbarossa, during the Third Crusade, found the bodies of the three kings in Constantinople and brought them to Germany. Today, Cologne Cathedral preserves the relics of the Magi. The mendicant orders of the 13th century contributed to the tradition of making the nativity scene, and the epiphany has a prominent place. The Renaissance brought blackness to King Balthasar.

The long night of time fixed and generated new details about the Magi, which impregnated the European cultural tradition forever and ever. The story of the Three Wise Men is a story built in pieces, which has changed generation after generation and has reached our days as a commercial spectacle. And, like all good stories, it is made over a slow fire.

 

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Evolutionary theory is much more complex than a reduction to simple individual competencies. The thing is that Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of the species led to the conclusion that the existing social hierarchies within contemporary societies were the result of “natural selection” or “survival of the fittest”. Even so, the selective application of biological concepts in a social and anthropological framework can be harmful to humanity.

 

At the end of the 19th century, the English naturalist and philosopher Herbert Spencer pushed for the application of the biological concepts of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” in the field of social science. Spencer thus invented the concept of “social Darwinism”, which was a deliberate misrepresentation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.

The concept became very popular in academic circles, for example in the neoclassical or marginalist school of economics, represented by the economists Jevons, Menger, Walras, Pareto and Marshall. This school of economic thought focused mainly on explaining individual behaviour and the exchange of goods and services, abandoning the great classical themes of wealth generation and distribution, which had occupied economic analysis since the mid-17th century.

However, it is not by chance that this concept gained wide acceptance – especially among the European high society – since it appeared just at the time when the old European monarchies were transforming into today’s modern states, adopting capitalism as the only socio-economic system and abandoning mercantilism for good.

Therefore, Western states – including the emerging United States – began to attach great importance to competition between individuals – here also between companies, territories or countries – within the always-defended free market and to justify why there are strong actors who see their wealth and power increase, as opposed to those considered weak actors who see their wealth and power diminish, if they ever had any!

Thus, “social Darwinism” would only mean the ideal expression of dominant material relations. Since then, the concept has become very popular among Western societies and has been widely disseminated in academic and social circles, since it has provided Western societies with a pseudo-scientific justification of their privileged positions worldwide. Moreover, it has allowed them to continue to rationally justify their past colonisation of the Americas, Africa and Asia. It has even allowed them to justify misogyny.

Western states – including the emerging United States – justify why there are strong actors who see their wealth and power increase, as opposed to those considered weak actors who see their wealth and power decrease.

Of course, there are other options!

At the antipodes of Spencer, we find the Russian geographer and zoologist Piotr Kropotkin who, at the end of the 19th century, would provide an opposite view to “social Darwinism”. For Kropotkin, cooperation is the key factor in human evolution, while competition is a parallel issue.

Throughout his book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, Kropotkin unpacks how cooperation and mutual aid are common and essential practices in nature. If we humans renounce solidarity and replace it with greed, social stratification will appear, absolutism will be justified and fascism will be sweetened. The latter state could not be observed by Piotr Kropotkin, but it was magnificently described by George Orwell in his well-known fable “The Revolt of the Animals”.

Thus, only a morality based on freedom, solidarity and justice can overcome our destructive instincts, which are also part of human nature. It will therefore be of vital importance that science be the foundation of ethics, forcing it to shy away from any principle that sacralises power. It will also be important to constantly study social structures, which will enable us to produce the knowledge necessary to meet human needs, the basis for the development of a free society.

Those who think that “freedom is doing whatever you want” are fools! Hegel said that “freedom is consciousness of necessity” and Montesquieu, very beautifully, said that “freedom is being able to do whatever we want, when we want”. Then there are the phonies who say “Freedom is to have no limits”. And where do you find this? Perhaps in geometry, where there is only the point and the straight line or regular curves. No, life is pure exigency with limits. Freedom without responsibility is a fraud,” says the Spanish philosopher Antonio Escohotado in his work “The Enemies of Commerce. A moral history of property”.

Mutual support is therefore the term that describes cooperation, reciprocity and teamwork, which gates or implies a mutual benefit for the people cooperating or involved. There are countless examples of mutualism within the animal and plant kingdom, such as the collaborative work of ants in gathering food for the winter, or the highly effective strategy of plants, which take advantage of the interaction with insects and birds to pollinate. More than 170,000 species end up contributing to 35% of global food crop production.

Certainly, nature is full of examples and Kropotkin provides plenty of arguments to show that humans are interdependent. Indeed, this is the key to our success as a species in human evolution, to the extent that early human societies practised this strategy when it was a matter of survival.

The idea of the socially independent individual is a myth that has been widely promoted by Western states – especially in the Anglo-Saxon world – and by large multinational corporations, which have projected countless triumphant models of self-made men and women. The clear visualisation of their triumphs has allowed the system to model us on Spencer’s concept. Somehow, it has managed to turn us into atomised and easily controllable consumers, given that from the time we are small we are educated to become individual, self-sufficient, independent, property-owning, smartphone-carrying people who, although they make it easier for us to connect, paradoxically lead us into isolation. Without knowing it, social Darwinism is embedded in our brains.

The idea of the socially independent individual is a myth that has been widely promoted by Western states – especially in the Anglo-Saxon world – and by large multinational corporations, which have projected countless triumphant models of self-made men and women.

New ways for old strategies

Voltaire famously said that “civilisation does not abolish barbarism, but perfects it”. Strange as it may seem, the phrase is still relevant today. Slavery has always existed and will always exist, it is just that the contemporary world has softened the methods. What are the two things a human being would defend with his life? His children and a place to stay.

And nowadays, what are the two mechanisms that subjugate us to the system? Well, raising a family and acquiring a home. The skill of the system lies in the fact that it has been able to create profitable businesses around these two principles. This is why the desire for private property and the formation of the ideal family as a consumer entity has been fostered, while at the same time, wages are frozen, house prices rise and the cost of living has increased. This has resulted in a population of dependents and convinced people for a large part of their lives. These are the ones who will go into debt and submit to precarious work or an unjust law to maintain these standards imposed by the system. That is why it is up to us to declare ¡enough is enough!

Mutuality in Catalonia

In Catalonia, there are countless examples of mutualism, which can be traced back to the guilds and brotherhoods of the Middle Ages. Since the end of the 19th century, mutual societies, cooperatives and associations have been one of the distinctive features of Catalan society – just look at the amount of money raised by the TV3 Marathon year after year! The richness of its associative fabric shows a great diversity of entities that form the backbone of our country, ranging from leisure and sports associations, mutual or health insurance companies, social welfare, agricultural cooperatives, cultural or neighbourhood associations to political organisations, savings banks or community banking.

Community banking is based on the principle of mutualism, which is based on the associative tendencies of human beings to satisfy their needs through voluntary and peaceful cooperation, mutual aid and solidarity in a model where producers freely exchange products and services.

From the very beginning, we explained that 11Onze is a fincom. A fintech platform where the community can educate itself financially, get access to diverse content and access a growing range of financial products: from the El Canut account you can do your banking, buy gold and cryptos, and soon get access to credit.

Do you want to know what the great secret of the Catalans is?

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As with the resolution of past conflicts, the meeting of the victors at the end of the Second World War in the German city of Potsdam in the summer of 1945 once again divided the world into two blocs. The great Western powers implemented a new economic model allowing them to impose their pre-eminence over other countries.

 

Two political, social and economic models – in principle antagonistic – that would clash several times over the decades in small, low-intensity armed conflicts that would become the great lever of economic growth for the Western world.

However, the Potsdam Conference also confirmed that industrial capitalism – initiated at the end of the 18th century – was an exhausted economic model. The more than sixty million deaths resulting from the Second World War forced the old European monarchies – now evolved into Western democracies – to adopt much more subtle ways of achieving their economic goals. The new extractive strategy therefore had to be less catastrophic and more effective. Therefore, the new economic model that will be progressively deployed will no longer involve having to physically occupy territory but will be sufficient to control local elites.

With this new strategy, the United States, as the big winner and supported by a powerful military-industrial complex, will be able to displace the world’s economic centre – from Europe to North America – through the imposition of its currency, the financial pressure exerted by its banks, and the creation of technological dependence on a global scale. Thus, the establishment of their well-known multinationals – Amazon, Nike, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Apple, McDonald’s, Disney, HP and others – will allow it to directly or indirectly conquer almost the entire world. Entertainment, mainly cinema and major sporting events such as the Olympic Games, the Super Bowl or the World Cup, will be the real weapons of mental and material subjugation that would make it possible to extend the American dream to the whole world.

The United States will be able to displace the world’s economic centre – from Europe to North America – through the imposition of its currency, the financial pressure exerted by its banks, and the creation of technological dependence on a global scale

Social peace, the basis of the new economic efficiency

It all began in the spring of 1951 in Montreal, when representatives of various Western intelligence agencies met secretly with university psychiatry professors at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. As a result of that meeting, we know from declassified documents that the US military invested a large amount of money in McGill University in Montreal to research sensory isolation.

