The new digital vassals

The internet was born with a powerful promise: to democratise knowledge, reduce intermediaries and empower the individual. A horizontal technology for a freer economy. Twenty years later, the balance is more uncomfortable. Never have we been so connected, and never so dependent. Never have we had so many tools, and never so little control over them.

It is not only a matter of privacy. Not even of consumption. What is at stake is the very nature of economic power. More and more, our everyday life—working, communicating, buying, saving—passes through digital infrastructures we do not control, because we do not access them as owners, but as conditioned users. We enter чуж territory.

For decades, we have explained this reality with the same narrative, which spoke of digital capitalism, the platform economy or technological innovation. But these words no longer describe what is happening to us. The market, as we have understood it until now, is dissolving, because, in some way, competition has given way to dependence. Price, to rent. Ownership, to temporary access.

Something has broken in the implicit contract between economy and freedom. And perhaps the problem is not that capitalism has become more aggressive, but that it has mutated into something else. A system where we no longer buy products, but inhabit platforms; where we are no longer sovereign customers, but tolerated users; where power is no longer exercised from the market, but from the infrastructure.

The question, then, is not whether technology makes life easier. The question is another, much more uncomfortable one: when everything works thanks to private platforms, who really rules? And, above all, what are we within this system?

It is not capitalism, it is a mutation

For far too long, we have tried to understand the present with the words of the past. We talk about digital capitalism, technological neoliberalism, hyperconnected global markets. But these concepts no longer explain how the system truly works. Classical capitalism—with all its inequalities—was based on a fundamental idea: the market. Supply, demand, competition, prices. Imperfect, yes, but recognisable.

Today that framework is fading. Big tech companies do not compete in open markets; they control infrastructures. They do not sell one-off products, but continuous access. Therefore, they no longer depend so much on consumption as on a new dependence. Because profit no longer comes mainly from producing better, but from charging for the simple fact of being inside.

Economist Yanis Varoufakis sums it up with an uncomfortable idea: capitalism has given way to a system based on private rents. Whoever controls the infrastructure—the cloud, the platform, the digital ecosystem—does not need to compete, because they only need to ensure that you cannot leave. Therefore, we are facing a natural evolution of the market. Or better still, a mutation in which a new business logic resembles the factory less and the toll more, free exchange less and recurring charges more. In short, less the sovereign customer and more the captive user.

From the fief to the platform

Within the feudal system, land—mostly—was not the peasant’s property, but only the place where he lived and worked. Above all, he depended on it, in addition to being forced to pay rents and having to obey the lord’s whims. And for his part, the feudal lord produced nothing; he only controlled access to the land. Therefore, the system was organised such that anyone who wanted to survive had to pass through the lord’s hands. That is why talking about freedom—far from the reality projected by Hollywood—is completely unreal, since the possibility of staying outside the system was almost impossible.

Today the land is no longer agricultural, but digital, functioning in a surprisingly similar way. Digital platforms are not neutral spaces, but private territories. We enter them to work, to communicate, to sell, to get informed or simply to exist socially. We are not owners, but guests, because access is conditioned by rules that can change unilaterally, without negotiation or any real alternative.

If the feudal lord offered protection, platforms now offer us visibility. If the vassal paid part of the harvest, the user now pays with data, time, commissions, or subscriptions. If the peasant could not leave the land without losing everything, the user likewise cannot leave the system without being excluded. Therefore, the only difference is the technology, but not the power relationship.

Even while living in a highly advanced free-market economy, we live in an economy of conditioned access. In some ways, it resembles a feudalism without castles or swords, but with algorithms, adhesion contracts and structural dependence. A system where formal freedom coexists with an increasingly deep practical submission.

From effort to trace: how value is extracted today

In industrial capitalism, the mechanism was relatively transparent. Value was extracted from labour through time, effort, and production. We could argue about unfair wages or abusive conditions, but the source of profit was clear. Today, by contrast, value is no longer extracted mainly from what we do, but from what we leave behind.

Every click. Every search. Every movement. Every digital interaction generates a trace. A trace that does not fade, but accumulates, is analysed and monetised. The great resource of the 21st century is not oil or skilled labour. It is data. And that data is not produced in a factory, but in everyday life.

What is most revealing is that this process does not require active consent. There is no need to sign any labour contract. It is enough to exist within the platform. The user works without knowing it, consumes while producing, and participates while being analysed. Free time becomes raw material.

This explains an unsettling paradox: the more we use these services, the more value we generate… but the less power we have. Profit is not redistributed; it concentrates. And it does so without visible conflict, because it does not look like classic exploitation. There are no shifts, no factories, no strikes—only dependence.

The result is a new kind of extractivism, not territorial but rather digital. It is not based on natural resources, but on human behaviours. A system that does not wear out the land, but does wear out individual autonomy, turning the user into an unsettling combination: customer, product and invisible labour force.

When the market disappears

This model does not only change how value is created. Above all, it changes how the economy is organised. Because when value comes from controlling infrastructure, the market ceases to be necessary.

In theory, the market works thanks to competition. Several actors offer similar products and the consumer decides. In digital practice, this no longer happens. Major platforms do not compete on equal terms, since they can buy rivals, copy features or expel them through internal rules. In this way, they do not play the market; they replace it.

Prices stop being the result of supply and demand, becoming opaque variables defined by algorithms. Conditions change without notice. Commissions rise when dependence is already total. And the user cannot negotiate, because there are no real alternatives. Leaving the system is not a free decision, but rather a leap into the void: losing visibility, contacts, customers, accumulated data. As in feudalism, existence outside the dominant territory is formally possible, but materially unviable.

Thus, market capitalism gives way to a rent system. Whoever controls the platform charges simply for allowing access. There is no need to innovate constantly. It is enough to maintain dependence. Progress stops being a requirement; the stability of dominance becomes the goal. Economic power, then, is no longer contested in the realm of production, but in that of control: control of channels, of data, of rules. And when control consolidates, economic freedom becomes a functional illusion.

The State inside the system: from counterweight to manager

For a long time we trusted that the State would act as a natural counterweight to the excesses of economic power, with the concrete tasks of regulating, arbitrating and guaranteeing rights and duties. But in the digital ecosystem, this function has been diluted. Not because the State has disappeared, but because it has changed roles.

Governments no longer control the key infrastructures of the digital economy; rather, they use them or subcontract them, and even imitate them. Thus, we find public administrations that depend on private clouds or essential services that run on external technologies, or citizens’ data hosted in systems that do not answer to direct democratic sovereignty.

Instead of questioning the power of platforms, the State often adapts to them. It legislates late, regulates reactively and, in some cases, consolidates the model. Institutional digitalisation—necessary in many respects—runs the risk of reinforcing the very logic it claims it wants to control: centralisation, total traceability, technological dependence.

The problem is not that the State uses technology. The issue is who controls the architecture. Because when infrastructure is not public or neutral, political power ceases to be sovereign and becomes the manager of a system it did not design.

Money as a tool of control

No system of power is complete without controlling money. And in the new digital order, that control no longer passes only through traditional banks, but through technological channels that allow—or prevent—access to the economy.

Digital payments, financial platforms, electronic identities, programmable money. All of this can bring efficiency, but it can also introduce an unprecedented layer of conditionality: not only what you can buy, but when, how and under what rules. In the feudal system, the lord had power because he controlled land; by contrast, in the current system, real power is controlling flows: of information, of money or of access. And when those flows are digital, control can be total, instant, and invisible.

In this way, economic freedom does not disappear all at once; it is gradually restricted, under the excuse of security, efficiency or common progress. Until one day we discover that leaving the system is no longer a viable option.

Citizens or users?

All of this has a direct impact on citizens—not only as consumers, but as political and economic subjects. In an environment dominated by platforms, the figure of the free citizen tends to dissolve, and the figure of the user emerges: without political rights and with terms of use. The user no longer negotiates; they only accept, because they no longer participate in defining the rules—they suffer them or assume them. And when something fails, there is no space for democratic conflict, only an automated customer-service form.

This transformation is subtle, but profound. Because a society of users is easier to manage than a society of citizens: less critical and more dependent. The new digital vassal no longer needs to be repressed; they only need connection. Without sovereignty, there is no freedom

Technology is not the enemy, but it is not neutral either, because everything depends on who controls the rules, the infrastructures, and the benefits. The problem with technofeudalism is not digitising the economy, but doing so without sovereignty.

When we do not control the platforms where we live digitally, we are not free. When we do not control the channels through which money circulates, we are not independent. When the value we generate is extracted without return or decision, we are not economic actors; we are only resources. And regaining sovereignty is not going backwards: it is understanding the system, reducing dependencies and becoming aware that economic freedom is not abstract, because it is built, it is protected, but it can also be lost. The new digital vassals do not wear visible chains. They wear passwords. And perhaps the first step to stop being one is to stop believing that all of this is inevitable.

Regaining control: a conscious decision

Technofeudalism is not imposed with violence; it is installed through convenience, through free services, friendly interfaces, and the promise that everything will be easier if we give up part of our control. The problem is that this renunciation is not symbolic, but structural, because when we delegate access to information, work, consumption, and money to infrastructures we do not control, we cede real power. And without economic power there is no effective freedom, only managed dependence.

The good news is that this process is not inevitable, but it is not automatic either. Regaining sovereignty—digital, economic and personal—requires awareness, judgement and informed decisions. Understanding how the system works is the first step to avoid being trapped in it.

At 11Onze, this risk has been warned about for some time. Not from fear, but from knowledge. Because protecting savings, diversifying with purpose, reducing unnecessary intermediaries and choosing more transparent models is not an ideological matter: it is a matter of autonomy.

In a world that tends to turn citizens into users and savers into digital vassals, regaining control over one’s own value is an act of responsibility, but also of freedom. The future does not belong to those who adapt best to the system, but to those who understand how it works and decide not to live forever on someone else’s land.

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If today we speak of the Three Kings as one speaks of distant relatives, it is because for almost two thousand years Europe has needed to believe in visitors coming from beyond the map. From a brief and scarcely detailed account—four lines in the Gospel of Matthew—tradition has constructed one of the most enduring fictions of our culture: three exotic, crowned figures crossing deserts to pay homage to an anonymous child in a marginal corner of Judea.

What is surprising is not that this story endured, but what its endurance reveals. Each generation has rewritten the Magi of the East to respond to its own fears and desires. In Late Antiquity, they were Persian astrologers; in the Middle Ages, feudal kings; in Modernity, benevolent saviors bearing gifts. Always the same pattern: projecting outward what we do not understand inwardly.

What we rarely remember is that, in the time of Jesus, “the East” was not a cardinal direction but a moral imaginary. The Roman Empire had inherited from the Greeks the conviction that the most ancient secrets—science, magic, wisdom—came from those lands where the sun rises. The East thus served as a mental stage on which to place forms of knowledge that Europe did not yet dare to claim as its own. It was a safe place to locate wisdom without having to confront local ignorance.

Hence the account of the magi functioned as a kind of symbolic frontier between what Europe wished to be and what it was not yet able to assume. Whether they came from Persia, Arabia, or India, they brought an external authority that made it possible to validate a birth that, in Roman eyes, had no relevance whatsoever. It is significant that Matthew scarcely describes the landscape or the route: he does not need to. The East is not an itinerary; it is a justification. A conceptual framework that allows an unknown child to be immediately inscribed within the geopolitics of transcendence.

Umberto Eco—in Baudolino—had intuited this with the kind of humor that dissects myths without breaking them: societies do not only invent narratives; they invent geographies that make those narratives plausible. And perhaps that is why the Three Kings continue to walk: because we still seek an East that explains what we lack in the West.

An improbable story with a precise function

The traditional account tells us that the Three Kings are three, that they are kings, and that they come from the East. History, however, moves across far rougher ground. Matthew’s original source is revealingly austere: it speaks of no kings, fixes no number, and identifies no specific geographical origin.

It was later tradition that projected an iconographic exuberance that says far more about the political and cultural needs of each period than about the facts themselves. Early Christianity had more to gain from a flexible narrative than from a precise chronicle. Imprecision was an opportunity: it allowed the myth to be adapted to audiences and, above all, to power.

The earliest Christian testimonies oscillate between two, four, or twelve magi, depending on the community and the liturgical calendar. The number “three” emerges in the third century as an elegant narrative solution: three gifts, three figures, three continents. The number does not explain the past; it orders the imaginary. Even the theological symbolism—gold for kingship, incense for divinity, myrrh for future death—is added later, when the liturgy requires a stable script. The story, therefore, is not memory: it is architecture.

When Matthew says “magoi”, he refers to wise-priests of Iranian tradition, figures who combined astrology, ritual, and natural knowledge. But medieval culture—especially from the Carolingian period onward—elevates them to the status of kings. What a coincidence that this occurs precisely when monarchies need to legitimize their power through biblical precedents. Turning magi into kings allowed the Carolingians to establish a useful parallel: if even monarchs from distant lands bow before Christ, any Christian king could present himself as the natural continuation of that foundational gesture. Faith became a blank check for political order.

They did not come from the East; they came from an idea of the East. Geography here is secondary: Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia, India—each century has chosen its own map. In the Middle Ages, the three known continents—Europe, Asia, Africa—had to be reflected in three figures, thus transformed into symbols of universality. A brilliant invention that turns history into an argument: “all humanity recognizes the truth of Christ.” But this imagined universality reveals an even deeper mechanism: Europe has always projected what it needs to confirm onto that moral East, so distant that no one can dispute its details.

What is truly original—if we read the tradition as a palimpsest—is that the story of the magi does not function as a scene of devotion, but as a disguised critique of the blindness of power. Herod, a few kilometers from the birth, knows nothing of what is happening; foreigners, by contrast, have discovered it by reading the stars. It is an ancient political sarcasm: local power, obsessed with preserving itself, is incapable of recognizing what is being born beside it. The magi seek a king and find a child; Herod seeks a child and recognizes only a threat. This is more than theology: it is diagnosis.

This ironic displacement—the powerful who do not know, the foreigners who understand—gives the story an unexpected depth. The magi do not arrive to confirm a miracle, but to correct a mistaken perception of the world. And it is perhaps this critical function—more than their exotic appearance—that has kept the story alive: the idea that truth often comes from outside because inside we are too dependent on our own fears.

What we seek and what we would not know how to see

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Three Kings is not their arrival, but the contemporary inability to understand what they were really seeking. The story insists on a star, as if truth always required an external light to become visible. Yet the paradox is that, when the magi finally reach Bethlehem, what they find is not a radiant epiphany, but a vulnerable child and a family trying to survive within a hostile political order. Foreigners see the promise; locals see only precarity. It is a universal mechanism: hope often needs outside eyes, because those within are too contaminated by the need for security.