This research was initiated by Dr Donald Olding Hebb, who would eventually abandon the project when he realised the magnitude of the tragedy and completed by Dr Donald Ewen Cameron, who would take it to a higher level. Cameron went on to experiment with many patients who were subjected to a multitude of electroshock sessions, combined with sleep cures and constant repetition of recorded messages to the point of mental exhaustion.

The study found that sensory isolation is a way of generating extreme monotony that leads to a reduction in critical thinking capacity through the confusion of the individual’s mind. Therefore, when a person is not able to reason… we are in trouble!

The results of all these experiments will allow Western intelligence agencies to design mechanisms of control over their population to guarantee social stability within democracies. Consequently, the idea of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right to private property, the fundamental basis of the free market, will be repeated ad nauseam. To ensure economic efficiency, competition will be made an instrument to drive economic growth, based on the premise that “if the company next door has better products and more sales than me, I will consequently have to develop better ideas to be better than my competition”.

Not least, the studies on sensory deprivation will enable Western intelligence agencies to develop interrogation manuals – such as the famous KUBARK manual of the US military and the CIA – to be used against internal and external dissidents of the system the West’s postulates.

The management of fear

The technological breakthrough of World War II would take humanity into outer space – to the Moon and beyond – but it also led to the development of the atomic bomb as a weapon of global destruction. It will be used as an instrument of political pressure that persists to this day.

The five main arms manufacturing countries in the world – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – are the ones who are in charge of our peace. They make a business out of war, but they sell peace, above all, through the propagandist MSM serving Western hegemonic powers that test the ‘democracy’ of each country. They are big media that confuse freedom of expression with freedom of pressure and decide who is a dictator or a coup leader, which incidentally has the “bad habit” of making people vote to find out what they think about that policy or any other issue that may affect them. And those media outlets that don’t follow these guidelines are shut down or taken to the confines of the system. The news shows a reality that often doesn’t exist to suggest, isolate and pit us against each other!

Countries like the United States, England, France, Russia and China – they are the ones who are in charge of our peace. They make a business out of war, but they sell peace, above all, through the propagandist MSM serving Western hegemonic powers that test the ‘democracy’ of each country.

Economic shock therapy

As everyone knows, the Wall Street crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1932, some 5,096 banks went into receivership. Their collapse drove many companies into bankruptcy, which saw stocks of goods accumulate, and led to a significant fall in prices, especially in the agricultural sector. Finally, the decline in economic activity led to a runaway rise in unemployment.

Influenced by the economist John M. Keynes, the newly proclaimed President of the United States, F. D. Roosevelt, launched a major public employment programme to get people back to work: the policy known as the New Deal. But it was not until after the Second World War that the Depression ended, thanks in large part to the implementation of the famous Marshall Plan, which generalised Keynes’s regulatory and interventionist model to most of the Western world.

Contrary to Keynes’ postulates, we find already in the late 1940s a small group of intellectuals – known as the Mont Pelerin Society and led by the Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek – who were convinced that if governments stopped providing services and regulating markets, the problems of the world economy would solve themselves. One of its leading representatives and professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, believed that through economic shock therapy, he would push societies to accept a purer, deregulated capitalism.

Indeed, the theses of the shock doctrine have been imposed all over the world in different processes. These radical measures have triumphed not so much from the hand of freedom and democracy but from their imposition through shocks, crises and states of emergency. Thus, far from sugar-coating the role of the US in becoming a global hegemon, its ability to control the world is due to sanctions, restrictions, blockades, freezes, confiscations or military action.

Above all, the role played by the creation of a specific international bureaucracy, generated strictly because it does not depend on the United Nations and is therefore exempt from any direct control that might upset the international community, has been essential. These supranational bodies – World Bank, World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund – have executed all these economic shock therapies by the book all over the world, combining political pressure with extortion. And there is no shortage of examples!

Milton Friedman believed that through economic shock therapy, he would push societies to accept a purer deregulated capitalism.

A system in need of a financial mafia

In 2004, the American John Perkins – a former employee of the American consulting firm CHA Consulting, Inc. – published an interesting book entitled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, in which he explains in detail how he participated in different processes of economic colonisation of Third World countries, especially on the South American continent, during the 1980s.

Perkins, as chief economist at CHA Consulting, had the task of identifying countries with natural resources of interest to the clients – mostly corporations – represented by his consultancy.

Once identified, the next stage was to send a “small army of jackals” to the country in question to promise that, with the sale of its resources, the country would achieve Western standards of social welfare and economic stability. Finally, the country was forced to take out a large loan – through the World Bank or other related organisations – justified to the public as part of the deal and because it had neither the technology nor the infrastructure to extract, produce or manufacture the natural resource.

But this amount of money never reached the country in question, since it left the World Bank – based in Washington – and was diverted to an account in Houston, Texas or San Francisco, where, funnily enough, the owner was a company that worked for the consultancy, and which specialised in the construction of the infrastructure necessary to extract, produce or manufacture the natural resource.

Thus, the money was used to pay for the cost of the construction – power stations, roads, industrial parks, ports – which in the end only generated large profits for the companies awarded the contracts. It is true that, to a lesser degree, they also ended up enriching a local minority who owned the basic industries or commercial establishments, but to the detriment of the majority. Thus, at the end of the process, all the country’s economic resources earmarked for health, education or other public services were used to repay those loans. As John Perkins explains, knowing upfront the country’s inability to repay the loans was an important part of executing the plan.

Thus, this system has allowed Western corporations or supranational bodies – the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund – to create a parallel empire that controls large parts of the planet: the so-called “areas of influence”. It is for this reason that Western democracies can tell one of these “voluntarily influenced” countries that if it cannot repay its loans, it can always sell its resources to be exploited… without the obligation of a social or environmental commitment; or that it has to allow the construction of a military base on its territory, or that it has to vote against certain countries considered “enemies” at the next United Nations meeting.

When the president of one of these countries does not accept, the government is often intervened or overthrown. The process starts with a strong national and international smear campaign, false news of all kinds is created to condition public opinion and, in the end – in favour of democracy – the coup d’état is carried out with full justification. And if it did not go well, he would end up being assassinated. Contemporary history is full of examples: Mossadeq in Iran (1953), Ngô Đình Diệm in Vietnam (1955), Lumumba in the Congo (1960) Allende in Chile (1973). More recently, the pressures of all kinds that Lula da Silva has had to endure to stop the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon, and Maduro to nationalise Venezuelan oil or Petro for the decarbonisation of the Colombian economy.

The economy of death

In 2009, amid the global recession, the English psychologist Oliver James published the book “The Selfish Capitalist”, which concludes that behind the mental illnesses of today’s Western society lies the capitalism that has been practised for the last fifty years. Simplifying a lot, the thesis of the book exposes how the Anglo-Saxon neoliberal economy has pushed individuals to want to have more and more cars, mobile phones, clothes, and money… and all this has led to permanent dissatisfaction of the individual. Based on a study published by the World Health Organisation in 2004, concludes that mental illness affects almost 23% of the population in the Anglo-Saxon world and 11.5% in the rest of the European countries, given that they entered the neoliberal wheel later.

For example, in the United States, the number of young students with huge debt is increasing, just as there is a huge number of people in debt for healthcare, credit cards or mortgages. So this system, designed to exploit the so-called “developing” countries, has now turned against the West.

On the other hand, neoliberal economics has sought to maximise short-term profits without taking into account the social cost and environmental impact. And here, neoliberals like Friedman got it wrong: beyond the short term, we need to increase profits in the long term, so that everyone wins. If we are guided by the goal of paying a decent rate of return to investors who invest, we can begin to change the model.

According to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global military spending increased by 3.7% in real terms in 2022, to a new all-time high of $2.24 trillion. If much of this money went to pay the same companies that get these million-dollar contracts, but instead of paying to make missiles, it would go to collecting all the plastics in the oceans, restoring destroyed natural environments, cleaning up the waste dumped in the oceans… the planet would be a much better place. And in this process, new technologies can help us to make it possible.

This system, designed to exploit the so-called “developing” countries, has now turned against the West.

Multipolarity

This system has worked as long as the winners have been the United States, since it allowed their allies to take a piece of the pie on the condition that they supported its international policy or facilitated access to their markets for its companies. The United States has shared the pie with aligned countries, but not with those who were willing to dispute its economic interests.

At this point, we are entering a new era where the distribution of political, military and financial power will no longer rest with a single country. In short, the world will no longer dance to a single tune. We have already begun to dance to the tune of oriental music, to the rhythms of the balalaika, combined with a little samba, a touch of Indi-pop and a dash of mbaqanga.

 

11Onze is the community fintech of Catalonia. Open an account by downloading the super app El Canut for Android or iOS and join the revolution!

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For some time now, history has brought us back to an old and still unresolved debate: what exactly is Spain? A difficult question that a handful of generations have had to face. Along the way there have been all sorts of debates, promises, triumphs and defeats. And, in spite of everything, we are still far from finding an answer.