Read with a long view, this story is unsettling because it shatters the myth of the power’s clairvoyance. Herod consults his sages and gains only fear; the magi consult the stars and find meaning. It is a clash of cosmologies: power reads the world in order to defend itself, while the wise read it in order to understand it. And here the story becomes contemporary without forcing it: in a time that confuses information with judgment, societies once again distrust any truth that does not confirm their inertias. The star today is not a religious symbol, but an uncomfortable reminder: light does not say what we want to hear; it says what we do not know how to interpret.

The miracle of the magi is not their arrival, but their ability to ignore the noise of the world and follow an intuition. While Herod turns every rumor into a threat, they transform a fleeting light into vital orientation. Perhaps that is why tradition has turned them into benevolent figures: we need to believe that there are still humans capable of reading the sky without turning it into an instrument of power. But the subtext is sharper: the magi do not act out of faith, but out of conscience. And this moral distinction—so fragile and so current—keeps the story in tension.

Ultimately, the story of the Kings teaches us that what we seek is often not what we would find if we knew how to look. That truth is never spectacular: it is discreet and uncomfortable. That power prefers to interpret rather than to understand. And that wisdom does not consist in following a star, but in knowing what to do when the light is gone.

Because if the magi remind us of anything, it is that the path to truth is short when there is light, but endless when we are afraid.

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

They say that the 1978 Constitution is the pillar of Spanish democracy. Perhaps it is, but it is also its chastity belt. Everything that tries to breathe outside the centre is repressed in the name of unity. What was drafted to guarantee autonomy has ended up becoming a mechanism of submission: a text that confuses loyalty with obedience, and coexistence with silence.

When the current president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, declared that “all the money of the Catalans is ours”, he was not making an electoral jest, but expressing, without filters, the deepest truth of a system designed to turn solidarity into appropriation. From the Bourbon centralisation of the 18th century to the constitutional regime of 1978, Spain has built a model that confuses unity with submission and finds in Madrid its gravitational centre. What was historically an administrative necessity has today become a form of economic and symbolic domination.

While the capital proclaims itself the engine of progress, the reality is far more prosaic: Madrid does not generate wealth; it absorbs it. Its so-called “Madrid miracle” is the result of a fiscal and legal architecture designed to concentrate power and income, suffocating the productive territories that sustain the country.

The Direct Link with the “Emptied Spain”

According to the Spanish Tax Agency, Madrid contributed 19.5% of the national GDP in 2023, but declared 24% of the country’s highest incomes. The difference is not productivity but absorption: wealth is born in the periphery —Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands— and declared in the centre. The State has built a radial model in which everything —companies, institutions, media and sport— orbits around a single nucleus while the rest of the territory empties out.

With a 100% exemption on wealth and inheritance taxes and a tax policy tailored to large fortunes, Madrid has created an internal tax haven within the State itself. More than 25,000 high-net-worth individuals have established residence there in the last decade. Capital takes refuge, the periphery is exhausted, and the State looks on contentedly, because this imbalance serves its interests.

This concentration of wealth in the centre not only impoverishes productive territories but also accelerates the depopulation of large parts of the country. Rural and industrial areas, deprived of investment and economic activity, suffer a constant exodus of young people and an increasing dependence on subsidies. The so-called “Emptied Spain” is not a natural or demographic phenomenon, but the direct consequence of a State that drains resources, talent, and opportunities toward Madrid.

This unfair competition is not corrected — it is encouraged. The supposed constitutional solidarity is, in fact, a mechanism of legalised plunder across the entire territory. And when any region denounces this abuse, it is immediately branded as selfish. The paradox is striking: those who sustain the State are accused of wanting to break it.

Density as a Strategy of Domination

Demography was its first visible consequence. From 1950 onwards, the Meseta began to empty gradually, pushed by the need to feed Madrid with large doses of human capital.

That internal population flow was not spontaneous: it responded to a state strategy aimed at reinforcing the political and administrative centre. Madrid did not grow to be the economic engine of the country, but to become its seat of power.

That massive concentration transformed the city into an ecosystem of civil servants, administrators, public employees and middlemen, rather than a space for producers or innovators. It was not a geographical accident but the result of a political project of population density — because where population accumulates, representation accumulates; and where there is representation, there is legitimacy.

The parliamentary majority that sustains this status quo is not a coincidence. Forty-five percent of the seats in Congress are distributed between Madrid and the two Mesetas, a configuration that turns demographic concentration into permanent political hegemony. The Electoral Law, designed to over-represent the province as the voting unit, guarantees that the centre governs even without a social majority.

Thus, the two-party system —PSOE and PP— acts as the two faces of the same regime, alternating in power without ever altering its foundations. Madrid has fortified itself not only with laws and votes but also with the morality of power, under the conviction that everything central is rational and everything peripheral is suspect.

Over time, this induced demography and over-representation became the material and symbolic basis of central power. When democracy arrived, Madrid already concentrated enough electoral weight to condition any majority. Territorial balance ceased to be an objective and became a statistical anomaly. Since then, concentration has been interpreted as “efficiency,” and the emptying of the periphery as a natural consequence of the market.

But even here, the logic remains the same: dependence as a method of cohesion. The centre grows at the expense of the periphery, and the periphery remains loyal because it depends on transfers, contracts or institutional presence. As in every historical structure of domination, corruption functions as a mechanism of social peace — compensating grievances, buying loyalties and preventing reforms that could dismantle the system.

Thus, demographic policy, radial economics and structural corruption form a single mechanism. Power is not only exercised from the centre but fabricated by it — with population, resources and narratives all serving the same purpose: to preserve unity through dependence.

Corruption as the Binding Agent

No structure can stand without cement — and in Spain, that cement is corruption. It is not a modern vice, but an organic inheritance. As early as the 11th-century León Courts, favour was the currency of power: bureaucracy existed to grant, not to administer. Under both the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, that courtly system was amplified and perfected until it became a method embedded in the State’s very core. When Spain was not yet Spain — merely a mosaic of kingdoms governed from the centre through the failed project of the Hispanic Monarchy — grace replaced law, and political loyalty was bought through economic obedience.

This pattern was never broken, only modernised. Where once there were royal favours, today there are public contracts; where there were viceroys, now there are government delegations; and where there were clienteles, now there are political parties. Corruption acts as the historical continuity of personalist power, the invisible glue binding the elites of the centre with the obedient peripheries.

And when obedience fails, the mechanism is debt. Creating debt is the modern way of subjugating territory. The autonomous communities, lacking fiscal sovereignty and forced to finance essential services with insufficient resources, are compelled to resort to the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) — an instrument created by the Ministry of Finance to provide liquidity… in exchange for structural dependence.

Through the FLA, what was once denied as financing —by imposing conditions and controls— is returned as conditional debt. Thus, need is transformed into political submission, and dependence into forced loyalty. Plunder and indebtedness are two sides of the same coin — one that always lands heads-up for the centre and tails for the periphery.

Law as a Shield

The foundation of this architecture is not economic but legal. The 1978 Constitution, presented as a pact of coexistence, consecrated the unity of Spain as a dogmatic principle.

Article 2 defines it as “indissoluble”; Article 138 promises economic balance between territories, but without establishing effective mechanisms; and Article 156 recognises the financial autonomy of the regions… as long as it does not question unity. The result is a constitutional right to centralism, where every real decentralisation is perceived as a concession rather than a right.

The very legal structure reinforces this asymmetry. The State retains “basic” competences in almost every sphere —health, education, energy, taxation— under what the Constitutional Court calls “the basic equality of Spaniards.” This apparently neutral principle allows the central government to recentralise competences whenever it considers it necessary to “guarantee national cohesion” or “avoid territorial inequalities.” It is the legal mechanism that enables the State to decide on taxes, infrastructure or natural resources that, in other federal systems, would belong to the territories themselves.

The system of regional financing is a paradigmatic example: the regions collect only a limited portion of taxes but depend on annual transfers that the Ministry of Finance can adjust at its discretion. This generates a structural dependence that turns the principle of autonomy into an administrative fiction.

Within this legal and financial machinery, the banks play an essential role. Institutions such as La Caixa or Banco Sabadell —originally founded to channel Catalonia’s productive savings and credit— have ended up acting as structural pawns of the centralist system. Not out of ideology, but out of a need to survive within a regulatory, fiscal and political framework that rewards submission and punishes dissent.

The relocation of corporate headquarters after the 2017 referendum is the clearest proof: a legal operation presented as a “business decision,” but in reality the result of explicit political pressure from the State and the Bank of Spain, determined to use financial fear as an instrument of territorial control.

Thus, the very institutions that were created to support Catalonia’s productive economy have become guarantors of the status quo, ensuring that the flows of credit and investment continue to pass through the centre and that the structure of dependence remains intact.

In this way, Madrid can act as a fiscal paradise, applying bonuses and tax cuts that attract capital, while Catalonia or Valencia cannot fully manage their own resources without being accused of breaking Spain’s unity. The message is clear: the economic freedom of the centre is “efficiency”; that of others, “selfishness”.

Law thus becomes the shield of privilege, transforming inequality into a norm and dissent into a moral crime. In this way, centralism defends itself not with the army, but through legal codes, compliant banks and disciplined economic institutions that make power a matter of law, and law a tool of control.

When the Territory Questions the System

The Catalan independence movement was not —as it was portrayed— an identity delusion, but a political reaction to an unsustainable economic and institutional system. For decades, Catalonia had believed that self-government could coexist with constitutional loyalty, but the 2010 Constitutional Court ruling against the Statute of Autonomy shattered that illusion.

When the State declared unconstitutional several articles approved by referendum and ratified by Parliament, it made clear that autonomy had cardboard limits: self-government existed only as long as it did not question the centre. The demand for fair financing was not merely a budgetary issue; it was, in fact, a denunciation of the extractive model that feeds the heart of the State with resources from the entire eastern seaboard.

At the core of the economic debate appeared the fiscal balances, the investment deficit, and the radial infrastructures —all of which led to a political question of sovereignty, as they revealed that financial dependence is the true mechanism of submission.

In 2017, “el Procés” exposed that centralism is not a dysfunction of the system but its foundational essence. When part of the territory dared to question it, the State responded not with dialogue but with institutional reprisal and judicial mobilisation. In that response, the Bourbon monarchy played an especially active role, becoming the symbolic guarantor of the old order.

The application of Article 155, the intervention of the Catalan Government and the criminal prosecution of political and civil leaders revealed the stark reality: the Constitution is not a framework for coexistence, but a contract of submission that activates whenever someone tests its limits.

For this reason, the so-called “New Singular Financing” that the PSOE and its satellite parties now loudly offer to Catalonia is a complete contradiction in terms. Because if it were truly singular, it would break the fiscal uniformity that guarantees central power and would cause the constitutional edifice upon which the 1978 regime rests to implode.

The system cannot reform itself without destroying itself, because its strength lies in its rigidity. It was created to live off centralisation, and centralisation is incompatible with the economic freedom of the territories.

Behind the Mirage of ’78

As Montesquieu once warned, “when power is concentrated, freedom fades”. Spain has turned this maxim into a state doctrine. Madrid acts as an internal metropolis that governs through attraction and dependence — fiscal, media, political and sporting. Corruption fattens the machinery, law sanctifies its legitimacy, and demography guarantees its continuity.

That is why speaking today of “singular financing” is an oxymoron: no singularity is possible within a system designed to erase it. Madrid’s centralism is not a pathology — it is the very heart of the regime.

And as long as wealth continues to flow from the eastern seaboard to the centre, Spain will remain a state of dependencies with the appearance of a democracy. The true miracle is not Madrid: it is that the country still endures. Because —as always— power does not reside where work is done, but where the distribution of merit is decided. Perhaps the real question is not whether Spain can change, but whether it truly wants to.

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

Des de fa temps, la història ens retorna a un vell debat encara no resolt: què és ben bé Espanya? Una pregunta difícil que han hagut d’afrontar un grapat de generacions. Pel camí hi ha hagut tota meva de debats, promeses, triomfs i derrotes. I, malgrat tot, encara estem lluny de trobar una resposta. 

Després de la llarga nit franquista, a Espanya se li van plantejar nous reptes a partir de 1975. L’Estat havia de trobar l’equilibri entre la reforma que proposava el govern franquista i la ruptura que demanava part de l’oposició. La solució pactada va ser la de transitar plegats cap a un nou règim fonamentat en una nova Carta Magna. La Constitució espanyola de 1978 es va dividir en deu títols i 169 articles. Al text, el terme “nació” apareix tan sols en dues ocasions, mentre que el terme “Estat” conté 90 entrades.

La primera i més important menció a la “nació” és la que obre el Preàmbul. “La nació espanyola, desitjant establir la justícia, la llibertat i la seguretat i promoure el bé de tots els que la integren, fent ús de la seva sobirania…”, comença el text fundacional, tal com si la mateixa nació redactés el que s’hi llegirà. Més endavant, aquesta “nació” autoproclamada expressa la voluntat de “constituir-se en un Estat social i democràtic de dret”, el qual desplegarà tots els seus òrgans i funcions. 

La “nació”, objecte de litigi

Segons sembla, l’al·lusió a “els que la integren” es refereix als individus. En efecte, l’article 2 fonamenta la Constitució en “la indissoluble unitat de la nació espanyola, pàtria comuna i indivisible de tots els espanyols”, la qual “reconeix i garanteix el dret a l’autonomia de les nacionalitats i les regions que la integren i la solidaritat entre totes elles”. Justament aquest article és objecte de continu litigi. 

Aquest famós article 2, en realitat, sembla que ens està dient que no són els individus els qui decideixen o desitgen una cosa, sinó que és la nació. Perquè la nació és qui ostenta la sobirania, no el poble. I qui anuncia aquesta proclamació de la sobirania tampoc és el poble, sinó que està personificada en la figura del Rei d’Espanya. Per tant, tot allò que integra la nació resulta confús.

El regne de les “nacionalitats”

Certament, l’al·lusió a les nacionalitats i a les regions apunta a la vella idea de la divisió territorial del regne. Aquesta paraula —“regne”— no s’esmenta enlloc a la Constitució. Cosa estranya, atès que Espanya es configura, en la seva forma, com a regne. Regne d’Espanya, en singular. Però aleshores, què són les nacionalitats? Què amaga el terme per referir-se a aquestes entitats orgàniques etnoculturals?

Sembla evident que es tracta d’un expedient púdic per al·ludir, sense anomenar-los, als antics regnes d’Hispània, a part de Castella, formats per: Catalunya, València, Mallorca, Aragó, Navarra, Galícia, el País Basc, Andalusia (i Portugal). Per tant, quin és el sentit i quina és la funció de les nacionalitats i de les regions? Impossible saber-ho, ja que aquests conceptes no tornen a aparèixer en tot el redactat de la Constitució.

Tot gira entorn de la “reconquesta”

Contra el discurs repetit com un mantra dins del sistema escolar franquista, l’aprenentatge d’Espanya es va articular en funció del concepte de “reconquesta”. Es tracta d’un terme historiogràfic —emprat encara en els currículums de secundària de Castella— que descriu el procés de recuperació del món feudal per sobre del món musulmà i jueu, perquè s’entén que els musulmans no eren els legítims propietaris de la geografia hispànica…

Aquest procés va arrencar poc després de l’arribada dels àrabs a la península Ibèrica al segle VIII i va finalitzar amb els Reis Catòlics al segle XV, els quals acabarien unificant “Espanya” com un Estat integral. Aquesta Reconquesta acabaria forjant “l’esperit espanyol”. O sigui, arguments històrics per justificar el nacionalcatolicisme imposat després de la Guerra Civil.

Tanmateix, no sembla que hagi existit mai ‘de facto’ una “nació espanyola”, és a dir, integradora de nacionalitats i regions, com ens vol fer creure la Constitució actual. Ni tan sols és segur que s’hagi consolidat mai com a Estat-nació, en el sentit modern. Ho veiem a continuació!

De la confederació a l’absolutisme

L’Estat dinàstic, iniciat pels Reis Catòlics, com hem dit, va acabar esdevenint un Estat absolutista. Abans de ser-ho, havia hagut de restringir el poder de la noblesa, forçar l’adscripció a la religió catòlica i cohesionar tot el poder en una devoció lleial al Rei. En contra del que pensen alguns, la llengua va restar al marge d’aquest esquema de poder. Per tant, no va ser mai un element unificador fins a principis del XVIII, encara que el franquisme intentés falsejar la història una vegada més.

El poder es va anar organitzant al voltant de cinc Consells d’Estat: Castella, Aragó, Itàlia, els Països Baixos, Portugal (1580-1640) i les Índies Occidentals. Per tant, els diferents territoris que configuraven la geografia de la Corona d’Hispaniae —plural d’Hispània— mantenien l’administració, la moneda i les lleis pròpies. En aquest sentit, es tractaria d’una mena confederació de nacionalitats, les quals conservaven les seves peculiaritats, furs i tradicions.

El predomini de Castella (que aglutinava Galícia, Astúries i Lleó) sobre els altres regnes existents de la península Ibèrica cada vegada va ser més evident, per extensió i població i, sobretot, després d’incorporar les Índies Occidentals al regne castellà, que ho va fer a títol de “descobriment”, amb tot el que va significar. D’aquesta manera, la progressiva translació de l’economia del mediterrani cap a l’atlàntic va comportar un canvi de paradigma en les relacions entre els diferents territoris que configuraven la Corona Hispànica.

Aquesta pluralitat, no sense sobresalts, va anar derivant cap a una major centralització del poder. Però el salt definitiu va ser després de la guerra de Successió i la subsegüent entronització de la dinastia borbònica al tron castellà. Entre 1707 i 1716, el nou rei Felip V va anar promulgant els coneguts Decrets de Nova Planta pels diferents territoris de la corona d’Aragó com a càstig per la seva rebel·lió i com a dret de conquesta. En canvi, aquesta pèrdua d’autonomia no va afectar mai ni Navarra ni les Províncies Basques, atès que aquests territoris havien estat fidels a la causa borbònica.

Va ser llavors quan Castella es va transformar en l’Espanya borbònica: una monarquia absoluta i fortament centralitzada. Prova d’aquest procés, Felip V escrivia el 1717: “He jutjat per convenient […] reduir tots els meus Regnes d’Espanya a la uniformitat d’unes mateixes lleis, usos, costums i tribunals, governant-se tots igualment per les lleis de Castella”. Així, com a resultat d’una repressió i per dret de conquesta, una Espanya castellanitzada per força es comença a configurar com un modern Estat (d’importació francesa) nacional (d’exportació castellana). Naturalment, la il·lusió va durar ben poc.

La il·lusió fallida de la “república federativa”

L’il·lustrat i escriptor José Marchena (1769-1821), exiliat a Baiona per escapar de la Inquisició, va escriure el 1792 un revelador informe per Jacques Pierre Brissot, un girondí i ministre d’assumptes exteriors de la República Francesa, sobre les dificultats d’implantar a Espanya una constitució semblant a la francesa del 1791. Les seves paraules són força reveladores: “França ha adoptat ara una constitució que fa d’aquesta vasta nació una república unida i indivisible. Però a Espanya, les diverses províncies de les quals tenen costums i usos molt diferents i a la qual s’hi ha d’unir Portugal, només hauria de poder-se formar una república federativa”.

En un sentit similar, el 1808, a Cadis, el cèlebre polític gironí, Antoni de Campmany va escriure, tot just començada la Guerra del Francès, en la famosa publicació ‘El Sentinella’: “… A França, doncs, no hi ha províncies ni nacions; no hi ha Provença ni provençals; ni Normandia ni normands. Tots s’esborraren del mapa dels seus territoris i fins i tot els seus noms […]. Tots es diuen francesos”. I més endavant detalla: “Llavors, què seria ja dels espanyols si no hi hagués hagut Aragonesos, Valencians, Murcians, Andalusos, Asturians, Gallecs, Extremenys, Catalans, Castellans? Cadascun d’aquests noms inflama l’orgull d’aquestes petites nacions, les quals configuren la gran nació”.

Dècada rere dècada, de les nou constitucions espanyoles redactades durant l’edat contemporània (1812-1978), totes tenen en comú —amb petits matisos—, una mateixa afirmació: són una constitució de la monarquia i de confessió catòlica, la religió del Rei i de la nació. Per tant, la unitat de la nació és la unitat de la monarquia.

Existeix, doncs, una nació de nacions?

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When Europe emerged from the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War in the mid-17th century, it decided to reorganize itself. With the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and, shortly afterward, the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), the continent consecrated a new political architecture: each king would rule within his own territory, and that territory would be enclosed by a legal border. From that territorial redesign, a new world was born —that of the nation-states— a legal invention that would turn geography into property and diversity into suspicion.

For centuries, this system functioned with brutal yet solid efficiency, giving rise to regular armies, stable currencies and bureaucracies capable of controlling the territory with the same coldness with which they drew maps. The border ceased to be a zone of exchange and became a line of separation. And with it, Europe believed itself immortal.

But time erodes all geometries. In the 21st century, the lines drawn at Westphalia have begun to melt, as if the borders of Europe’s political map were made of wax. This has allowed capital to circulate without an address, companies to operate without a homeland, and people to move more out of necessity than vocation. In this new landscape, the old nation-state looks increasingly like an empty fortress: perfect in form but hollow in substance. In fact, it feels as if we are once again inside Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” (1924), in which the author brilliantly portrayed the 1920s as a Europe enclosed, sick and fascinated by its own fever.

The inner fracture

Today’s Europe suffers a crisis that is not moral, but demographic and territorial. Its societies are ageing at a dizzying pace, which causes their interior spaces to fade progressively and the welfare system —built on the premise of an abundant active population— can only be sustained thanks to the massive entry of human capital.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of workers from diverse backgrounds arrive —who, like the barbarians of the 4th century, do not come to destroy but to sustain the system— preventing collapse. This new human capital provides the necessary workforce, contributes net tax revenue and ensures that social contributions continue to feed public services. Without them, the wheel of welfare would stop instantly, accelerating Europe’s decline.

But Europe has not yet understood that, like 5th-century Rome, it will only survive if it is capable of transforming its political structure to organically integrate all this human capital.

This population crisis overlaps with another of a geographical nature. The continent’s night map shows a brightly lit coastline and a vast dark interior. The great metropolises —London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Madrid, Berlin— concentrate wealth and power, while vast rural areas are emptied to the point of becoming human deserts. This is the new invisible frontier now taking shape, where divisions are no longer between states but between useful territories and abandoned ones.

Nation-states, born to defend their unity, now find themselves divided from within. The fiscal balance, redistribution and territorial cohesion that sustained the social pact have cracked. The south pays for the north’s demography; the west lives off the labour of the east; the centre concentrates what the peripheries produce. The result is an imbalanced system reminiscent of the Late Roman Empire: bureaucratic, indebted and dependent on human flows it can no longer control or understand.

In fact, this is the model of state that 18th-century colonialism —French, English, or Dutch— exported across the world. The same that, with supremacist arrogance, drew lines over empty maps and imposed by force of arms the principle of territorial sovereignty as a universal formula, stripped of any local grounding. In this way, European powers projected onto Africa, Asia, and the Americas their dream of rational order through the creation of straight borders, traced with a set square across deserts, jungles or unknown mountains, even if this meant separating peoples who shared language, culture and economy, or merging them with historical enemies under the same flag.

The result was an artificial geography built upon a state architecture with no social foundation. And when those colonies achieved independence, they did so under a poisoned inheritance: the nation-state had been an imposed model without a society to sustain it. The civil wars, genocides and absurd borders of the 20th century are the bill.

Because Europe, in trying to civilize the world, ended up universalizing its own mistakes. And perhaps now, faced with its own internal crisis, the Old Continent is beginning to understand that that model of rigid border and single identity was not a historical truth but an anomaly of its past.

The future lies in the limes

During the Late Empire, when Rome began to collapse under its own weight, the Germanic peoples crossed the limes not to destroy the Empire but to become part of it. They wanted to be Romans and, contrary to popular belief, their contribution —labour, soldiers, farmers, and taxes— was essential to keep the system alive. From that moment on, this new human capital allowed lands to continue being cultivated and kept the State functioning.

Today, history seems to be retracing the same steps. The Europe that invented the concept of the nation-state sees its model running out while new populations sustain its continuity. In essence, it is the same process the Old Continent experienced in the past, when it needed those “barbarians” to keep being what it was.

Perhaps this will lead us into a new Late Antiquity, a kind of transitional moment in which sovereignty will no longer be measured by control of territory but by the ability to manage the flows that cross it —capital, people, data, or ideas. And any State that fails to understand this and entrenches itself will likely be condemned to dissolve.

The Mediterranean once again —which was once the economic heart of the world— holds the key to the future. It is the place where the two halves of the old system meet: the ageing north and the growing south. If Europe wants to be reborn, it must look again towards its Mare Nostrum and understand that its survival depends on the permeability of what modernity sought to make impermeable.

When a civilization enters decline, history offers two options: raise walls or build bridges. Rome survived as long as it knew how to integrate, and disappeared precisely when it began to exclude. Even so, Europe is still in time to straighten its course. Perhaps the end of the nation-state will not be a collapse but a return: one in which geography acts as truth and history as a warning.

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Throughout history, the concept of a border has been subject to multiple interpretations. For the Romans, borders were conceived as a zone of influence and control rather than fixed lines. In contrast, in medieval times, a border was a dynamic, flexible space, often laden with commercial and political opportunities. However, from the mid-17th century onward, the Pyrenean border became a legal line of separation between territories, acquiring a distinctly administrative character.

This new border conception had profound consequences for the political configuration of Europe. The reorganization of the political map favoured the consolidation of new state sovereignties but also led to the rupture of cultural, social, political, and economic realities that had been cohesive for centuries. Thus, any person, community, or territory that challenged this new principle of sovereignty—in the absolute and indivisible unity of the State—faced harsh military and political reprisals.

Following this evolution, the concept of a border has been widely analysed by various disciplines in the social sciences. Until recently, these studies were influenced by political-historical perspectives that interpreted the border as a fundamental element for defining states. Examples of this can be found in 19th- and 20th-century political theories, which justified the precise delineation of territory and the strategic use of borders as instruments of defence and state sovereignty. Over time, politics allowed the state to associate its identity with the concept of a nation, thus forcing the unification of diverse historical realities under the nation-state model, a process that ultimately generated internal tensions.

However, more recent studies in historical geography have redefined the notion of a border. It has been demonstrated that borders are not simple, immovable physical lines but dynamic contact spaces where constant social, economic, and cultural interactions occur. This perspective dismantles the traditional idea of a border as an impenetrable wall and redefines it as a transition and relationship zone. A paradigmatic example of this new perspective is the doctoral thesis of Oscar Jané Checa, which provides a rigorous and well-documented analysis of the construction of the Pyrenean border in the 17th century and its impact on Catalonia. Studies like this help to understand that the border is not just an imposed division, but also a living space that shapes and transforms the societies that inhabit it.

Geographical elements that shape an identity

The origins of the Països Catalans date back to the Carolingian era when, under the policy of ‘Renovatio Imperii’, the territories south of the Pyrenees—from Pamplona to Barcelona—were organized into defensive territories against the Andalusian world. Until the 13th century, the Counts of Barcelona maintained interests north of the Pyrenees, but after the Battle of Muret, expansion was redirected toward the southern peninsula and the eastern islands, shaping what we know today as Països Catalans. This process was made possible by three fundamental geopolitical elements.

The first key factor was the sea, understood as the main axis of communication and territorial cohesion. This allowed the establishment of a wealth triangle between Valencia, Mallorca, and Barcelona—a model that, despite centralist pressures, persists today as an economic and cultural reference.

The second determining factor was the difference in altitude between the Castilian plateau and the Mediterranean coastline. The physical structure of Països Catalans has favoured, since ancient times, a high population density in coastal areas and low valleys, in contrast to the higher and more isolated inland regions. This geographical reality has led to different population models: a coast open to communications and exchange, while the interior has maintained a more dispersed and self-sufficient population.

This distribution can be observed in a night map of the Iberian Peninsula, where the most illuminated areas correspond to the Ebro Valley -Zaragoza-, the Mediterranean coast -from the Roussillon plain to Murcia-, the Guadalquivir Valley, the mouth of the Tagus River, the small valleys of the Cantabrian coast and the centre of the peninsula, as it is the capital. The rest of the territory remains in the dark, indicating a low demographic density that reflects the reality of empty Spain.

The third key factor is the presence of a vast demographic desert known as the Celtiberian Mountain Range. This area, with an extremely low population density, has historically remained disconnected from other peninsular regions. It is the second least populated area in Europe, after Finnish Lapland. This desert extends from Tortosa to the north with Zaragoza, to the west with Madrid and to the south with Ciudad Real. This population vacuum has acted over the centuries as a natural barrier that has preserved the Països Catalans from direct contact with the peninsular interior, reinforcing its geopolitical uniqueness.