 

Oriol Garcia Farré, historian and 11Onze agent

 

After Franco’s long night, Spain was faced with new challenges from 1975 onwards. The state had to strike a balance between the reform proposed by Franco’s government and the rupture demanded by the opposition. The agreed solution was to move together towards a new regime based on a new Magna Carta. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 was divided into ten titles and 169 articles. In the text, the term “nation” appears only twice, while the term “State” contains 90 entries.

The first and most important mention of “nation” is the one that opens the Preamble. “The Spanish nation, desiring to establish justice, liberty, and security and to promote the good of all its members, in the use of its sovereignty…,” the founding text begins, as if the nation itself were writing the text that will be read. Further on, this self-proclaimed “nation” expresses the will to “constitute itself as a social and democratic state governed by the rule of law,” which will deploy all its organs and functions.

 

The “nation,” the subject of dispute

The reference to “all its members” seems to refer to individuals. Indeed, Article 2 bases the Constitution on “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards,” which “recognises and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions that make it up and the solidarity between all of them.” It is precisely this article that is the subject of continuous litigation. 

This famous article 2, in reality, seems to be telling us that it is not the individuals who decide or want something, but the nation. For it is the nation that holds sovereignty, not the people. And the one who makes this proclamation of sovereignty is not the people either, but is personified in the figure of the King of Spain. Therefore, everything that makes up the nation is confusing.

The kingdom of “nationalities”

Certainly, the allusion to nationalities and regions points to the old idea of the territorial division of the kingdom. This word —“kingdom”— is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. A strange thing, given that Spain is configured, in its form, as a kingdom. Kingdom of Spain, in the singular. But then, what are nationalities and what does the term hide to refer to these ethno-cultural organic entities?

It seems evident that it is a pious expedient to allude, without naming them, to the ancient kingdoms of Hispania, in addition to Castile, formed by: Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, Aragon, Navarre, Galicia, the Basque Country, Andalusia (and Portugal). So what is the meaning and function of nationalities and regions? It is impossible to know, since these concepts do not appear again in the Constitution.

 

Everything revolves around the “reconquest”

Contrary to the discourse repeated like a mantra within the Francoist school system, learning about Spain was articulated around the concept of the “reconquest.” This is a historiographical term – still used in secondary school curricula in Castile – which describes the process of recovery of the feudal world over the Muslim and Jewish world, because it is understood that the Muslims were not the legitimate owners of the Hispanic geography…

This process began shortly after the arrival of the Arabs on the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century and ended with the Catholic Monarchs in the 15th century, who would end up unifying “Spain” as an integral state. This reconquest would end up forging “the Spanish spirit.” In other words, historical arguments to justify the National Catholicism imposed after the Civil War. 

Even so, it does not seem that there has ever existed ‘de facto’ a “Spanish nation,” that is, integrating nationalities and regions, as the current Constitution would have us believe. It is not even certain that it has ever been consolidated as a nation-state, in the modern sense. We see it below!

“It does not seem that there has ever existed ‘de facto’ a ‘Spanish nation’, that is to say, integrating nationalities and regions, as the current Constitution would have us believe.”

From confederation to absolutism

The dynastic state, initiated by the Catholic Monarchs, as we have stated, ended up becoming an absolutist state. Before becoming an absolutist state, it had to restrict the power of the nobility, force adherence to the Catholic religion and unite all power in a loyal devotion to the King. Contrary to what some think, the language remained outside this power scheme. Therefore, it was never a unifying element until the beginning of the 18th century, although Francoism tried to falsify history once again.

Power was organised around five Councils of State: Castile, Aragon, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal (1580-1640) and the West Indies. Therefore, the different territories that made up the geography of the Corona de Hispaniae —plural of Hispania— maintained their own administration, currency, and laws. In this sense, it was a kind of confederation of nationalities, which retained their own peculiarities, charters, and traditions.

The predominance of Castile (which included Galicia, Asturias, and León) over the other existing kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula became increasingly evident, in terms of extension and population and, above all, after incorporating the West Indies into the Castilian kingdom, which did so by way of “discovery,” with all that this entailed. Thus, the progressive transfer of the economy from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic brought about a paradigm shift in relations between the different territories that made up the Hispanic Crown.

This plurality, which was not without its ups and downs, gradually led to a greater centralisation of power. But the definitive leap came after the War of Succession and the subsequent enthronement of the Bourbon dynasty on the Castilian throne. Between 1707 and 1716, the new King Felipe V promulgated the well-known Nueva Planta Decrees throughout the different territories of the Crown of Aragon as punishment for their rebellion and as a right of conquest. However, this loss of autonomy never affected Navarre or the Basque Provinces, since these territories had been loyal to the Bourbon cause. 

It was then that Castile was transformed into Bourbon Spain: an absolute and highly centralised monarchy. As proof of this process, Felipe V wrote in 1717: “I have judged it convenient […] to reduce all my Kingdoms of Spain to the uniformity of the same laws, customs, habits, customs and courts, all governed equally by the laws of Castile.” Thus, as a result of repression and by right of conquest, a forcibly Castilianised Spain began to take shape as a modern (French-imported) national (Castilian-exported) state. Naturally, the illusion was short-lived.

“Of the nine contemporary Spanish constitutions, all of them have in common the same affirmation: they are a constitution of the monarchy and of Catholic confession.”

The failed illusion of the “federative republic”

The enlightened writer José Marchena (1769-1821), exiled in Bayonne to escape the Inquisition, wrote a revealing report in 1792 for Jacques Pierre Brissot, a Girondin and foreign minister of the French Republic, on the difficulties of implementing in Spain a constitution similar to the French one of 1791. His words are quite revealing: “France has now adopted a constitution which makes of this vast nation a united and indivisible republic. But in Spain, the various provinces of which have very different customs and usages, and to which Portugal must be united, it should only be possible to form a federative republic.”

In a similar vein, in 1808, in Cadiz, the famous politician from Girona, Antonio de Campmany wrote, just after the French War had begun, in the famous publication ‘El Sentinella’: “…. In France, then, there are no provinces or nations; no Provence or Provençals; no Normandy or Normans. They have all been wiped off the map of their territories and even their names […]. They are all called French.” And he goes on to say: “So what would become of the Spanish if there had not been Aragonese, Valencians, Murcians, Andalusians, Asturians, Galicians, Extremadurians, Catalans, Castilians? Each of these names inflames the pride of these small nations, which make up the great nation.”

Decade after decade, of the nine Spanish constitutions drafted during the contemporary age (1812-1978), all have in common —with minor nuances— the same affirmation: they are a constitution of the monarchy and of Catholic confession, the religion of the King and of the nation. Therefore, the unity of the nation is the unity of the monarchy.

Does it exist, then, a nation of nations?

 

11Onze is the community fintech of Catalonia. Open an account by downloading the super app El Canut for Android or iOS and join the revolution!

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The economy has been one of the main protagonists in the relationship between Catalonia and Spain. In an exercise of synthesis, we have compiled nine of these key moments in our history. They may not be the best known, but they are undoubtedly the ones that have marked a before and after. One after the other, they offer a chronology of encounters and misunderstandings.

 

“As long as Spain does not understand the Catalan issue,
Spain will be subjected to the same woes of the past”.
Américo Castro, 1924

 

1479. The construction of a dynastic state

After the Castilian Civil War, the two largest kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula (Castile and Catalan Confederation) together created a new political entity known as the Hispanic Monarchy. This dynastic state was formed from the union of just two elements: the army and foreign policy. The other elements that make up a modern state, such as borders, currencies, laws, and institutions, remained completely separate. Thus, with regard to the configuration and distribution of power, it should be borne in mind that, while Castile was organised according to the authority of the queen (Isabella), always above the nobility and the church, the Crown of Aragon was organised around the Constitució de l’Observança, which obliged the king (Ferran) to govern and make agreements in accordance with the laws of the Principality. This is the first difference in the system of political and economic organisation between Spain and Catalonia.

 

1556. The drift of history

With the death of the Castilian queen (Isabella), the peninsular dynastic state was at the point of dissolving. After family vicissitudes, the throne was eventually occupied by the grandson, due to the incapacity of the daughter (Juana) and the death of the son-in-law (Felipe). The dynastic union between the two kingdoms was thus definitively confirmed in the persons of Carlos (the future emperor) and his successors. For years, Emperor Charles sought to consolidate the idea of a universal monarchy that would be polyglot and open to the entire territory of the Habsburg Empire. The Emperor’s policy was aimed at changing the course of European history. It was of no use for him to believe that it was possible for the rights of cities and regions to coexist with the imperial structure, since the idea of the nation-state was gaining ground, largely as a result of the Reformation. Nor did it ever manage to create the necessary complicity between Castilians and Catalans to forge a common country.

1585. The perversity of the system

In the autumn of 1585, King Felipe II of Castile presided over the celebration of the General Courts of the Catalan Confederation in Monzón. Following the tradition established by his father (Carlos), Felipe II thus recognised the duality of power in the peninsular territory formed by the crowns of Castile and Catalonia Confederation. The parliamentary system always involves tensions – because that’s intrinsic to debating – but it seemed that an agreement would be reached. The problem arose when royal officials tried to blatantly boycott the Cortes‘ resolutions. And it is even more perverse when the Monarchy – unilaterally – decides to manipulate and rewrite the agreements made by the Catalan Cortes to favour its interests. Among the most important alterations, which affected the entire Crown of Aragon, were those relating to the control of trade, the increase in spending by the Royal Court in Catalan territory, and the dilution of the control that the Diputació del General (the Generalitat) could have over the Holy Office (the Inquisition), the repressive arm of the monarchy.

 

1626. Towards a single centralised unit

In March 1626, Barcelona received the King of Castile, Felipe IV, who had come to the city to swear the Catalan Constitutions. The reason was none other than to unravel the ambitious plan of the king’s minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares. The project, known as the “Unión de Armas”, called for each kingdom that formed part of Castile – that is, mainly the Catalan Confederation – to contribute a certain amount of money and soldiers. But what the Castilian oligarchies did not realise was that if Felipe IV swore to the Catalan Constitutions, he was automatically granted the title of count of Barcelona, which obliged him to oversee their resources. The Catalans were, therefore, more interested in having their proposals for new Catalan Constitutions approved, and their grievances addressed, than in engaging in absurd wars. Curiously, two decades later, the northern Catalan territory would be dishonestly torn away from the main body. And it would not be until forty years later that Castile would officially notify the Generalitat of the loss of the northern Catalan territory.

1760. The rules of the game change

For several decades, a new family of French origin had held the throne of Castile, the Borbones. The open dispute over that ascension had been left behind, to the point that it had had to be settled on the battlefield. Four decades after the Nueva Planta Decree, King Carlos III convened the Cortes Generales in Madrid. In that new political paradigm that emerged from the battlefield, the representatives of the former territories of the Catalan Confederation -formed by Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and Mallorca- jointly presented a memorial containing a frontal critique of the Borbonic system in force. To put it very simply, the document, known as the “Memorial de greuges”, argued that the new state had to safeguard territorial plurality and move away from centralist and unifying structures.

 

1810. The construction of a new political reality

In the context of a European war, more than 240 deputies from all over the territory arrived in Cadiz convinced that they were going to make history, to write a Constitution. King Carlos IV of Spain had been deposed as an absolutist, after the French occupation of the peninsular territory. The Cortes of Cádiz established that power resided in the citizens as a whole, represented by the Cortes. But Cadiz was also – for the first time – a real opportunity for Catalan politicians to be invited to participate actively in the new Spanish political system that was being created. In that revolutionary context, the Catalan delegation openly defended the proposal to modernise Spain in accordance with the Austrian project that had been liquidated less than a century before. Therefore, economic and social development had to be based on the industrialisation of the territories. But the Treaty of Valençay restored Fernando VII to the throne as an absolute monarch and frustrated all the modern ideas that had emerged from the Cortes de Cádiz and its revolutionary constitution, which had shaken Spain.

1870. History always gives a second chance

That summer of 1870 in Paris, María Isabel Luisa de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias, Queen of Spain, abdicated. This renunciation of power – like Emperor Carlos – was the consequence of an intense political debate about how Spain’s modernity was to be articulated. The dispute between Carlists and Liberals had been settled on the battlefields for the past three decades. But during the following decades the impasse would continue. Spain had entered a labyrinth from which it would take a hundred years to emerge. Modernity entailed a profound structural transformation, including the distribution of power. Historiography has approached this period from the perspective of the first crisis of Spanish capitalism. But, in reality, at the root of the economic problem was corruption. 

Politicians, military officers, and nobles speculated in both the railway companies and in construction, to the point that at the end of the decade there was a stock market crash of biblical proportions. The Civil War in the United States caused an increase in the price of raw materials – cotton – the driving force behind the Catalan textile industry, which – due to a lack of foresight on the part of the state – led to the ruin of many businessmen in this sector. And a prolonged period of poor harvests led to a sharp rise in the price of basic foodstuffs, which had a negative effect on the lower classes. In this difficult context, and given that the state was so heavily in debt, two solutions were found: on the one hand, to increase the tax burden on the working classes and, on the other, to embark on a colonial adventure such as the War of the Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru.

 

1931. The mountains are a good place to think

That spring of 1931, Spain opted to manage power according to a formula that had failed in the past. Corruption had exhausted the system of the Borbonic Restoration and, therefore, a new relationship with power had to be sought. The question then – and still today – was whether Spain could be a federation of nations. It had to be proved! It was in this context that the deputies of the recently created government of the Generalitat of Catalonia, charged with drafting a proposal for a relationship between Catalonia and Spain, took up residence at the Sanctuary of Nuria. Everyone was certain that this was a historic moment. 

The result was a constitutional text that responded to the will of Catalonia and its legitimate right to exercise self-determination. It was proposing a situation of legal and political equality with respect to the other peoples of the State. It was proposing to broaden our outlook. But the state became nervous. A year later, the Spanish Cortes approved a Statute that had nothing to do with the one endorsed months earlier by the people of Catalonia. It rejected the federal formula, reduced the powers of the Generalitat, and established the co-official status of Catalan and Spanish in a bilingual model. Catalonia was reduced to an “autonomous region within the Spanish state”. It was then that sabre rattling began to be heard in the distance, forcing Spain to return to the battlefield.

 

2004. Towards a new historical paradigm

With the hangover from the events of the last decade of the last century, everyone believed that Spain had chosen to recognise its diversity. The Catalan language was spoken – even – in the most intimate circles of the Castilian oligarchy. In a climate of economic strength, social stability, and mutual recognition, Catalonia believed it could rethink its relationship with Spain. Was it possible? The scrupulousness of the mission – as in the past – in drawing up a new constitutional framework, such as the new Statute of Catalonia, meant a major effort to find a meeting point where all social strata were represented. How this story continues is known to everyone. 1 October 2017 is the confirmation of the impossibility of dialogue and the need to go back to the beginning of everything: much earlier than the Castilian Civil War of 1479.

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Is there something magical about Halloween? Do we celebrate La Castanyada like those who celebrate Halloween in Anglo-Saxon countries? Do we worship death or life? Celebrating autumn with ‘panellets’, chestnuts and sweet potatoes may have more to do with our agricultural past than we think.

 

The genetic and cultural process that humans underwent five million years ago enabled us to transform objects into utensils, a fact that allowed us to adapt more effectively to different climates. Mobility was key to our survival. But about 10,000 years ago, this nomadism was altered by an even more revolutionary discovery: agriculture

The ability to produce one’s own food meant that we settled in areas suitable for cultivation and, at the same time, allowed us to keep wild herds in stables to ensure protein for the whole year. These primitive sedentary societies were conditioned forever by an agricultural and livestock calendar. It was then that the first evidence of the worship of gods, goddesses and ancestors appeared. 

And what does all this have to do with Halloween? Well, anthropology has studied in depth how there is a pattern, a belief, that is common in the origin of the festivity in an infinite number of cultures all over the world. Their starting point is always the same: the celebration of the birth of a period of darkness that extends into a period of light. This is how we find festivities such as the Roman Pomona, the Celtic Samhain or the Basque Udazkena. 

Likewise, Samhain or Udazkena marked the beginning of the agricultural calendar when fields and lands became barren — similar to when talking about the deceased — until the arrival of spring, when life flourished again. Thus, the start of a new cycle of life. These pagan beliefs practised by the inhabitants of the ‘pagus’ — the peasants — remained deeply rooted for millennia until the irruption of Christianity in the 1st century. 

The Catholic world appropriates pagan traditions

The beginning of the end of paganism came with Pope Boniface IV, who in 610 consecrated the Roman Pantheon of Agrippa, which until then had been dedicated to the pagan cult of Jupiter. Taking advantage of this fact, he instituted a feast commemorating all the unknown and anonymous saints of Christianity, which was celebrated on 13 May. 

But it was not until the middle of the 9th century, following the Carolingian Renaissance, that what we know as All Saints’ Day was definitively established throughout the medieval West. The papal encyclical of Gregory IV in 840 promulgated the definitive Christianisation of all the territories of the empire and forced the substitution of pagan festivals, such as Samhain or those of Pomona, for All Saints’ Day, changing the date of celebration to 1 November. For centuries, the Catholic world continued its policy of supplanting pagan ancestral traditions with church events, while in the Anglo-Saxon world, where Protestantism was pre-eminent, this pressure was relaxed. 

Today, we observe that while All Saints’ Day is more of a dark, sad, secluded day, Halloween — All Hallow’s Eve — is festive, sweet, fun and, yes, greatly amplified by the American propaganda machine. As for the rest of the world, such as the Philippines or Mexico, and especially in the wake of Pixar’s film ‘Coco’, the holiday is even more festive: not only the graves of the deceased are visited, but a family picnics are held around them, where masks and coloured ribbons are used, while special dishes are cooked.