This physical separation has also been reproduced in the north, where the French noon has similar characteristics, although to a lesser extent. This explains why the Catalan territories of the French State (Roussillon) and the Spanish State have historically lived isolated from each other. Only some accesses, such as the Ebro Valley -following the waterway through the Tortosa-Lleida-Zaragoza axis and the Huerta of Alicante, have allowed a certain connection with the interior.

This geopolitical framework, together with the language as a distinctive element, has consolidated the idea of a country with a homogeneous structure and its meaning. Beyond the linguistic unity from Salses to Guardamar, the geographical configuration explains the territorial continuity of the Catalan language, which expanded following a logical path without significant natural obstacles.

Dynastic rivalries and family clashes

After the Castilian Civil War (1475-1479), the two largest territories of the Iberian Peninsula—the Kingdom of Castile and the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation—formed a new political entity known as the Hispanic Monarchy. This dynastic state was structured around two key elements: the army and foreign policy. However, other fundamental aspects of the modern state, such as borders, currency, laws, and institutions, remained completely separate. Initially, the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation maintained its institutions and legal systems, leading to recurring tensions with the Hispanic monarchy in the following centuries.

The discovery of rich metal deposits in Mexico and Peru led to the founding or refounding of American cities that played a strategic territorial role in ensuring a constant flow of wealth to Castile. This transformed Castile into an economically powerful actor but also into a state that spent exorbitant sums to construct its idea of civilization, based on Catholicism. This obsession often led to numerous conflicts of various kinds, such as theological disputes, dynastic struggles, commercial issues, and monumental architectural projects. In addition, at the beginning of the 16th century, the main Communities of Castile were forced to assume a considerable tax to finance the purchase of the imperial title by the Habsburg family, which triggered the famous Revolt of the Commoners.

With the acquisition of the imperial title, France – ruled at that time by the Valois dynasty – perceived the Habsburgs as its main enemy, since with that purchase, the Habsburg family came to control most of the territories surrounding the French kingdom. This situation further aggravated France’s economic challenges in the mid-16th century, as the Habsburgs indirectly conditioned commercial mobility and restricted opportunities for growth.

As a result, key sectors such as agriculture – especially vines, wheat and other cereals – and textile manufacturing, which were the economic engine of the French kingdom, were limited by the difficulties of access to the markets of Italy and the United Provinces. Key cities such as Lyon, Paris and Marseilles experienced the effects of this blockade, and their commercial freedom and capacity for economic expansion were curtailed.

For this reason – despite being an eminently Catholic society – France supported the Dutch and German Protestant factions, to counteract Hispanic expansionism. This strategy was part of the geopolitical principle of the “Grand Dessein”, which sought to surround the Hispanic dominions with hostile allies to wear down the influence of the Habsburgs in Europe. As a consequence, during the following centuries, the Hispanic Monarchy and France would clash fiercely for control of Europe.

Change in European economic dynamics

At the beginning of the 17th century, the American mines began to show signs of depletion, a trend that would become more pronounced as the century progressed. This slowdown in the inflow of precious metals endangered the economy of the Hispanic Monarchy, which -to maintain its high rate of spending – was forced to borrow from German and Genoese banks. This financial dependence led to a generalized increase in taxes and a strong fiscal pressure on the entire Hispanic society. Thus, the monarchy was forced to look for new financing mechanisms, which would lead it to demand greater contributions from the different kingdoms of the Hispanic Monarchy.

In this context, in March 1626, Barcelona received King Philip IV, who had arrived in the city to swear the Catalan constitutions. However, the real purpose of the visit was to unblock the ambitious plan of the king’s minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares. The project, known as the “Union of Arms”, intended that each kingdom of the Hispanic Monarchy, including the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation, would contribute a determined number of money and soldiers, a burden that until then had fallen mainly on Castile since it had the exclusive monopoly of the American precious metals.

However, the Castilian oligarchies did not gauge well the implications of the oath of the Catalan constitutions. While it granted Philip IV the title of Count of Barcelona, it also restricted his ability to freely dispose of Catalonia’s economic resources. This meant that the monarch needed the consent of the Diputació del General and Les Corts to obtain new taxes or request extraordinary resources, which considerably limited the monarchy’s ability to execute Olivares’ project.

During that visit, the Catalan institutions showed the king more interest in the resolution of grievances that they considered essential than in contributing to military conflicts of exclusively monarchical interest. Among these demands were the demand to block the interference of the Council of Castile in the affairs of the Principality -initiated in the time of Philip II- the protection of Catalan trade, the limitation of the privileges of the Castilian Mesta and other monopolies that benefited Castile to the detriment of Catalonia, as well as measures to protect Mediterranean trade against piracy and French and Genoese competition. Catalonia never refused to defend herself from possible threats, but she rejected a fiscal and military imposition that violated her legal system.

With no clear options on the horizon and excessively conditioned by its international policy, the Hispanic Monarchy ended up imposing a forced militarization and an increase in fiscal pressure -without prior negotiation- with the Catalan institutions, which further fuelled the tension between the central government and Catalonia. This situation of unrest was perceived by the French monarchy as an opportunity to weaken the Hispanic power in the Iberian Peninsula. For decades, France had been looking for fissures in the Hispanic Monarchy,and the situation in Catalonia provided the ideal pretext to intervene.

The opportunity presented itself in 1639 when the Catalan social and institutional crisis became fertile ground for insurrection. France acted with a calculated strategy of destabilization, based on three main axes. First, it offered diplomatic and political support to Catalonia by recognizing its sovereignty under French protection. Second, it intervened militarily in Roussillon and other Catalan areas, reinforcing the perception that France could be an ally against Castile. Finally, it fostered internal division in Catalonia, playing on the rivalry between supporters of resistance and those who saw an alliance with Paris as a viable political option. With these moves, France managed to weaken the Hispanic presence and position itself as a key player in the Catalan conflict.

Conflict of identities

Faced with the repression of Philip IV and the centralizing policy of the Habsburgs—led by the Count-Duke of Olivares—Catalonia proclaimed Louis XIII as Count of Barcelona in 1641. This decision implied a reformulation of the Catalan identity discourse, situated between defending its institutions and the necessity of a strategic alliance with France.

However, this connection with France was not homogeneous or without tensions. The French presence in Catalonia did not lead to full integration within the French monarchy, but instead generated discontent among various sectors of society. As French military support transformed into an actual occupation, disenchantment toward France grew, ultimately favouring Catalonia’s return under Castilian sovereignty in 1652.

Oscar Jané Checa’s thesis shows that the redefinition of identities did not only take place in Catalonia, but also in France and Castile. For Castile, Catalonia was becoming – and still is today – a rebellious region that questioned the imperial project of the Habsburgs. For France, northeastern Catalonia was a territory that could become a frontier territory to be administered and assimilated. And Catalonia -as always-was oscillating between the defence of its institutions and the need to fit somehow between one of the two neighbouring monarchies.

At the same time, the financial situation of the Hispanic Monarchy deteriorated. Faced with the inability to meet its debts, the State entered into a cycle of successive bankruptcies (1627, 1647, 1652 and 1662), which undermined its credibility in the eyes of European chancelleries and weakened its international position. On the other hand, France began to apply colbertism, a form of mercantilism that encouraged industry, luxury manufacturing and navigation, making it in a short time the great European economic power of Louis XIV’s time.

A morning on Pheasant Island

On November 7, 1659, Pheasant Island, a small river islet at the mouth of the Bidasoa River between Hendaye and Irún, became the setting for a crucial moment in European history: the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. This agreement ended the long war between the Hispanic and French monarchies, a conflict that began in 1635 as part of the Thirty Years’ War.

Pheasant Island, due to its strategic location as a neutral territory, was chosen for the negotiations. On one side, Luis de Haro, representing a war-weary Hispanic monarchy in decline, and on the other, Jules Mazarin, the powerful prime minister of Louis XIV, advocated for an ascendant France, consolidated as an emerging power in Europe.

France, moreover, arrived with its homework done. For months, the jurist, historian and ecclesiastic Pierre de Marca, royal commissioner, had been working on the delimitation of the new border between the Kingdom of France and the Hispanic Monarchy, especially concerning the incorporation of Roussillon and Cerdanya. His posthumous work, “Marca Hispánica” (1688), became a fundamental reference in the study of the Pyrenean border and the construction of the French territorial identity. Although he was neither a geographer nor a cartographer, his influence on the political configuration of the territory made him a key figure in 17th-century geopolitics.

When the pens met the paper, the cession of several strongholds and territories that reconfigured the political reality of the Iberian Peninsula was confirmed. Castile ceded to France the counties of Roussillon, Conflent, Vallespir and part of Cerdanya, thus consolidating the division of Catalonia. At the same time, the treaty stipulated the marriage of Maria Teresa of Austria, Infanta of Castile, to Louis XIV of France, a dynastic bond that was intended to seal the peace through family union.

While notaries and witnesses were certifying the agreement, celebrations were being prepared in Madrid and Paris. However, for the inhabitants of the affected regions, especially in Catalonia, the signing of this treaty represented a deep wound. And more than forty years would have to pass before the Hispanic Monarchy officially notified the Generalitat of the cession of those territories. The new Pyrenean border represented a definitive cut in the historical territory and at the same time a breach that would ignite, decades later, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1715). This conflict, with tragic consequences for the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation, would end up establishing the Bourbon model in the Iberian Peninsula, irreversibly altering the political and national balance of the region.

The economic and institutional fracture of the border

One of the key elements in the integration of Northern Catalonia into the French orbit – apart from the construction of countless forts and fortresses such as Montlluís, Bellegarde, Prats de Molló, Vilafranca del Conflent, Perpinyà, Salsas or Colliure – was taxation, especially through the salt tax, an essential product for preserving food. While in the rest of Catalonia, salt – coming from the mines of Súria and Cardona – continued to be subject to the Hispanic tax system, the new French territories were incorporated into the gabelle regime, a high tax on salt imposed by the French State, which from then on would consume it from the salt mines of Peyriac-de-Mer, Sigean and Gruissan. This change forced the inhabitants of the region to modify their commercial structures and reinforced their economic dependence on the French monarchy.

Consequently, many products that previously circulated freely between the territories north and south of the Pyrenees became subject to taxes and regulations imposed by both monarchies. However, these restrictions generated new commercial dynamics outside state laws. Smuggling became an economic activity of great importance for many border communities, which found in this practice a means of survival and prosperity.

Over the years, this economic fracture was consolidated with a progressive institutional and cultural assimilation. The French administration dismantled the institutions of Roussillon and Cerdanya and progressively imposed the French language in education and official spheres. This process sealed the definitive separation between southern and northern Catalonia, generating a new frontier that transcended geography and became a political and identity fracture that persists today.

A final reflection on the contemporary border

More than three centuries later, the border drawn in the 17th century continues to have significant implications. Northern Catalonia, administratively integrated into the French State, retains cultural and historical traits in common with the rest of the Països Catalans, but its integration into the French Republic has progressively eroded its specificities. The border, which in the past was an administrative and economic barrier, has become today a symbolic separation that marks the distance between two different political and legal realities.

These borders, fixed with the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and reinforced by the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), were conceived as impassable lines in a world dominated by nation states. However, this state model is now in crisis. Globalization, European construction and the claims of national identities question the limits set centuries ago. Alejandre Deulofeu, with his theory of “The Mathematics of History”, stated that empires and nations follow predictable cycles of rise and decline, and that the model built in Westphalia of forced state sovereignties is destined to disappear.

In a European context where borders are constantly being redefined, the European Union has allowed for greater territorial permeability, but identity tensions and struggles for self-determination demonstrate that the border is not only a geographical boundary but also a mutable political and historical construct. Just as the 17th century was decisive for the configuration of the modern nation-state, the 21st century poses new challenges regarding sovereignty, national identities and the role of borders in a changing Europe.

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Quin abast històric té el relat que apareix a la “Cronica Fratris Salimbene di Adam Ordinis Minorum” la qual en dona fe d’una hipotètica ascensió del rei En Pere II el Gran al cim del Canigó, l’any 1285? I quina relació hi ha entre aquesta narració i la revolta popular esdevinguda a Sicília la primavera de 1282, coneguda com les vespres sicilianes?

A finals del segle XIII, el vell frare franciscà Salimbene d’Adam o de Parma (1221-1290), reclòs en el monestir de Montefalcone (Itàlia), tot realitzant un acte de memòria, redacta les seves impressions personals sobre la seva atzarosa vida. No es tracta d’un cronista apocalíptic, sinó profètic. No proposa una visió tremendista del seu món, sinó que narra uns fets per a la seva posterior reflexió. La seva “Cronica Fratris Salimbene di Adam Ordinis Minorum” escrita entre 1283 i 1290, és una mica de tot: autobiogràfica, història de l’orde, història de les ciutats del nord d’Itàlia, crònica universal del temps de Frederic II Hohenstaufen “stupor mundi” o diari de viatges a França i Itàlia.  

L’origen del mite

La tardor del 1889, G. Uzielle publicava dins del “Bollettino” del Club Alpí Italià un extens article titulat: “Leonardo da Vinci e le Alpi”. Aquest treball estava complementat per tres apèndixs, el tercer dels quals responia al títol: “Ascensione di Pietro III d’Aragona al Canigou”. De fet, es tracta d’un fragment (pàg. 354 – 355 de la primera edició) de la cèlebre crònica d’en Salimbene d’Adam. 

La primera edició moderna de la crònica es va realitzar dins de l’obra “Monumenta Historica ad provincias Parmensem et Placentinensem pertinentia, III” (Parma, 1857). La segona edició, més completa i elegant, fou dirigida per Oswald Holder-Egger i la podem trobar al “Monumenta Germania Historica: Scriptores, llibre XXXII” (Hanover, 1906). Així doncs, la importància de Salimbene d’Adam pel Pirineisme es deu al foli 459 (pàg. 597 – 599 de la segona edició) que duu per nom: “Sobre la mort del rei Pere d’Aragó”.

El context en el qual apareix l’article d’Uzielle al “Bollettino” italià és el context en el qual s’està a punt de materialitzar la gran obra del Pirineisme escrita per Henri Beraldi: “Cent ans aux Pyrénées”. Amb l’edició d’aquesta magna obra —set volums en total— es comença a edificar el corpus de coneixements que posteriorment coneixerem com a Pirineisme el qual es tracta d’una barreja entre la pràctica esportiva combinada amb l’emoció estètica i cultural, sempre desenvolupada dins la serralada dels Pirineus. D’alguna manera, el Pirineisme va ser creat com l’antagònic a l’Alpinisme perquè aquest només representava la pràctica esportiva.  