 

In Catalonia, joy and severity

As for our culture, according to the folklorist and ethnologist Joan Amades in his well-known ‘Costumari català’ (Salvat Editors, 1982), All Saints’ Day has two very different faces: the joyful and festive one in the morning and the rigorous and severe one in the afternoon. This is because, as Amades recalls, there is a belief that, just after midday on 1 November, people who died not long ago return to live with their families for a few hours. 

There was even a tradition, in Barcelona, of placing the dishes on the table for the deceased, as if they were another guest. Likewise, it was very common, on 1 November, to call the deceased into coming home, but also to help them find their way to eternity. For this reason, it was customary to hang lanterns on the façades of the houses, and on the tombs. 

In ‘Costumari català’, Amades also recalls a custom typical of rural villages, where it was popular to go to cemeteries to offer of bread to the deceased. This tradition evolved into the popular ‘panellets’, which bakers turned into a business. 

Continuing with gastronomy, chestnuts, sweet potatoes and ‘panellets’ have been and still are the traditional Christmas specials of this time of year. As an anecdote, it is said that in some areas of Catalonia superstition states that if you eat chestnuts, your hair will fall out and, for this reason, women did not want to eat them. This is the reason why chestnuts were replaced by pine nuts. Perhaps this is why many ‘panellets’ are wrapped in pine seeds.

In short, All Saints’ Day, today, as in the past, always responds to the same spirit: to keep the memory of our ancestors alive and to venerate the cycle of life that is so well expressed in the peasant world.

 

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Until the mid-20th century, the official version of the transoceanic expedition that led to the discovery of the “New World” was somewhere between myth and romantic argument. But nothing of what had been recounted until then has turned out to be entirely true, not even the places of departure and return. For decades, a small group of historians – rejected by the academy and ignored by the media – have persisted in their work of dismantling a web of falsehoods surrounding the true facts.

 

If we shy away from fantasy and focus on making a true analysis of historical reality, which is based on the objective and scientific study of documentary sources – be they direct or indirect, primary or secondary – we will quickly realise that the usurpation of the historical identity of the transoceanic expedition carried out against the Catalan admiral Christopher Columbus is a fact

Without any economic or institutional baggage to condition their research, a small group of historians have been able to find the true version of the discovery of America and the real identity of its protagonists that was silenced by Castilian censorship. Comparative studies of popular manuals, general histories and planispheres, whether in Castilian, Portuguese or French editions, have revealed how the Crown of Castile – through pervasive censorship supported by specific laws – came to control most of the narrative about the American expedition. Fortunately, curiosity has unmasked the manipulation and revealed the crudeness with which the Crown of Castile worked to manipulate the facts in order to confuse public opinion about the true authorship of the discovery.

Therefore, we should not be surprised that the Castilian epic appears at the beginning of the 16th century, just when Columbus was stripped of all the titles signed in the “Capitulaciones de Santa Fe” which, let us remember, was the legal framework that supported the whole discovery of America. With that trial, the Crown succeeded in making the Columbus family a harmless family in the eyes of the authorities. Indeed, a long period of litigation began thereafter – first against Christopher Columbus and then against his descendants – to nullify the agreements. For more than eighty years, the Columbus family would sue the monarchy, but it would prove to be a fruitless affair.

 

Manipulated documentation

The task set in motion – first by the Crown of Castile and later by Spain – has promoted over the centuries a series of official and singular versions, with an infinite amount of mixed-up data, unlikely places, real characters mixed with fictitious ones, changes of identity or disparity in the natural origins of the main characters. This has made it possible to configure a novelistic story, mutable to the tastes of the audience and handy for covering the needs of Spanish politics at any given moment. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the epic has been based on a premeditated false narrative. But this confusion has begun to dissipate with the emergence of prominent scholars from outside Spanish circles, who have managed to reverse the tendency to repeat the official narrative as a set mantra.

An example of this changing trend has been the research of the American historian Alícia Gould, which has made it possible to trace all the surnames of the expedition members that appear in the supposed official records of Columbus’ different voyages, and has led to the following conclusion: nothing is true, everything is smoke and mirrors! Her research has gone far beyond the texts that list the names of the crew members. The investigation found that most of the crew members’ surnames do not have any documentary continuation that certifies that the sailor or individual – who appears in the lists – had a real and effective existence. But it is also very surprising that in these notorious lists, no Catalan surname appears among the crew. So, if we think that all these surnames have been manipulated, and we look for their equivalents in Catalan – Garay for Garau or Fernández for Ferrandis or Cases for Casaus – it turns out that they all fit in with very well-documented surnames, not only as real Catalan characters in flesh and blood but also as sailors, cosmographers or military men.

In conclusion, the Columbus chronicles that have come down to us denote a clear manipulation, given that they are full of anachronisms and significant temporal inconsistencies, something that seems inexplicable when the main source was supposedly a bibliophile, cultured and with a great memory, like Columbus’ son. Textual examination has shown that all these supposed originals have been retouched. For this reason, to trust the sources without applying any kind of documentary criticism, or suspecting the political intentions of the book’s arrangers, leads us, rather than to value rigour and historiographical academicism, to rely on faith.

The task set in motion – first by the Crown of Castile and later by Spain –  has made it possible to configure a novelistic story, mutable to the tastes of the audience and handy for covering the needs of Spanish politics at any given moment.

The departure point of the expedition

Today we know from outstanding research work done by historians – both the pioneering Núria Coll and Eva Sans – that the town of Pals d’Empordà had an important natural port. We know this because these studies have made it possible to document countless witnesses that speak of commercial transactions that were carried out and, therefore, we know it had become an important commercial port since the beginning of the 13th century. In addition, toponymy and landscape archaeology have made it possible to identify both the remains of buildings and geographical features documented on ancient maps. All this, combined with palaeo-hydrographic studies of the area around Pals, confirm what the documents testify to.

Bearing in mind that the surface of the planet is exposed to constant change that causes regular movements, and we understand that the seas move away from the beaches or the other way around, we will understand that the surroundings of Pals at the end of the 15th century have nothing to do with the landscape of Pals that we see today. Obviously.

Therefore, what is most surprising about the official version – as far as the departure point of Columbus’ transoceanic expedition is concerned – is the name: Palos de Moguer. This is undoubtedly the same case as Sant Esteve de les Roures, two places that do not exist, nor have they ever existed. Certainly, in the province of Huelva, there are two villages, separated by 16 km, which correspond to the place names Palos de la Frontera and Moguer. Both are located more than 40 km from the Atlantic coast. And as if this were not enough, it is even more surprising when we find out that neither of the two places has ever been surrounded by walls or had a 21.28 metre-high Catalan Gothic bell tower.

Let us keep in mind that in the 15th century, Catalonia had become an important European nautical power. In fact, it is where the most outstanding pilot schools, cosmography centres, navigation instrumentation workshops and a host of specialists in the production of nautical charts were to be found. Moreover, since the mid-13th century, the Principality had pursued a very active insular policy that consolidated more than a hundred consulates of the sea scattered throughout the Mediterranean.

By contrast, at the same time, in Castile, there were no nautical schools, no pilot schools, no cosmography centres, nor any kind of nautical infrastructure capable of carrying out a transoceanic expedition such as the one undertaken by the Catalan admiral Christopher Columbus. Many historians point out the profound contradiction of the American expedition in itself, given that it was undertaken in a context where Castile was still waging war within its own territory against the Arab world, and had no developed commercial infrastructure or even a sufficiently powerful naval fleet to carry it out. In the context of a deep economic crisis – which would end with the revolt of the Castilian Communities – it is questionable that Castile had sufficient military and, above all, nautical capacity to launch a transatlantic expedition. Significantly, the first Castilian consulate – that of Seville – was created in 1543.

But the definitive proof of the point of departure of Columbus’ expedition is provided by Antonio de Herrera on the title page of his work “Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano”, where in both editions of 1601 and 1726 there is an engraving that theoretically aims to illustrate “the town of Palos” in Andalusia when in reality it is meticulously representing the silhouette of the town of Pals d’Empordà. You only have to look at the engraving to quickly recognise its characteristic bell tower. Even so, the three caravels are depicted, which curiously carry the Catalan flag, something that is repeated successively in the engravings that illustrate the interior of the work. And as if all this were not enough, the quotation that accompanies the engraving reads: “The Admiral left Palos, villa of the Count of Miranda, to discover”. For, as Spanish historiography has pointed out, the Andalusian Palos belonged to the Count of Niebla. On the other hand, the Lord of Miranda was the Count of Empúries. Let’s continue!

Palos de Moguer is undoubtedly the same case as Sant Esteve de les Roures, two places that do not exist, nor have they ever existed!

The point of return and reception of the expedition

Today we know for certain that the Catalan admiral Christopher Columbus was received with full honours by the Catholic monarchs at the Royal Palace in Barcelona on 3 April 1493, after completing the first transoceanic voyage. And this event – accepted by all historiography – was totally silenced by the official version until not so long ago.