Beraldi, com a bibliòfil empedreït, crea tot aquest món; rescata personatges del passat: De Carbonnières, Russell, Cadier, Passet, els enginyers geodèsics, Brulle o Lister, etc. Els grans mites de les grans gestes pirinenques hi són presents. Però la cosa no acaba aquí. Cap a 1911, Beraldi signa un article titulat “Tentative de Pierre III au Canigou”, publicat a “Le passé du Pyrénéisme”, on escriu: “Finalment, ens trobem davant d’un primer fet ben caracteritzat d’alpinisme. Pujar per pujar, per conquerir un cim. Tres anys després de les Vespres Sicilianes. Ascensió per Vallmanya o Taurinyà, ascensió dels Cortalets seguida fins al clot dels Estanyols, un lloc molt impressionant amb un temps fosc; sobrevinguda brusca d’una broma negra. Amb poques paraules, temptativa al Canigó el 1285.”

Així doncs, arran d’aquests dos articles i de posteriors treballs més actuals, la historiografia situa com a primera ascensió al cim d’una muntanya la protagonitzada pel rei En Pere II el Gran l’any 1285, al cim del Canigó. Com veurem, el foli 459 de la crònica de Salimbene d’Adam ha estat erròniament interpretat com a verídic, quan en realitat és un tractament metafòric de les disputes de poder entre dos reis —Pere de Catalunya i Carles d’Anjou— i dos territoris, Catalunya i França.

La tessitura a la qual Salimbene d’Adam escriu la seva crònica es realitza dins d’un context molt particular. I és per això que cal analitzar tot el text de la crònica amb rigor i contextualitzar el succés narrat dins d’ella amb la mentalitat social i política del segle XIII. La mirada del present cap al passat s’ha de fer amb ulls crítics perquè, si no ho fem, estem condemnats a deformar la realitat històrica.   

Per tant, tot el que estigui fora d’aquesta línia de treball —rigorositat i contextualització— genera un debat estèril. La principal tasca de l’historiador és crear coneixement i, per a fer-ho possible, no hem de desvincular els esdeveniments ni del seu espai ni del seu temps. Perquè això no succeeixi, tenim al nostre abast un conjunt d’eines —documents, cròniques, anals, cronologies, restes arqueològics, història oral— que ens ajudaran a apropar-nos amb la transparència possible a l’estudi del passat. Però això no acaba aquí. Així doncs, apareix la segona norma que hem de seguir: la lectura de la documentació. La simple lectura no ens porta enlloc, sinó tan sols a la distorsió històrica. Per tant, cal saber llegir entre línies. I aquest és l’error el qual es pretén reparar.

Una mirada rere la crònica

Per a comprendre el rerefons que amaga la crònica de Salimbene d’Adam sobre la narració del Canigó, hem de realitzar un doble esforç: per una banda, hem d’entendre el context sociopolític en la qual fou redactada la crònica i, per l’altre, hem d’analitzar pacientment els successos esdevinguts entre 1280 i 1285. Aquests cinc anys són la clau que ens permetrà desemmascarar el mite.     

El foli 459, apartat A, comença amb el significatiu títol: “De la mort de Pere, rei d’Aragó”. Malgrat aquest inici, Salimbene ja ens ho adverteix en el foli 445, apartat B, quan ens comenta: “Coneixent per avançat, que en menys d’un any, quatre il·lustres personatges, seran lliurades a la mort per voluntat de Déu, allí on es troba el sepulcre de tot vivent” seguit de “El primer serà el rei Carles, el segon el papa Martí, el tercer Felip, rei de França, el quart Pere, rei d’Aragó.” Així doncs, el rei En Pere d’Aragó (de Catalunya) serà la quarta persona rellevant del panorama polític internacional de l’època que passà a millor vida durant aquell any de 1285. 

Recordant el que s’escriu anteriorment, Salimbene comença el text dient-nos que “De la mateixa manera, en el present mil·lenni, durant la vetlla del beat Martí, Pere, rei d’Aragó, va tancar, va concloure amb la seva pròpia mort, el darrer dia; en aquest, el menor dels germans, el guardià que el va escoltar en confessió; fou enterrat a Vila-Nova, en el mateix lloc que els germans menors.” Efectivament, el rei En Pere II de Catalunya va morir la nit del 10 a l’11 de novembre de 1285 —diada de Sant Martí— a Vilafranca del Penedès, encara que el cronista escrigui Villa-nova. De fet, ja feia unes setmanes que havia caigut greument malalt mentre es dirigia cap a Salou per embarcar-se direcció a Mallorca, per arreglar les qüestions familiars amb el seu germà Jaume, donat que aquest havia pres part activa en favor de la croada francesa contra ell rei En Pere. Feia una mica més d’un mes —l’1 d’octubre— que l’exercit del rei En Pere havia vençut les tropes croades al Coll de Panissars.

Les vespres sicilianes 

Però els conflictes no només es reduïen a qüestions familiars. A l’origen de la croada s’hi trobava la qüestió siciliana. Veient-se la mort de prop i sota pressió, el rei En Pere va demanar que Sicília tornés a l’Església i va demanar “enviar una ambaixada al papa Honori —quart—, per a obtenir concòrdia entre els fills de Pere d’Aragó i els fills de França que es comentava que eren consanguinis” i així resoldre el conflicte polític. 

Finalment, el darrer problema que havia de solucionar —arran de la croada francesa— era la qüestió castellà per la Regió de Múrcia. Però ni els problemes familiars, ni la qüestió siciliana i, ni de bon tros, els problemes amb Castella pogué fer-se’n càrrec, ja que la malaltia va posar fi a la seva vida.

El foli 459, apartat B, comença amb el suggerent títol: “Sobre la recomanació de Pere, rei d’Aragó, que queda evidenciat amb un exemple del que s’ha exposat amb anterioritat”. Aquest exemple és el que més controvèrsia ha suscitat dins del panorama historiogràfic.

Salimbene d’Adam ens presenta el protagonista de la seva narració, elogiant-lo de manera heroica “Aquest rei Pere d’Aragó fou un home de gran cor, un fort soldat, i savi en la guerra” i demostrada per mitjà d’actes passats. “Doncs aquest home tingué una gran audàcia, i molta empenta”, i més concretament pel “… que es fa palès en l’empresa del regne de Sicília, que contra el rei Carles —d’Anjou— i el papa Martí —quart— es va atrevir a envair-los.” Al llarg de tota la crònica, Salimbene d’Adam ens descriu detalladament tot aquest afer. De fet, el tema sicilià serà un dels grans conflictes del segle XIII. A l’origen del conflicte s’hi troba la qüestió de qui ha de posseir l’illa. L’interès sobre Sicília es deu, principalment, a què l’illa és el graner de la Mediterrània i la clau de la ruta del comerç cap a orient.

Carles d’Anjou havia cercat projectar la seva persona per tota la Mediterrània per mitjà d’una nova croada. Amb la intenció de donar un cop d’efecte als seus adversaris, projectava un nou saqueig sobre Constantinoble, reproduint els esquemes de la quarta croada (1204). Però la situació es va torçar quan el sud italià s’enfrontà obertament a la seva política personal. Els sicilians havien començat a comprendre que la seva projecció com a república —similar a la de Gènova o Venècia— estava en greu perill. Aquest debat, Carles no el va entendre i va preferir destruir tal iniciativa.

Seguint la política insular del seu pare —el rei En Jaume el Conqueridor—, el 30 d’agost de 1282 un poderós estol català comandat pel rei En Pere va desembarcar a les costes de Sicília —concretament a Trapani—, provinent de la costa tunisenca d’Al-Coll, on hi havia anat a ajudar el seu vassall i aliat Abu-Bekr, senyor de Constantina. Un cop a Sicília, el rei En Pere es dirigirà cap a Palerm per ser coronat rei el 27 de setembre de 1282. La seva presència allí no era gratuïta: la seva esposa era Constança de Sicília, neta de Frederic II Hohenstaufen “stupor mundi”. Amb aquest acte, el rei En Pere reivindicava la memòria del passat de la família Hohenstaufen a l’illa, el passat que havia intentat esborrar la política de Carles d’Anjou. Els sicilians estaven convençuts que aquesta —la catalana— era la millor opció i la més encertada per a forjar el seu projecte. És per això que els sicilians, el 31 de març de 1282, s’havien alçat en armes contra el domini francès a l’illa. Aquest fet fou conegut com la revolta de les vespres sicilianes.

El conflicte va posar en escac la política de Carles, conduint-lo a una situació tensa. La negativa del rei En Pere d’abandonar Sicília el va conduir a dos nous horitzons: la disputa bèl·lica contra Carles i la disputa legal contra el papa. D’ambdues en va sortir victoriós. Mentre que a Carles el va esclafar a Nicotera —Calàbria— a les forces del papa les va destrossar a Panissars.

Un exemple per l’audiència 

Salimbene ens explica que per a demostrar tot això, posarà un altre exemple sobre la valentia demostrada pel rei En Pere: “Evident, encara que seguit d’un altre exemple, amb això que clarament exposem”. Cal dir que a l’edat mitjana era molt normal recórrer a exemples fantàstics, impossibles de realitzar pels mortals, un terreny reservat tan sols per als herois. La finalitat de l’exemple és captar millor l’atenció del lector, com així ha estat. Aquest recurs de ficcionar un episodi per reforçar la imatge d’un rei valent no és un cas aïllat en la literatura medieval. Per exemple, en la tradició francesa, es troben històries similars sobre Carlemany i la seva llegendària ascensió als Pirineus, on es diu que va rebre una revelació divina sobre la seva missió a Hispània. Aquesta narració simbolitza la seva campanya per expandir el cristianisme i el seu paper com a defensor de la fe. De la mateixa manera, també es poden trobar paral·lelismes amb Ricard Cor de Lleó i les seves aventures a Terra Santa, així les novel·les cavalleresques franceses, situa l’heroi dins d’un espai d’incertesa —d’aventura— com és el bosc, per reafirmar el seu poder i coratge.

Salimbene ens situa el seu exemple en un espai concret “En els confins de Provença i d’Hispània” i ens presenta l’objectiu “s’aixeca una alta muntanya, que la gent del país l’anomena Mont Canigó” i l’envolta de misteri “encara que nosaltres podríem anomenar-la Mont Tenebrós.” Atès que el protagonista de l’exemple és el rei català, Salimbene, segurament va optar per escollir un espai geogràfic del territori del rei.

Des de temps llunyans, el Canigó havia estat considerada com la muntanya més alta de la serralada dels Pirineus, impossible d’arribar-hi. Però per si no havia quedat prou clar que l’empresa és molt arriscada, recorre a una descripció geogràfica que li ofereix el gram geògraf grec del segle II, Ptolemaeus d’Alexandria a la seva “Geographia” el qual va recollir observacions empíriques que permetien identificar punts de referència geogràfics rellevants per a la navegació: “Doncs, aquesta muntanya que els mariners veuen primer a l’arribada, després de partir és el darrer punt que podem veure, perquè quan ha desaparegut, cap altre és visible.” D’aquesta manera, l’objectiu impossible ha quedat fixat. Malgrat haver tingut alguns problemes interns, com ara les guerres amb els sarraïns, la revolta dels barons o els problemes familiars, la política insular iniciada pel rei En Pere arran del seu casori amb Constança de Sicília —el 13 de juny de 1262— ja no tindrà fre. El rei En Pere seguirà la seva política fins a les darreres conseqüències, encara que això esdevingui una qüestió personal.

Després d’emfasitzar sobre la perillositat de l’empresa plantejada pel rei En Pere, el cronista continua escrivint: “Mai cap home hi ha habitat, ni cap fill d’home s’ha atrevit a pujar-hi a causa de la seva alçada extraordinària, per la dificultat de l’itinerari i per l’esforç”. Malgrat haver tingut alguns recels importants a l’interior del reialme, sobretot per part de l’Església sobre les seves intencions d’envair Sicília, el rei En Pere va persistir en la idea inicial i va decidir tirar endavant amb l’aventura. En un primer moment, el rei En Pere comptarà amb el suport polític de dos importants aliats: Castella i Constantinoble. És per això que Salimbene ens diu: “Doncs bé, Pere d’Aragó havent decidit a pujar a la muntanya va cridar al seu costat a dos cavallers, amics íntims, que ell honrava amb el seu afecte, cosa que li prometeren no separar-se mai d’ell.”

Com ja hem dit abans, la campanya de Sicília va començar el 30 d’agost de 1282. Un cop iniciada, aturar-la era quasi impossible, malgrat l’excomunicació papal del 9 de novembre de 1282. En aquest punt, Salimbene ens parla que “Mentre pujaven sentiren trons espantosos i del tot terribles sentiren trons espantosos i del tot terribles” fins que els seus companys “caigueren a terra, morts de por sota el pes de la por i de l’espant d’allò que els havia vingut” que malgrat els esforços del rei En Pere per a restituir la situació, els dos companys “fins a perdre el coratge.” En realitat, les dues aliances que havia signat amb Castella i Constantinoble mai arribaren a fer-se efectives. Per altra banda, vist que l’excomunicació papal no havia donat resultats, el papa va lliurar els regnes del rei En Pere a qualsevol príncep cristià que els volgués conquerir. Per això, el 27 d’agost de 1283 l’oferia al rei de França i el 27 de febrer de 1284 —en una cerimònia celebrada a París— donava la investidura a Felip III de França, l’Ardit. Des d’aquell moment, la croada començava a dibuixar-se. Malgrat tot això, el rei En Pere va continuar amb la seva empresa.

El desafiament de Bordeus 

Però hi ha un fet que encara honra més la figura del rei Pere. Al foli 427, Salimbene ens explica amb gran detall el famós desafiament de Bordeus. Carles d’Anjou havia comunicat, per mitjà d’una ambaixada al rei En Pere, que aquest no havia estat cavalleresc i que havia entrat a Sicília sense raó. Per tant, aquesta qüestió l’havien de solucionar cavallerosament —o sigui, a cops d’espasa— i per aquest motiu se citaren per l’1 de juny de 1283 a la ciutat de Bordeus amb la finalitat de solucionar la qüestió siciliana. Ràpidament, el rei En Pere, s’adonà que es tractava d’una maniobra de distracció del rei francès per allunyar-lo i matar-lo lluny del seu regne —com li havia succeït al seu avi a Muret— cosa que l’alertà a marxar prematurament de Bordeus. I preveient la imminent invasió de Catalunya per les trobes croades del papa i del rei francès, el rei En Pere va demanar ajuda als seus aliats. La negativa fou total i al rei En Pere no li va quedar cap altre remei que afrontar la situació tot sol. És per motiu que Salimbene ens diu que davant d’aquest fet “Pere va decidir pujar amb grans dificultats tot sol.”