For centuries, both Portugal and Andalusia held this narrative, until the emergence of the study by the historian Antoni Rumeu de Armas, who, in his extensive work “Colón en Barcelona” – published in the midst of Franco’s dictatorship (1944) – had the courage to document the arrival of the Discoverer of America in the Catalan capital. Rumeu de Armas’s study was a key work for the future of Columbus studies, and contributed with an innovative investigation – in terms of the detail and precision of the research – in testifying how the city of Barcelona played a fundamental role in the discovery of the “New World”. Since then, documents of all kinds have continued to appear that prove that the discoverer was received in Barcelona.

Rumeu de Armas was able to demonstrate that the official version was built on a falsehood when it spoke of Palos de Moguer as the place of departure and return of the expedition. The analysis of the documentation – especially the ship’s log – made it possible to prove that the Pals de Empordà-Barcelona pair were the expedition’s true departure, return and reception points. It is also clear from the ship’s logbook that the expedition was planned as a reconnaissance voyage. Therefore, of a short duration and with a more or less fixed return.

On this first voyage, Columbus had managed to find the lost continent spoken of in countless ancient texts: the lands on the other side of the Atlantic “which had been cut off since the sinking of Atlantis”. And as proof of this discovery, of this “New World”, he presented to the royals and high authorities of the kingdom, the natives, animals, precious metals and plants that they had brought back. Reliable proof that they had come from lands hitherto unknown.

Even so, the Catholic Monarchs – from the summer of 1492 – stayed between Barcelona, Girona and Figueres, as the Principality was involved in a territorial conflict with the French, who had invaded Cerdanya and Roussillon in order to exchange them for the kingdom of Naples. King Ferdinand the Catholic – who was looking after the interests of his states – began to organise the military defence of the territory. It was for this reason that both monarchs, being in Catalonia and knowing that the expedition was only a reconnaissance expedition and, therefore, of short duration, waited for Columbus to return to Barcelona. It was there that a Portuguese delegation arrived to negotiate the distribution of the newly discovered lands, a process that would end with the Treaty of Tordesillas. And it was also there that the papal donation documentation arrived – from Pope Borja, “il papa catalano” – which would be made public by Bishop Pedro Garcia of Barcelona. Moreover, contemporary chronicles explain that the audience in Barcelona had a great echo and that the reception was a really popular and spontaneous celebration, with all the people of Barcelona celebrating in the street, a fact that is not recorded in any of the Castilian chronicles.

As Father Casaus’ chronicle explains, the gold that arrived from Columbus’ second voyage was confiscated in its entirety by the kingdom’s officials and customs officers, which made it possible to pay for the campaign to recover the Cerdanya and Roussillon, and to finance the construction of the fortress of Salses. But the most worrying event occurred during the course of the third voyage, when Francisco de Bobadilla – with broad powers to judge the admiral – confiscated all his merchandise, arguing that not all the promised wealth had been sent to the Crown. Thus began a veritable campaign of public discredit that would end with Columbus’ arrest.

All documentation on the trial against Columbus has disappeared. From indirect sources, it is known that the Crown seized all the documentation that Columbus had to provide in his own defence. It is also known that the reports on which the accusations were based were drawn up by Pere Bertran Margarit and Bernat Boïl, representatives of the Crown. Therefore, we should not be surprised at the somewhat farcical trial – something to which the Crown of Castile has become accustomed – in which Christopher Columbus and later his family became involved. In an act of extraordinary audacity, the Crown overstepped its bounds when, by means of falsehoods, it dispossessed the most famous navigator of the time of all his deservedly acquired titles.

At this point, the history of the discovery of America is an immoral issue for the Catalans. Since the 15th century, Catalanophobia has marked relations between Castile and Catalonia. We cannot continue to accept the Genoese origin of the Discoverer, we cannot continue to believe that the configuration of the crew of the three caravels was Castilian and – above all – we cannot continue to legitimise Castile as the promoter of the transoceanic expedition that led to the discovery of the “New World”, according to the official version, with the invaluable help of Queen Isabella of Castile who – with the pawning of her personal jewels – helped to defray all the expenses of the voyage. The whole thing makes no sense at all!

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Antonio Rumeu de Armas: En Colom a Barcelona, Editorial Llibres de l’Índex, 2012. 
  • Eva Sans i Narcís Subirana: El Port de Pals. ANNALS de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins, Volum LIV, Girona, 2013.
  • David Bassa i Jordi Bilbeny: Totes les preguntes sobre Cristòfor Colom. Col·lecció Descoberta, Editorial Llibres de l’Índex, 2015.
  • Jordi Vila: Les Capitulacions colombines de 1492: un document català. 1r Simposi sobre la Descoberta Catalana d’Amèrica, Arenys de Munt, 2001.
  • Jordi Bilbeny: Cristòfor Colom, príncep de Catalunya, Proa, Col. Perfils, Barcelona, 2006.
  • Jordi Bilbeny: Inquisició i Decadència: Orígens del genocidi lingüístic i cultural a la Catalunya del segle XVI, Librooks, Barcelona, 2018.

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Since time immemorial, what the Greek geographers defined as the Iberian Peninsula has been the basis on which Spanish history has been constructed, forging different realities. But with the development of Spain – at the beginning of the 19th century – different political conceptions have sought a way of structuring it to their advantage at any price. Therefore, some have insisted on establishing a fictitious historical and territorial uniformity, simply because they share the same geography. Catalonia has shared this plot of land, but its historical reality is different and it is important to remember this, now that the debate is once again open.

 

The traditional history of Spain has been constructed based on the premise of giving a unique protagonism to Castile – extended with Andalusia and Extremadura – which has been exclusively identified with Spain. The periphery, especially the eastern Mediterranean and the northwest of the peninsula, has been allowed to play either a secondary role or to acquire a certain relevance from time to time, especially at times when Castilian decadence was most evident.

Thus, Castile – always from a negationist point of view – has made people believe that there is a “Spanish nation” and a “peripheral” identity that it has defined as nationalities. But the reality is different. The Spanish nation, like the Catalan nation or the Basque nation, exists because it is acknowledged by those who claim to be part of it. Therefore, trivialisation is once again used to confuse public opinion and try to avoid any legitimate process of self-determination. In this sense, the construction of the identity of the Spanish nation often becomes a systematic destruction of the “peripheries”, that is to say, Spanish nationalism ends up constructing its identity by repressing the differences between the territories it considers to be national.

This vision has highlighted the serious problem of Spain’s historical reality. Firstly, it has highlighted Spain’s imperfection as a political project, given that it has repeatedly shown the continuous issues of adaptability to Western standards, especially in terms of the dynamics of adopting capitalism, liberalism, and rationalism in the triple aspect of the economic, political and cultural realities. Secondly, and even more importantly, Castile’s utter failure in its task of making Spain a harmonious community, fully satisfied with itself and tolerant of the other territories that make it up. If the plurinationality of the state is hidden, the past is distorted.

Spain’s imperfection as a political project has become evident, given that it has repeatedly shown the continuous problems of adaptability to Western standards.

Dismantling “the unity of destiny as a universal fact”

Within the Francoist school system, historiography was articulated according to the concept of “Reconquest”, which is a historiographical concept – still used in the secondary school curricula of Castile – that describes the process of recovery – since the Muslims were not the legitimate owners of the Hispanic territory – of the feudal world over the Muslim and Jewish world. This process would begin shortly after the arrival of the Arabs on the Iberian peninsula (8th century) and would end with the Catholic Monarchs (15th century), who would eventually unify “Spain” as an integral state. This Reconquest would end up forging “the Spanish spirit”.

In the middle of the last century, a group of historians – in order to legitimise the victors of the Civil War – undertook the task of constructing historical arguments to support the new regime. The theoretical corpus was based on finding “the essence of Spain”. Thus, Spanishist historiography came to “prove” that there were indeed distinctive characteristics of continuity between the prehistoric past and the present which define this “Spanish spirit”.

Currently, research tends to break the territorial homogeneity of the provinces. It shows an increasingly clear predisposition to carry out research that emphasises social and territorial differences, such as the latest studies on the 8th century Hispano-Goths, which show significant differences between the peninsular societies, mainly conditioned by the habitats where they carried out their activities. The archaeological evidence -without shying away from documentary sources- shows conclusively that the process of Romanisation affected them in very different ways.

Therefore, the crises of late antiquity from the 3rd to the 8th centuries would provoke much more profound changes, which would affect the different peninsular territories unequally. Consequently, the arrival of the Arabs in the Iberian Peninsula would also affect these societies in different ways, so that the idea of continuity between the Visigothic kingdom and the subsequent political formations would be diluted like sugar.

Archaeology has confirmed that the penetration of the Muslim world into peninsular territory was not as traumatic as it was made out to be. The archaeological remains reveal that, after the conquest, the peninsular territory was never abandoned. Therefore, all this would show that many Hispano-Goths professed the new Muslim faith, not so much out of conviction, but in order to maintain ownership of the land. And this land would be transformed by the introduction of new systems of agricultural production, based mainly on the management and power of water.