Així doncs, el rei En Pere va disposar el seu exèrcit —per tal de barrar al pas a les tropes croades— en els principals colls de la serra de l’Albera: Panissars, Pertús i Banyuls. Malgrat els intents dels croats per passar-hi, les tropes del rei En Pere van poder frenar els intents. Però va ser l’abat de Sant Pere de Rodes qui va mostrar a les tropes croades el pas del Coll de la Maçana —prop el castell de Requesens—, la qual cosa els va permetre travessar l’Albera —12 de juny de 1285— i arribar ràpidament fins a Girona per posar-hi setge. Després d’uns mesos d’intensos combats —terrestres i navals— les tropes catalanes venceren les tropes croades. Potser, de totes elles, la coneguda és la batalla del Coll de Panissars de l’1 d’octubre de 1285. 

El doble sentit de la crònica

I ara entrem en la qüestió més delirant de la narració. Salimbene ens explica que “I quan fou al cim de la muntanya —el rei En Pere—, hi va trobar un llac” i en veure’l “aquell lloc, hi va tirar una pedra. Aleshores sortir un drac horrible, de gran dimensió que es va posar a volar per tot l’aire que omplia d’ombres i que l’enfosquia amb el seu alè. Després —d’aquest succés— el rei En Pere va iniciar el descens.”

Aquest és el fragment on rau la gran metàfora que amaga el text de Salimbene per explicar el regnat d’En Pere II el Gran. La política insular del rei En Pere el va conduir a fitxar com a objectiu principal Sicília (el llac); després de temptejar la zona amb les campanyes de Tunísia, finalment hi ha el desembarcament a Trapani (tira la pedra); el papa Martí IV l’excomunica i posa tot els seus regnes sota la jurisdicció del rei francès (surt un gran i horrible drac); els francesos envaeixen Catalunya seguint la proclama de la croada dictaminada per la Santa Seu (el cel s’enfosqueix amb l’alè del drac); finalment, el rei En Pere surt victoriós de Bordeus i de la croada contra Catalunya (inicia el descens).

Finalitzada la seva aventura, Salimbene li reconeix els seus mèrits i les compara amb les empreses realitzades pel gran heroi llatí: Alexandre el gran. És per això que Salimbene ens diu: “Segons jo —Salimbene—, la gesta de Pere d’Aragó es pot comparar amb les gestes d’Alexandre, que amb moltes terribles empreses i gestes es va esforçar per a merèixer els elogis de la posteritat.”

La fi del mite

La figura del rei En Pere II el Gran de Catalunya no deixa de ser interessant pels esdeveniments que són lligats a ella. No es va astorar davant de tantes adversitats, arribant a meravellar als seus adversaris. Va saber afrontar el seu repte i el va superar. I aquesta és la seva metàfora; la seva existència personal. I aquesta és la mirada que recull Salimbene a la seva crònica. És per això que el context en la qual apareix la figura del rei En Pere II de Catalunya (d’Aragó) dins la crònica és sempre relatiu a la problemàtica siciliana. Aquesta qüestió, Salimbene la descriu d’una manera clara, descrivint l’evolució des de l’època de l’emperador Frederic II Hohenstaufen “stupor mundi”, passant pel període del rei Manfred i Carles d’Anjou fins a arribar al rei En Pere II de Catalunya.

Salimbene intueix que el rei En Pere II el Gran de Catalunya —igual que ho serà Carles d’Anjou— serà un dels personatges rellevants del panorama polític del segle XIII. Ho creu perquè coneix de primera mà els esdeveniments. Sap que el rei En Pere va haver de recórrer un llarg camí i va haver d’afrontar-se a tota mena de penalitats per assolir el seu objectiu final. És per això que Salimbene, reconeixent-li la seva tenacitat i la seva convicció de si mateix, ens mostra una certa simpatia vers el rei català. I per aquesta raó no ens ha d’estranyar la lloança metafòrica que realitza a la seva crònica un cop s’assabenta que el rei ha mort.

El problema —com sempre— rau en la mirada amb la qual ens apropem al passat. Des d’un punt de vista rigorós, tothom sap que l’existència d’un llac al cim d’una muntanya és més que improbable, perquè si així fos estaríem desafiant a les lleis de la física. És de sentit comú. Per no parlar sobre l’existència de dracs. Si neguem aquestes dues premisses, el nostre pensament com a historiadors ens ha de situar enfront d’una pregunta clau: Què ens intenta explicar el cronista a través de la seva narració? 

En canvi, si no realitzem aquest petit esforç i reconduïm la narració fictícia cap a la realitat, amb la finalitat de donar-li veracitat, ens endinsem per un camí molt perillós. Malgrat això, hom s’hi ha endinsat. És per això que trobem datacions a l’acció que narra en Salimbene. Ni el 1276, i encara menys el 1285 són possibles. No ho són perquè mai va existir l’aventura del Canigó, encara que la idea romàntica d’un feudal davant la muntanya sigui tan suggerent: La veritable aventura fou Sicília. El Pirineisme comença quan l’home té curiositat per entendre la realitat i es llança a l’aventura de l’observació, però… això són figues d’un altre paner. 

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Què té de màgic la festivitat de Tot Sants? Celebrem la Castanyada com qui celebra el Halloween als països anglosaxons? Venerem la mort o la vida? Festejar la tardor amb panellets, castanyes i moniatos té més a veure amb el nostre passat agrícola del que pensem.

El procés genètic i cultural que els humans vam experimentar ara fa uns cinc milions d’anys ens va capacitar per transformar objectes en utensilis, fet que ens va permetre adaptar-nos amb més eficàcia als diferents climes de la terra. La mobilitat va ser clau per a la nostra supervivència. Però, ara fa 10.000 anys aproximadament, aquest nomadisme es va veure alterat per un descobriment encara més revolucionari: l’agricultura. 

La possibilitat de produir l’aliment propi va comportar que ens establíssim en zones aptes per al conreu i, al mateix temps, ens va permetre estabular els ramats salvatges per a assegurar-nos la proteïna de tot l’any. Aquestes societats sedentàries primitives van quedar condicionades per sempre més per un calendari agrícola i ramader. Serà aleshores quan apareixeran les primeres evidències del culte als déus, a les deesses i als avantpassats. 

I què hi té a veure tot plegat amb Tot Sants? Doncs que l’antropologia ha estudiat a fons com, en l’origen de la festivitat hi ha un patró, una creença, que es dona de manera similar en infinitat de cultures d’arreu del món. El seu punt de partida sempre és el mateix: la celebració del naixement d’un període d’obscuritat que s’allarga fins a un període de llum. Així és com trobem festivitats com les de la Pomona romana, la del Samhain celta o l’Udazkena basca. 

D’aquesta manera, el Samhain o l’Udazkena marcaven l’inici en el calendari agrícola del període en què els camps i les terres semblaven ermes —similar al món dels difunts— fins que, amb l’arribada de la primavera, tot tornava a començar. S’iniciava així un nou cicle de la vida. Aquestes creences paganes que practicaven els habitants del ‘pagus’ —els pagesos— van mantenir-se ben arrelades durant mil·lennis fins a la irrupció del cristianisme al segle I. 

El món catòlic s’apropia de les tradicions paganes

L’inici de la fi del paganisme va venir de la mà del Papa Bonifaci IV, que l’any 610 va consagrar el Panteó romà d’Agripa, que fins aleshores s’havia dedicat al culte pagà de Júpiter. Aprofitant aquest fet, va instituir una festa que commemorava tots els sants desconeguts i anònims de la cristiandat i que se celebrava el 13 de maig. 

Però no va ser fins a mitjans del segle IX, arran del Renaixement carolingi, quan s’instaura, definitivament i per tot l’occident medieval, el que coneixem com la festivitat de Tots Sants. L’encíclica papal de Gregori IV de l’any 840 va promulgar la cristianització definitiva de tots els territoris de l’imperi i va obligar a substituir les festes paganes, com ara el Samhain o les de Pomona, per la de Tots Sants, canviant la data de celebració a l’1 de novembre. Durant centúries, el món catòlic va continuar la seva política de suplantar tradicions ancestrals paganes per esdeveniments d’església, mentre que al món anglosaxó, on el protestantisme era preeminent, va relaxar aquesta pressió. 

Avui dia, observem que mentre Tots Sants és més aviat fosc, trist, de plorera i silenci, en canvi, Halloween —‘All Hallow’s Eve’— és festiva, dolça, divertida i, això sí, molt amplificada per l’aparell propagandístic nord-americà. A la resta del món, com ara Filipines o Mèxic —i sobretot arran de la pel·lícula ‘Coco’, de Pixar—, la festivitat té, encara més, un caire festiu: no només es visita la tomba del difunt, sinó que se celebra un pícnic familiar al seu voltant, on es col·loquen màscares, cintes de colors i, fins i tot, es cuinen plats especials. 

A Catalunya, alegria i severitat

Pel que fa a la nostra cultura, segons narra el folklorista i etnòleg Joan Amades al seu conegut ‘Costumari català’ (Salvat Editors, 1982), el dia de Tots Sants té dues cares ben diferents: l’alegre i festiva del matí i la rigorosa i severa de la tarda. Això és així perquè, tal com recorda Amades, hi ha una creença molt popular que, just quan fa mig dia de l’1 de novembre, les persones que han mort fa poc temps tornen unes hores a viure amb la família. 

Fins i tot hi havia la tradició, en algunes cases de Barcelona, de posar el plat a taula per al difunt, com si fos un convidat més. Així mateix, era molt comú, l’1 de novembre, convocar els difunts a casa, però també ajudar-los a tornar a l’eternitat. Per això, a la façana de les cases era habitual penjar-hi uns fanalets, i també s’hi posaven sobre les tombes. 

Al costumari, Amades també rememora un costum típic de les poblacions rurals, on era popular fer ofrenes de pa als difunts dins els cementiris. Aquesta tradició va evolucionar fins als populars panellets, que els forners van convertir en un negoci. 

Seguint amb la gastronomia, per aquestes dates les castanyes, els moniatos i els panellets han estat i són els aliments més usuals. A tall d’anècdota, per exemple, s’explica que en algunes zones de Catalunya hi havia la superstició que menjar castanyes feia caure els cabells i, per això, les dones no en volien menjar. Per aquest motiu, les castanyes se substituïen per pinyons. Potser per això molts panellets s’embolcallen amb les llavors del pi.

En definitiva, la festivitat de Tot Sants, d’avui, d’abans i de molt abans, sempre respon al mateix esperit: mantenir viva la memòria dels nostres avantpassats i venerar el cicle de la vida que tan bé s’expressa en el món de pagès. 

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El segle XV, Catalunya va començar amb el Compromís de Casp, una assemblea de notables convocada amb l’únic objectiu d’escollir el següent rei de la Corona catalanoaragonesa. La mort de Martí l’Humà sense descendència legítima i sense haver nomenat oficialment successor al candidat natural Jaume d’Urgell, va donar molta força a la candidatura de Ferran d’Antequera, regent de Castella. I tot plegat, quina relació existeix amb el descobriment d’Amèrica?    

Al final del segle XIII, va cessar abruptament el procés expansiu que de manera sostinguda havia afectat tot Europa durant els dos segles anteriors. Era el primer símptoma de l’esgotament del sistema feudal. Des d’aleshores, les grans fams i epidèmies dels segles XIV i XV, posarien en evidència els forts desequilibris d’un sistema ja obsolet. 

La crisi generalitzada del feudalisme va afectar totes les estructures materials, socials i mentals. Fams i epidèmies determinaren reajustaments dels sistemes d’explotació agraris, el caràcter contradictori dels quals va fomentar les lluites camperoles i les reaccions senyorials, típiques del període. Les ciutats, beneficiades al començament pel fluix migratori camperol, es veieren commogudes per les tendències immobilistes de les oligarquies i els programes democratitzadors d’amplis sectors socials urbans.

Les monarquies europees es van trobar atrapades en aquest context de conflicte. La seva autonomia d’acció els exigia un drenatge més eficaç de recursos, que superés la vella malla de drets feudals, de gestió complexa i de rendiments incerts, encara que clarament insuficients. El concepte, tantes vegades repetit, que el rei “deu viure de lo seu” va constituir un hàbil estratagema per a limitar la monarquia, sostraient-li el control dels recursos financers.

La desigual textura econòmica i social dels països que componien la Corona catalanoaragonesa va determinar cronologies i desenvolupaments específics de la crisi. L’any 1333, “lo mal any primer”, va romandre com a símbol de la crisi agrària catalana, situació extensible a Mallorca; però Aragó, i també València, experimentaren greus dificultats arran de la crisi de les Unions (1347-48) i de la Guerra dels Dos Peres (1356-75). La diversitat social i institucional de la Corona va imposar continguts diferenciats a la crisi: el problema de remença fou una qüestió específica de Catalunya; a Mallorca, el camperolat era de condició lliure; i a Aragó i València, els mudèjars van constituir la massa dels treballadors en condicions de servitud rigorosa. Per això mateix, a Catalunya es va lluitar per l’adquisició de drets econòmics i jurídics. A Mallorca, els forans van combatre, al so de “qui deu que pac”, contra la corrupció administrativa generada pel deute públic i l’administració dels impostos. I a Aragó i València, no hi hagué lluites camperoles, exceptuant anècdotes aïllades, durant els segles XIV i XV.

El marc politicoinstitucional de la Corona catalanoaragonesa

La unió dinàstica d’Aragó i Catalunya, el 1137, determinà l’estructura politicoadministrativa de la Corona. Tant Aragó com Catalunya s’incorporaren, en aquella data, com a entitats que mantenien íntegres les seves disparitats econòmiques, fiscals i institucionals. Es tractava d’una confederació. Les conquestes de Mallorca i València, al segle XIII, no quedaren com a prolongacions de Catalunya o d’Aragó, sinó que ambdues entitats se sumaren a la Corona en qualitat de regnes dotats d’autonomia interna. Sicília, Sardenya i Nàpols, també amb el títol de regnes, s’incorporaren posteriorment a aquesta peculiar estructura. 