Research tends to break down the territorial homogeneity of the provinces and shows an increasingly clear predisposition to carry out research that emphasises social and territorial differences.

Delegitimising the origins in order to cancel out the differences

From the 9th century onwards, most of the peninsular territories were organised as kingdoms, with the king as their highest representative. In contrast, in the northeastern territories of the peninsula, the county would be the administrative structure to be implemented, and the count – imposed from Aachen – would be in charge of administering justice, guaranteeing public order and managing taxation.

This differentiating element – such as the Carolingian organisation of the Catalan territory – will be widely combated by Francoist historiography through a policy of diminishing its relevance. For this reason, it will be considered a government structure with little historical relevance and, for this reason, there will be a lack of will to disseminate it – both in academic circles and in school curricula – which will impact its knowledge.

Therefore, we should not be surprised that these historians do not want to understand that our singularity is the result of a legal framework different from the Hispanic matrix. The Catalan territory was assigned following the Carolingian policy of the Renovatio Imperii. This was probably the reason for its lack of diffusion since the essence of Spain was so far away!

Certainly, the title of king is one of the oldest and best-known political offices. The oldest ruling term is found in the Indo-European REG (to rule/rule) which evolved into Latin as REX. In the context of the political transformations that took place from the 4th century onwards in Western Europe, large territories were governed by Germanic military leaders, who gradually freed themselves from Roman domination and organised themselves as kingdoms. The new territorial leaders – whether Goths, Franks or Suevi – followed their legal tradition and adopted the title of rex as the highest political figure.

Therefore, all the peninsular rulers would be perpetuating their juridical legality. While the Astur-Leonese, Navarrese and Castilian dynasties would continue to use the title of king, the Catalan sovereign would use the title of count, given that he would continue to be legally linked to the French dynasty – heir to Carolingian legality through the Capeta family – and legitimised by the Pope, until the signing of the Treaty of Corbeil and ratified at the Treaty of Anagni in the mid-13th century. In practice, all will be sovereigns with the same power, whether kings or counts.

The most paradoxical fact about the history of Spain – built on the historiographical concept of the Reconquest – is that it is constructed on the false premise of assigning a continuing legitimacy from the Visigothic kingdom to the Astur kingdom.

It has been widely concluded that this maxim is not true. Historians have shown that the indigenous Cantabrian populations – be they Astur, Cantabrian or Basque – always maintained a very distant and warlike relationship with the Roman, Visigothic, Arab or Carolingian world. Therefore, their isolation was due more to a problem of a poor administrative framework than to fierce resistance against Roman, Visigoth, Arab or Carolingian conquerors. Consequently, the propagandistic pamphlet that the three chronicles of Alfonso III of Asturias represent – especially the Albeldense, which in fact is where the famous concept of Reconquest comes from – must be read for what they are: a legal legitimisation before public opinion (and God) of the aggression carried out against a part of the Hispanic population whose only difference – compared to the rest of the population – is that they profess a different religion.

The history of Spain -built on the historiographical concept of the Reconquest- is constructed on the basis of a false premise.

The will to alter reality

“In Dei nomine. Ego Ramirus, Dei gratia rex aragonensis, dono tibi, Raimundo [Berengario], barchinonensium comes et marchio, filiam meam in uxorem, cum tocius regni aragonensis integritate, sicut pater meus Sancius, rex, vel fratres mei, Petrus et Ildefonsus…. ” is undoubtedly one of the key fragments of the history of Catalonia that has aroused the greatest historiographical hostility, especially on the Aragonese side.

This fragment corresponds to the famous “Capitulaciones Matrimoniales de Barbastro”, which were ratified with the “Renuncia de Zaragoza” – both from 1137 – by which King Ramiro II of Aragon, the Monk, publicly informed his subjects that he was giving his daughter, his kingdom and his honours to Count Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona and that this donation would be sealed through the marriage between the Count of Barcelona and his daughter, Peronella.

As a result, the Count of Barcelona was named Crown Prince of Aragon, and Ramiro – despite retaining the title – was returned to the monastery of San Pedro el Viejo in Huesca, from where he left in haste to be crowned king. For her part, Peronella – only one year old – was sent to Barcelona to be educated as the future Countess Consort of Barcelona and Queen of Aragon. Thirteen years later, Count Ramon Berenguer married her in Lleida, once she was legally old enough to do so, that is, fourteen years old. It would then be the first-born son of this union – Alfonso el Trovador – who would become the first person to hold both titles – count and king – which would legitimise the new political conception that arose from this donation.

Unaltered historical reality confirms the fact that after the “Public Renunciation of Saragossa”, the kingdom of Aragon remained in the political background, given that it had voluntarily dispossessed itself of its succession value, a key element in the 12th century. Despite this, the successive Counts of Barcelona would always respect and maintain all the Aragonese institutions, marking the beginning of the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation.

It is therefore essential not to fall into the political trap that circulates among certain Spanish circles, who argue that Peronella of Aragon was the key element that allowed the Catalan counties to be annexed to the kingdom of Aragon. It would be foolish to believe that a one-year-old princess would fall in love with a twenty-four-year-old count of Barcelona and that the latter – at the height of his dominions – would offer his territories to Aragon in exchange for “a more prestigious title”. Likewise, the fact of constructing two parallel genealogies – Alfonso I of Catalonia is the same as Alfonso II of Aragon – shows that there is malice and a desire to distort reality.

The real problem facing Aragon at the beginning of the 11th century was to find a legal solution in the will of King Alfonso I “el Batallador”, who, having died without descendants, had given all his territories to the military Orders, and this caused an institutional debacle. The Castilians – taking advantage of this power vacuum and legitimised by the king’s repudiated ex-wife – began the invasion of Saragossa, followed by the disconnection of Navarre through the figure of García Ramírez, known as “el Resaurador”. As a result, Aragon was severely weakened economically, with the consequent risk of disappearing.

Contrary to what Aragonese extremists would want you to believe, the union of Aragon with the Catalan counties was the only viable solution for the Aragonese oligarchy. It was the only way to put a stop to the pressure exerted by both Castilians and Navarrese and thus be able to boost its agricultural and livestock economy with a clear outlet to the Mediterranean markets.

It would be foolish to believe that a one-year-old princess would fall in love with a twenty-four-year-old count of Barcelona and that the latter – at the height of his dominions – would offer his territories to Aragon in exchange for “a more prestigious title.

Setting limits to power

At the end of the 11th century, a new mentality appeared in Barcelona society, based on work, business morals and friendship. Thus, Barcelona was able to develop its own form of capital accumulation, based on increasing and improving agricultural production in its territory, which enabled it to become the administrative epicentre of the Catalan counties. The notions of profit, investment and capital crystallised throughout the 12th century and led the Counts of Barcelona to conquer the cities of Tortosa, Lleida and Balaguer, and the frustrated attempt to conquer Mallorca.

And all this was possible thanks to a climate of social stability that, after the political disaster of the feudal revolts, led to the imposition of the convenientiae or feudal pacts between equals. From then on, the culture of the pact became generalised throughout the Catalan counties and became one of our peculiarities. As a result of this pact, the first version of the Usatges de Barcelona, the basis of Catalan customary law, was drawn up.

Gradually, Catalan sovereignty would be distributed among – counts, nobility, clergy and upright citizens – who would represent a large part of society. This constitutionalist policy would therefore be one of the distinctive features of the Crown, which from the 13th century onwards would be extended as the expansionist policies of the counts continued to be implemented. These new territories would be configured as states, where the Crown would ensure that the particularities of each territory were maintained. Catalonia would then be defined as a Principality, given that its highest authority would be the figure of a prince or the first among equals.

In contrast to the rest of the peninsular territories – where the problem of power was centred on sacralisation – in Catalonia, the conflict was centred on its use. The constant evolution of Catalan law would end up granting power to the count by cession (between equals). He would therefore be obliged to manage his expenditure correctly and to respect the different privileges, customs, privileges and usages of his territories. Therefore, pactism between equals will be encouraged, in order to balance the economic interests between the nobility, the clergy and the bourgeoisie, in order to maintain social stability.

As a result – and long before the English – the Catalan Courts would be the perfect model of parliamentarianism, which would constitute the nucleus of the Catalan pacifist tradition that has survived to the present day. Unfortunately, with the defeat of 1714 and the implementation of the Decree of Nueva Planta, the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation was fulminated and broken up into different provinces of a new centralised monarchy that would govern the entire Iberian Peninsula without legal differences.

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The adoption of a new economic logic at the beginning of the 19th century allowed the English and Dutch to acquire a dominant position over the rest of the European economies, and by extension, over the rest of the world’s economies. This prompted the old European monarchies – Castile, Portugal, France, Austria, Prussia and Russia – to seek ways of embracing this modern socio-economic vision in order to eradicate their endemic poverty, but unlike the former, it forced them to undergo tumultuous processes of adaptability to the new economic system.