Darrere d’aquesta façana institucional, tanmateix, Catalunya va exercir la direcció durant bona part del segle XIV. El disseny de l’expansió mediterrània fou obra seva. Mallorca, poblada aclaparadorament per catalans, fou en alguns aspectes una prolongació del Principat; sense corts privatives, quan acudia a les convocatòries generals els seus representants se sumaven a la representació catalana, encara que esporàdicament fes valer la seva condició de regne separat. Durant el segle XV, València va assumir el paper econòmic de Catalunya, però no el lideratge que aquesta havia tingut dins la confederació.

L’estructura federativa de la Corona i les diferents circumstàncies de la incorporació de territoris determinaren la desigual intensitat de l’acció monàrquica en cada regne. Resulta evident la distinció entre els territoris units mitjançant pacte dinàstic, Aragó i Catalunya, i els territoris conquerits, València i les illes Balears. En aquests darrers, per norma general, la monarquia operà amb menys contribucions. Ni Mallorca ni València no van conèixer figures equiparables la justícia d’Aragó o a la Diputació del General de Catalunya. A Mallorca i València el rei va arribar a designar els càrrecs rectors dels municipis i els components de les assemblees per assegurar-se la continuïtat del drenatge econòmic. Per aquestes raons, Mallorca es doblegà a les demandes financeres de la monarquia, a la segona meitat del segle XIV, fins al límit de les seves possibilitats. Durant el segle XV, València en va prendre el relleu; la seva contribució a les empreses d’Alfons el Magnànim i, sobretot, de Ferran el Catòlic, va portar el municipi vora la fallida.

Malgrat l’eficàcia desigual de la monarquia en la captació de recursos, l’acció de la Corona en el terreny legislatiu, judicial i financer estigué sotmesa a control. Fou la teoria del pactisme. El principi va ser enunciat clarament per Francesc Eiximenis, que va assenyalar que tota autoritat emanava de la comunitat, ja que aquella no era sinó la síntesi de l’exercici de la llei que, a la vegada, era el conjunt de costums. El poder reial provenia d’un contracte tàcit entre el monarca i el poble, i ambdós s’obligaven al compliment de la llei. El sistema operava, a la pràctica, de manera que el rei no era proclamat fins després d’haver jurat els furs o constitucions. Tampoc no podia establir o abolir disposicions generals sense el coneixement i consentiment de les corts. L’aplicació i administració de la llei, és a dir, la justícia, estava limitada per la trama de jurisdiccions feudals de vell encuny, pel seguiment realitzat per les corts, i per institucions com ara la justícia d’Aragó.

En tot cas, la gestió executiva dels monarques quedava particularment limitada per l’escassetat de recursos ordinaris a la seva disposició. Com a tota monarquia feudal, el rei disposava d’un patrimoni privat, format per monopolis, drets sobre l’activitat agrària i comercial, taxes judicials i altres ingressos aleatoris. Les creixents necessitats econòmiques conduïren a una millora de la gestió i coordinació financeres, amb la creació del mestre racional al final del segle XIII. Però el sistema, malgrat les seves virtualitats, va mostrar aviat que era limitat. El disseny d’una política imperialista a la Mediterrània, durament combatuda per Gènova, exigí esforços financers colossals amb relació a les possibilitats que oferia el patrimoni reial. Aquest patrimoni estava adaptat a circumstàncies històriques superades, perquè tenia una base agrària que el feia poc adaptable. Però la seva magnitud permetia certs marges de maniobra, tot i que sempre perillosos, com a garantia de préstecs hipotecaris i hipoteques i, en darrera instància, la venda de drets i jurisdiccions.

Els Trastàmara arriben a la Corona catalanoaragonesa

Juntament amb el tractat de Corbeil (1259), que va comportar la renúncia al predomini català al sud de França, possiblement el Compromís de Casp ha estat el segon gran tema objecte de polèmica per la historiografia catalana.

Després de la mort de Martí el Jove, el 1409, Martí l’Humà posà en marxa diverses iniciatives successives: el seu matrimoni amb Margarida de Prades i el nomenament de Jaume d’Urgell com a governador i lloctinent general, càrrec reservat generalment als hereus. Cap no donà resultat. Ni el rei obtingué la successió desitjada, ni Jaume d’Urgell va saber assegurar-la-hi des del seu càrrec de privilegi. Pocs mesos abans de la seva mort, el rei intentà encara una nova fórmula, que consistia a reunir una assemblea de notables per assessorar-lo en el tema de la successió. L’assemblea no arribà a reunir-se a causa de la mort del monarca al final del 1410. La qüestió successòria quedà, doncs, oberta. 

Després d’un dramàtic interregne, la primavera de 1412 es reuniren a la vila aragonesa de Casp els representants dels parlaments català, valencià i aragonès per escollir, entre els quatre candidats —Ferran d’Antequera, Jaume d’Urgell, Alfons de Gandia i Frederic de Luna—, el nou rei de la Confederació. A instàncies dels aragonesos i recolzats per l’exèrcit castellà, els mallorquins havien quedat exclosos de l’elecció amb la clara intenció d’impedir un possible empat. Per tant, transcorreguts tres mesos de deliberació, els representants van triar en Ferran d’Antequera, cosa que suposava per primera vegada l’entronització d’una dinastia castellana —els Trastàmara— per a governar la Corona catalanoaragonesa.

L’esclat de la revolta urgellista

De fet, la candidatura Trastàmara a la Corona catalanoaragonesa ja havia estat planejada per Enric III de Castella —pare d’en Ferran—, però les seves ambicions sempre havien topat amb l’oposició de la noblesa i la societat catalana, en general. Una situació que el controvertit Compromís de Casp va aconseguir capgirar, trasbalsant violentament Catalunya.

La negativa de no acceptar la resolució de Casp va conduir a bona part de la societat catalana a enfrontar-se obertament contra el nou rei Ferran. D’aquesta manera, esclataren infinitat de revoltes —fonamentades per les més que evidents argúcies castellanes emprades en l’elecció— les quals foren encapçalades pel mateix comte d’Urgell. Per aquest motiu, la revolta (1412-1414) enfrontà els partidaris de la causa urgellista contra les tropes Trastàmara, i va derivar en violents enfrontaments. Després de quasi dos anys de sagnants combats, les tropes castellanes —i aragoneses— imposaren la seva superioritat, detingueren el comte d’Urgell, com a principal instigador i l’empresonen a perpetuïtat.

Havent sufocat les aspiracions urgellistes, el regnat de Ferran I es va caracteritzar per no dur a terme ni consolidar cap acció política concreta. I en pujar al tron el seu fill Alfons el Magnànim el 1416, la situació s’agreujà més quan el rei va fomentar un clima d’incomunicació, a vegades de confrontació, entre el rei i els estaments catalans. A més, amb el trasllat de la Cort a Nàpols, l’allunyà definitivament de la realitat dels seus regnes ibèrics, cosa que contribuí a l’aparició de noves revoltes, aquest cop protagonitzades per la pagesia, o sigui els remences.

La guerra civil catalana

A la mort del rei Alfons el Magnànim el 1458, el va succeir el seu germà en Joan II, el qual es va trobar amb una oligarquia catalana encara més recelosa contra les polítiques del Trastàmara, sobretot pel que fa a les seves pràctiques autoritàries. Per aquest motiu, i de manera progressiva, l’oligarquia catalana va anant decantar-se cap a l’opció que representava el príncep Carles de Viana —amb un tarannà més dialogant—, que encara essent fill de Joan II, hi estava obertament enfrontat. Les disputes entre pare i fill es van anar accentuant, cosa que va acabar amb l’empresonament del príncep i, per tant, la vulneració dels fonaments de les constitucions catalanes. O almenys, aquesta va ser l’excusa per la qual la Generalitat es va alçar en armes contra el rei Joan II, iniciant així la guerra civil catalana (1462-1472).

Durant el conflicte, la Generalitat va intentar desvincular el rei Joan II de la Corona catalanoaragonesa, per mitjà de l’oferiment d’aquesta, primer a Pere de Portugal, com a net del comte Jaume d’Urgell i que governaria fins a la seva mort, el 1466; i segon al duc de Provença, en Renat d’Anjou, el qual aportaria tropes franceses al contenciós bèl·lic. Malgrat això, la victòria es decantà del bàndol de Joan II, el qual va prometre un perdó general i fidelitat a les lleis i constitucions catalanes.

Mentrestant, però, Joan II havia casat el seu fill Ferran amb la seva cosina segona, la infanta Isabel de Castella el 1469, que cinc anys més tard accediria al tron castellà. Així, a la mort de Joan II, el 1479, Ferran va pujar al tron de la Corona catalanoaragonesa, cosa que va suposar la unió dinàstica d’ambdues Corones, però no territorial.  

La consolidació de la dinastia castellana dels Trastàmara al tron de Catalunya va anar acompanyada de constants revoltes i enfrontaments armats. Això és important per entendre la desconfiança mútua que planava en totes les relacions entre el rei Ferran el Catòlic i l’oligarquia catalana. En aquest context, s’ha d’emmarcar el regicidi frustrat que, el 7 de desembre de 1492, va patir el rei Ferran quan fou apunyalat pel remença en Joan de Canyamars enmig d’una audiència pública celebrada a Barcelona. I fou en aquesta atmosfera política, l’època en la qual es va forjar l’empresa colombina de descoberta.

Una família barcelonina del segle XV

L’existència d’abundant documentació referent a la família barcelonina dels Colom és molt extensa i contrastada. El seu àlbum familiar el formen humanistes, diputats, diplomàtics, mercaders, navegants, bisbes, almiralls, militars, cosmògrafs, bibliòfils i banquers. Els Colom, de fet, van ser els fundadors de la Taula de Canvi, la primera banca moderna d’Europa. És a dir, era una família extremadament vinculada a la cort reial i a la fiscalitat.  

Segons les cròniques, el Descobridor estava vinculat a les quatre grans corts europees: la portuguesa, la francesa, l’anglesa i espanyola (o sigui, la catalana). Se sap del cert que el barceloní Cristòfol Colom estava vinculat als Urgell, que es va casar amb una Coïmbra —Felipa— que el lligava a la cort portuguesa i, de retruc, a l’anglesa, perquè la família reial de Portugal eren els Lancaster, la dinastia reial anglesa, i que tenia entrada a la cort francesa, atès que els Urgell i els Anjou eren parents.

Tot plegat està àmpliament documentat, però la historiografia oficial no en fa cas perquè parteix de la premissa que el Descobridor no podia ser català. Però, està clar, que els historiadors han estat incapaços de justificar totes aquestes vinculacions reials amb el Colombo llaner, inculte i plebeu. Per a ells, la Cort, en lloc de ser l’extensió política de la família reial —com afirmen els experts—, és una mena de beneficència, on s’acull qualsevol rodamon, se’l manté durant set anys i se li paguen els vicis nàutics.

En resum, la documentació relativa a la família barcelonina dels Colom palesa l’existència d’un personatge molt destacat en la navegació i en el comerç, el qual va emprendre el seu camí formatiu com a mariner des de ben jovenet. A través del llibre de comptes de la família Colom —senyal de família important— se’n dedueix que va voltar per tota la Mediterrània —des de Barcelona fins a Grècia, passant per Egipte— i per l’Atlàntic —des de Groenlàndia fins a l’Àfrica equatorial— cosa que el Colombo genovès no es va moure mai de Gènova. Per tant, és grotesc pensar que un home a qui els reis van atorgar els càrrecs de virrei i almirall menteixi sobre la seva trajectòria, experiència i tradició familiar.

El darrer reducte rebel

L’Empordà —sempre favorable a la Generalitat— va ser el darrer reducte dels catalans fidels a Renat d’Anjou, a l’hora de rendir-se davant les tropes del rei Joan II Sense Fe. De fet, esdevingué un important focus en el qual hi acabà vivint una part de l’oligarquia catalana —contraris als Trastàmara—, conjuntament amb un contingent de tropes franceses i un important grapat de corsaris portuguesos, vinguts durant l’època de Pere de Portugal. I entre aquells “rebels” hi trobem els Ianes o Yàñez Pinçon —un d’ells, capità del castell de Palau-saverdera— o En Pero Vasques de Saavedra, sotasignant del document de rendició —signat a Peralada— del qual les cròniques en parlen com a “que era alcalde de la vila y fortaleza de Palos”. No cal recordar que el Palos andalús mai va tenir muralles.

A més, serà el mateix Descobridor qui a través d’una carta adreçada a En Ferran el Catòlic, li explicarà que amb anterioritat havia dirigit una operació naval, a prop de Marsella, a les ordres del rei Renat d’Anjou quan aquest va ser proclamat rei per Generalitat el 1466. A més, també aprofitarà per descriure amb gran detall altres batalles navals i fets històrics que ocorregueren durant la guerra civil catalana.

Tanmateix, acabada la guerra, el rei Joan II Sense Fe va exigir a tots els pobles rebels, el pagament d’una multa com a compensació per la traïció als Trastàmara. Per aquest motiu, hi ha infinitat de documents que parlen d’aquests pagaments de multes o les reclamacions d’aquestes. Per tant, també encaixa amb les referències històriques que expliquen que “esta villa de Palos, como tenía una fuerte deuda por sus acciones contrarias a la Corona…” faci referència al Pals empordanès.

I encara resulta més evident que durant les negociacions amb la monarquia per materialitzar l’empresa de descoberta, el Descobridor demanés explícitament als monarques que permetés que “Palos salde su deuda con la Corona ofreciendo hombres para la expedición” i quan la reina Isabel respongui ho faci amb d’aquesta manera: “la reina y señora de Palos confirma que la deuda que teníais con nos, queda redimida pero la tendréis que pagar con hombres”.

Finalment, quan es redactin les Capitulacions de Santa Fe, aquesta clàusula quedarà escrita en la forma i en el contingut sencer. D’aquesta manera, el Descobridor s’assegurava que els Reis Catòlics no aprofitarien la seva marxa per a manllevar-los les propietats, com a revenja per la seva rebel·lió. La malfiança que demostra aquesta clàusula només s’entén en un context d’enfrontament i de desconfiança política, com el que s’havia viscut a Catalunya amb els Trastàmara.

I què hauria passat si En Colom hagués pogut executar les clàusules contingudes dins les Capitulacions de Santa Fe? No ho sabrem mai! Però sí que sabem que sense saber-ho, els Reis Catòlics havien signat un contracte —les Capitulacions— amb el Descobridor que permetria el naixement d’una nova dinastia reial, ja que les Índies esdevindrien un nou regne i En Colom en seria el virrei vitalici. I a més, el càrrec seria hereditari.