 

Oriol Garcia Farré, historian and 11Onze agent

At the beginning of the 17th century, the first colonial empires with deeply Catholic roots – such as Castile and Portugal – were structurally bleeding to death as a result of decades of fierce fighting against the Protestant and Turkish world, which was causing them significant losses of economic resources and a growing territorial delegitimisation. The repression exercised by the Catholic Castilian fundamentalists – led by their king – against the Dutch Calvinist world, far from definitively subjugating those territories, had the opposite effect, as it brought to the surface a survival instinct that has been widely studied by the Social Sciences.

At the root of the conflict was the Dutch refusal to contribute financially to the Hispanic imperial cause, which sought to universalise Catholic culture. For more than eighty years, imperial encounters sought to break the Dutch protective ring that had been built up to counter the pressure exerted by the famous Flanders “tercios”. This line of defence consisted of forty-three towns and fifty-five fortifications. Forced to live within this territorial microcosm, Dutch survival – as people – required rationalisation and systematisation of public and private initiatives.

First and foremost, Amsterdam was to become the epicentre of power for the seventeen United Provinces. From there, they would promote the creation of a free and open market that would be able to satisfy the needs – in that context of permanent war – of all the cities of the Dutch territory. Thus, it would encourage the diversification of agriculture as a basis for future specialisation and division of labour, foster technological innovation to improve agricultural production, promote fairs and markets to encourage the exchange of goods and services, expand internal trade networks and seek external trade routes through the development of a powerful shipbuilding industry, and guarantee the right to private ownership of the means of production. But above all, the government of the federation of the United Provinces would enforce all commercial contracts and ensure full freedom of movement of both people and goods through the creation of a Dutch standing army.

Therefore, this whole level of organisation resulting from the conjunction of the public and private spheres would be designed to meet the needs of the population in the face of Catholic pressure, which would lead to a significant increase in public spending. To reduce it, a financing mechanism would be developed consisting of issuing long-term public debt securities, which would be traded on the recently created Amsterdam stock exchange.

Forced to live within that territorial microcosm, Dutch survival – as people – demanded rationalisation and systematisation of public and private initiatives.

And Descartes came to the rescue!

A transcendental event was the contribution of the philosopher René Descartes to the mentality of Northern European society. Through his treatise “Man” he will argue that humans are divided into two distinct components: an immaterial mind and a material body, the latter understood as a perfect machine. In this way, he will succeed in separating the mind from the body and establish a hierarchical relationship between the two. Therefore, as the seigniorial classes dominate nature and seek to control it for productive purposes, the mind will have to dominate the body for the same purpose.

This view will be exploited by Calvinists to model the “good Christian” as one who controls his body, his passions and his desires and thus ends up self-imposing a regular and productive order. Therefore, any inclination towards joy, play, spontaneity or the pleasures of bodily experience will be considered potentially immoral.

All these ideas will be fused into a new explicit value system: idleness is a sin and productivity is a virtue. Within Calvinist theology, profit will become a symbol of moral success. It will be the test of salvation. To maximise profit, people will be encouraged to organise their lives around productivity and those who fall behind – during the race for productivity or fall into poverty – will be branded with the stigma of sin. This new ethic of discipline and self-mastery will become central to the culture of capitalism.

 

The creation of new monopolies

Until then, commercial expeditions had operated on the basis of small fleets created and controlled expressly by the monarchies. Most of the time, the company was set up for a single commercial voyage and, on its return, the small fleet was liquidated so as not to bear the costs of maintenance. Investment in such ventures was therefore extremely costly and high risk, not only because of the usual dangers of piracy, disease and shipwrecks but also because of the conditions of the spice market, where inelastic demand – insensitive to price changes – and relatively elastic supply – price changes increasing supply – could cause prices to fall at just the wrong time and ruin the venture’s prospects of profitability.

Thus, if the commercial expedition was successful, it has been calculated that the return was close to 400% of the initial investment, allowing the Crown to boost its economy. On the other hand, if it was a failure, it was the Crown itself who assumed the losses and, consequently, it was the population who ended up paying the debt through higher taxes and lower salaries, since the Monarchy managed the violence.

But in the early 17th century, through the formalisation of stable agreements – known as cartels – the respective governments of England and Holland obtained charters granted to private initiatives in the spice sector to trade with the East Indies. With the creation of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, entrepreneurial mechanisms were put in place to control supply and minimise risk in the global spice trade.

The novelty arose in the founding process of both companies when they came up against the problem of financing. Given the size and high costs involved, the founders of the companies were unable to finance the entire cost of the project, which made it necessary to obtain financing by selling part of their securities to merchants and small savers, to whom they granted them a share of the companies’ future profits in exchange.

 

The stock exchange becomes the key to the new system

Thus, both the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company would be the first shareholder-owned companies to be listed on the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges respectively. From then on, any English company seeking finance would be able to trade in its own securities. In less than a hundred years, more than a hundred English companies will be trading their own securities on the London Stock Exchange. For their part, any resident within the United Provinces would have the possibility to register in writing – in any of the 17 Dutch Chambers – the amount of money they wanted to invest on the stock exchange. At the beginning of the 19th century, both companies will distribute annual dividends of 40% to all shareholders and will be the first companies to publish their profits annually.

Supported by the methodical rationality of the Protestant world, both the English and the Dutch managed to give commercial continuity to those companies, which eventually became true multinationals for almost three hundred years, thanks to the use of the stock exchange as a mechanism to finance future commercial expansions. Therefore, the new economic system will be more dynamically and efficiently self-regulating, unlike the old centralised system, which still remains today. Within a few years, the new financial mechanisms and continuous private initiatives will break up the old commercial monopolies controlled by the first colonial empires, which had been self-legitimised by the right of conquest through the Treaties of Tordesillas, Zaragoza and Cateau-Cambrésis.

The two companies will be structured as a modern vertically integrated global supply chain corporation divided by a conglomerate of companies that will allow them to diversify into multiple commercial and industrial activities, such as international trade, shipbuilding and the production and marketing of spices. The companies would become so large in the early 19th century that they would gain quasi-governmental powers over their colonies, such as the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, issue currency, have their own flag and conquer new territories. The most extreme case was the British East India Company, which ruled India until its dissolution in the late 19th century when it passed directly into the hands of the British Crown.

Therefore, we would never be able to understand the English industrial revolution of the late 18th century if we untied it from the financial revolution that began in the early 17th century. As England was able to obtain more raw materials and more markets, it would be forced to mechanise all its production processes in order to satisfy the growing world demand. By the middle of the 19th century, it would control 30% of world markets, although this would change at the end of the century when new competitors appeared.

We would never be able to understand the English industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century if we untied it from the financial revolution that began at the beginning of the 17th century.

A system to satisfy social welfare

Unlike mercantilism, capitalism will decide not to consume all its goods, since it will organise itself rationally and methodically for the sole purpose of producing, accumulating and investing its goods in order to produce more and more. In this sense, capital investment decisions will be determined by profit expectations, whereby the profitability of invested capital will play a fundamental role in any economic activity.

The enlightened scholars defended capitalism as the only economic system capable of generating sufficient wealth to satisfy social welfare, which could only be maintained on the condition that it generated continuous economic growth in the production of goods and services. Thus, meeting this crucial social need will only be possible if there is a progressive specialisation in work or if new skills are acquired by individuals, companies, territories or countries. But it will also be necessary to maintain unchanged and without interference, the existence of free competition – based on the law of supply and demand – which will require a willingness to do so without coercion or fraud on the part of the participants in commercial transactions.

This innovative economic system will imply a new way of doing things based on the existence of three key axioms: the accumulation of capital as a source of economic development, strong privatisation of the means of production and the obligation to make constant profits. Therefore, the theoreticians of capitalism will be aware that the maintenance of the new economic system will force the systematic search for new markets and the creation of new and increasingly aggressive consumer dependencies between individuals, companies, territories or countries all over the world.

The maintenance of the new economic system will force the systematic search for new markets and the creation of new and increasingly aggressive consumer dependencies between individuals, companies, territories or countries all over the world.

The perversity of the system

Within the system itself lies a hidden self-destruction trigger that is activated when goods start rising in price, driven by the idea that their value can never fall. There are few areas of human activity where historical memory counts for as little as in the field of finance.

Financial crises and bubbles have been repeating themselves – in a more or less cyclical fashion – since 6 February 1637, when investment in tulip bulbs in Holland inflated prices to the point where a bulb could be worth as much as a house, or when in 1720 the English state fraudulently altered the real value of the South Sea Company’s shares in order to place debt, which would end up triggering a crisis of biblical proportions in its economy.

It may be tulips, shares in public companies, the debt of a growing country, investments in railways, dot-com stocks or complex financial assets, but in the end, there will always be a trigger: a war, a bankruptcy, a rumour or simply someone smarter who will cause a few to go ahead and sell the securities, and behind them the rest will try and fail to do so. This is what we now call “financial bubble bursts”. In credit contracts, the flow of money comes to a standstill, and what was once worth a lot is now worth nothing. The crisis begins. Bigger and bigger, more expansive and much more contagious.

 

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