Tal com explica la crònica del Pare Casaus, l’or que va arribar del segon viatge d’en Colom va ser requisat íntegrament pels oficials i duaners del regne, cosa que va permetre sufragar la campanya de recuperació de la Cerdanya i el Rosselló els quals havien estat empenyorats per Joan II per a finançar la guerra civil contra la Generalitat. Però el fet més preocupant succeirà en el decurs del tercer viatge, quan en Francisco de Bobadilla —amb amplis poders per jutjar l’Almirall— confiscarà la totalitat de la seva mercaderia argumentant que no s’havien enviat totes les riqueses promeses a la Corona. D’aquesta manera va començar una autèntica campanya de desprestigi públic que acabaria amb la detenció d’en Colom.

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Traditional Spanish historiography, centred around the Royal Academy of History —with its permanent headquarters in Madrid— still, upholds the concept of the “Reconquista” in the 21st century. This term is laden with political intent, serving to fuel the most Unitarian postulates of Spanish politics—especially on the right and far right—which perpetuates a monolithic and teleological view of the peninsula’s past.

Fortunately, since the end of Franco’s dictatorship, a new generation of historians has broken with the dogmas imposed by the regime, drawing inspiration from the methodologies of the Annals School and the French scientific model. This shift meant accepting that documentary sources did not reflect the entirety of social reality, but only what those in power had decided to record. Thus, most of the society—especially peasant communities—had been deliberately excluded from this official epic narrative.

The progressive incorporation of archaeology as a primary source made it possible to compensate for the documentary bias. This renewed perspective dismantled the traditional narrative and opened the door to studying forms of social organisation and settlement models that had historically been invisible. Thanks to this, it became possible to investigate productive dynamics, distribution processes and territorial reorganisations that until a few decades ago had remained hidden.

Furthermore, this methodology has revealed flagrant contradictions between the documentary record and archaeological remains, exposing numerous cases of falsified documentation, especially in disputes between ecclesiastical institutions and peasant communities, particularly with regard to property, exploitation rights, and territorial boundaries. This has shown that power not only controlled the production of surplus, but also legitimised its right to do so.

Today, the historiographical consensus is clear: the formation of feudalism in the Iberian Peninsula cannot be understood as a linear or homogeneous process. The most recent research shows that there was no single ‘peninsular feudal model’, but rather a constellation of territorial processes with diverse chronologies, intensities, and forms of articulation. Far from being a simple importation of the Frankish model, Castilian-Leonese feudalism was built on a complex foundation that brought together structures inherited from late antiquity, internal transformations derived from military pressure on the border with Al-Andalus, and the concentration of territorial power in the hands of a minority of local elites.

In short, these studies have shown that, over the centuries, power structures have exerted systemic coercion on the subordinate classes, progressively imposing the generation of surpluses to sustain the most unproductive sectors of society. Only through a multifaceted approach—economic, social, cultural, and mental—will it be possible to understand the complexity of a radically plural and diverse peninsular reality, far removed from the simplification that revolves around the supposed and unalterable essence of Spain.

The creation of a new historical reality

The Castilian-Leonese expansion can be interpreted, if one wishes, as a story of the Wild West due to the striking similarity between the two expansions, both in terms of the dynamics of employment and transformation and in their subsequent territorial consolidation. Thus, if we replace Arab scimitars with Indian bows and arrows, swords with cowboy revolvers, and stone castles with the wooden forts of the Seventh Cavalry, the result is a story worthy of the Western film industry.

However, this analogy should serve to distance us from the Spanish epic based on “destiny in the universal” and to accept — once and for all — that the process experienced by the Asturian world at the end of the 8th century is not an isolated event, nor, by any means, the result of a substantial idea. Rather, these events were very similar to those that occurred in other territories of the Hispanic world.

A paradigmatic case was the kingdom of Pamplona, which, only half a century later, adopted a very similar mechanism of legitimisation: the proclamation reigned —without Carolingian endorsement or immediate Caliphate pressure—, supported by the Church and by a heroic narrative —Roland and Roncesvalles— which, in the image of the Asturian model.

Based on this premise, we can understand how the new political reality of the north-west of the peninsula developed from the 9th century onwards. The emergence of a new oligarchy of Oviedo magnates, enriched by an efficient economy of pillage –on Caliphate lands– altered the tribal status quo of collective election, replacing it with the hereditary transmission of power within a single family. This break with the past took concrete and lasting shape with the founding of a new capital on the remains of an ancient Roman military camp. In this way, León became the new epicentre of Asturian-Leonese royal power.

This gesture not only involved the displacement of the political epicentre from Oviedo to León, but also the adoption of a new title — Rex Hispaniae — which evoked the plural notion of Hispania, configured from the ancient late Roman provinces. However, the Navarrese proclaimed Eneko Aritza—or Íñigo Arista—as Rex Pampilonensium, a title that emphasised their autonomy and, in turn, claimed power anchored in a specific territory and a distinct political community. The coexistence of these two formulas—one with a peninsular scope and the other with strictly regional roots—perfectly illustrates the fragmentation of power and the plurality of political projects that characterised the Iberian Peninsula in the early Middle Ages. In short, the notion of “Hispania” was far from being unified under a single crown, but rather became a disputed space, where each kingdom sought to legitimise itself on the basis of its own tradition and genealogy.

The new Leonese dynasty reorganised its political space into four territories: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and Bardulia—known from the 10th century onwards as Castile—linked by a modern urban network designed to meet the needs of an aristocracy increasingly dependent on the royal expansionist policy. At the same time, the south was the subject of intense military fortification to guarantee the security of the kingdom. From then on, the territory south of the border was known—both as a political entity and as a defensive space—by the name of Extremadura, from the Latin Extrema Durii, “the end of the Duero”.

Unlike the Asturian valleys of the north, this Extremadura—that is, the strip between the Duero and Tagus rivers—offered wide plains and forests suitable for the progressive and coercive imposition of large-scale cereal and livestock production, the basis of the survival of the Kingdom of León.

Only this perspective explains the enormous economic dynamism that the Leonese dynasty experienced throughout the 10th–12th centuries. Therefore, continuing with the analogy of the Far West—like a gold prospector gone mad— the kingdom of León always needed new territories to continue feeding its greed and that of its allies in order to maintain the political, economic and cultural structure of the kingdom.

Propaganda as a weapon of mass destruction

Whenever the coffers of the Kingdom of León demanded greater revenues, the recipe was invariable: expand at the expense of the lands under Caliphate jurisdiction. This constant thirst for resources was due, above all, to the whims of the elites: the enlargement of a palace or cathedral, the commissioning of a mural painting that responded to purely ornamental and ideological tastes, the acquisition of relics of dubious origin, the purchase of lavish jewellery with spices from the East, and, even more importantly, several devout—and very costly—journeys to venerate the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In short, these were expenses that were absolutely essential for the smooth running of the kingdom’s internal economy.

In addition, it was necessary to maintain a warrior elite that would guarantee the status of the elites, which represented such a huge economic drain on the royal coffers—and, incidentally, on the peasant communities—that the only way to legitimise it was to keep these warriors constantly on the move. This was to prevent them from becoming bored and starting to look for enemies at home, as numerous episodes documented in the 11th century show. Faced with this danger, the Leonese elites chose to channel feudal violence outwards, inventing and magnifying an external enemy: the infidel of the Caliphate, who, by defending himself against feudal attacks, further justified Leon’s expansionist policy.

But no conquest can last without a narrative to give it moral cover. The chronicles – like television or cinema today – were the perfect amplifier: they decided the plan, cut out reality, inflated the smallest victory and hid the most humiliating defeat. All wrapped up in heroic discourse that turned looting into a pious work and an unworthy manoeuvre into a founding feat. They did not explain what happened, but rather what was convenient for posterity.

And this is where the Albeldense, Rotense and Sebastianense chronicles come into play: pens that write to the rhythm of the sword, drafted ex post to create a tailor-made memory. Thanks to them, the usurpation was disguised as a feat and the Leonese dynasty proclaimed itself the direct heir to the legendary kingdom of the Basques. The ultimate paradox: the same dynasty that, at the time, had done everything possible to differentiate itself — or even renounce — that legacy, now claimed it as its founding pedigree.

To give substance to the legend, they did not hesitate to invent heroes such as Pelayo and battles such as Covadonga—episodes that, at best, are only mentioned in passing in accounts written centuries after the events they purport to describe. In fact, contemporary Arab chronicles do not even mention them, revealing the extent to which these myths are political constructs rather than historical accounts.

These chronicles—the foundation on which the historiographical idea of the ‘Reconquista’ is built—are not a transparent window into the past, but rather a showcase for political and economic propaganda at the service of a dynasty and an aristocracy hungry for land and eager to perpetuate their status. Far from merely explaining events, they anchor the fiction of a historical mission and construct an invented right to intervene in territories and communities that, until then, had lived on the margins of the new machinery of power. A fiction that, more than a millennium later, still breathes… and which, in some Castilian academic circles, continues to be venerated with the blind faith of a dogma.

A territory of “free people”

From the beginning of feudal expansion in the early 9th century, the territories of the north-western peninsula were organised under the legal and administrative formula of dominium, based on Roman law, which designated a dominus or lord as the owner of the land. Therefore, the king or count became, from the outset, the ultimate owner of all the land that was expropriated.

No lord would have any interest in owning land, water, livestock, or mills if there were no peasants capable of organising stable work processes that would convert their efforts into income. For this reason, from the 10th century onwards, León’s expansionist policy was implemented through the communities of ‘town and land’, which would become the key element of political and legal organisation within the newly expropriated territories.

Contrary to what traditional historiography maintains, these territories were not a desert in the literal sense of the word, i.e. completely unpopulated. The term desert has been used in a self-serving way to justify the use of force, when in reality it referred to areas that were not under the effective jurisdiction of Leonese or Castilian power. Free peasant communities lived there, with their own forms of self-government and resource management, which escaped the fiscal and jurisdictional control of the new lords.

The real danger to the aristocracy was not, therefore, a supposed demographic void, but the existence of these independent groups to be subjugated. To achieve this, brutal debt mechanisms were created — letters of settlement, ‘presura’ contracts — which immobilised the population, tied them to the land and allowed large-scale cereal and livestock production to be imposed, with the aim of ensuring the continuity of the lords’ incomes.

Over time, the lands ended up being ceded to other lords, ecclesiastical entities or monasteries, generating a diversity of property regimes — royal, abbatial, ancestral, behetría — which, from the 14th century onwards, would lead to the concentration of power and land in a few hands. Historiography has defined this process as Lordship.

However, at the beginning of the 13th century, this territorial policy ended up suffocating León society. The ambition of the rentiers—the nobility and clergy—demanded more land and, therefore, more peasants to turn it into income. However, since part of the indigenous population had been expelled or massacred, León—now more than ever—found itself with large unpopulated territories. Furthermore, the population of León did not have sufficient demographic capacity as a result of an insufficient birth rate, which prevented the situation from being reversed. For this reason, the Leonese feudal model became, in the long run, inflexible; and, despite providing social stability, it ended up stifling innovation and expansion.

At the same time, Castilian feudalism, which had also originated on the border with Al-Andalus, was shaped by an even more militarised society, where peasants were both farmers and soldiers, forced to defend the territory while producing surplus crops. Therefore, each new conquest required the construction of fortifications and the establishment of settlements that transformed entire communities into defensive units.

This dynamic made Castile a society that was extremely adaptable to the different expansionary circumstances of the successive centuries. For this reason, both the aristocracy—and the clergy—and the peasants shared the same social function: to guarantee territorial dominance. While León preserved a conservative feudalism, Castile deployed a much more aggressive, adaptable and dynamic feudal system, capable of projecting itself hegemonic over the rest of the territories. This model worked as long as there was enough territory to implement it, that is, until the 14th century.

Faced with this scenario of structural exhaustion, the royal family of León opted for a “pragmatic” solution: to sell the kingdom of León to Castile for an annual sum of 15,000 maravedis — about €2 million today — for each member of the family until their death. The agreement was sealed in the Concordia de Benavent (1230).

The Castilian extractive model

Following the purchase of the Kingdom of León, its integration into the Castilian sphere not only transformed the political balance on the peninsula, but also marked a turning point in the model of land exploitation. The former diversity of political and economic structures was absorbed by a system of government that concentrated power and land in the hands of a rentier minority, often absentee landlords, who lived far removed from productive activity. These elites, whether the monarchy, the high nobility or the upper echelons of the church hierarchy, gradually detached themselves from the material needs of the population and focused on perpetuating their privileges.

The Castilian peninsular economy evolved into an extractive model in which wealth did not come from innovation, manufacturing or internal trade, but from the ability to extract agricultural and fiscal rents from a subjugated peasantry, after having experienced the process of seigniorage or loss of freedoms. The territory was now perceived as an inexhaustible source of exploitation, rather than a space for innovation. This logic consolidated a structure of systemic inequality, in which productive work was relegated to the lowest strata, while the elites concentrated wealth and political power.

When, from the 16th century onwards, massive shipments of gold and silver from America began to arrive on the peninsula, this colossal influx of precious metals was not used to diversify the economy, create infrastructure or promote an industrial base of its own. On the contrary, it became fuel to finance distant wars, sustain a deeply corrupt court, maintain an increasingly parasitic aristocracy and pay perpetual debts to German and Italian bankers. Corruption was not a deviation from the system, but a pillar of its functioning: the distribution of honours, positions, and privileges served to ensure political loyalties and perpetuate the rentier circle. The result was that, while the Castilian royal coffers saw tons of gold pouring in, internal productive structures remained anchored in medieval patterns and dependent on rent extraction.

Thus, at the dawn of the 18th century, Castile was burdened with a structural deficit that turned the weakness of the urban fabric, the fragmentation of markets and the persistent concentration of land into insurmountable obstacles to modernisation and industrialisation. The feudal structures, the lack of an autonomous bourgeoisie capable of challenging aristocratic power, and the pre-eminence of agricultural rents over manufacturing production had shaped a dual country: a north with some dynamic urban centres but no capacity for traction, and a south dominated by large, unproductive estates.

This imbalance was not the result of specific circumstances, but rather the continuation—under new forms and new names—of the economic and political model born with the integration of León into Castile. A model that survived intact through each change of dynasty and which, with the arrival of the Bourbons, would not only remain unreformed, but would end up being amplified.

A dynamic that continues to this day

In the early 18th century, the death of the last Habsburg triggered a bloody war of succession. When the Spanish throne finally passed to the Bourbons, many believed that this would mark the beginning of a profound reform of the state, given that Philip V inherited a healthy treasury thanks to the management of his predecessor, Charles II, and the first documented controlled deflation in Western Europe. The royal coffers showed a surplus, an unheard-of situation for a monarch accustomed to the French court, which was permanently in debt due to the extravagant luxuries of Louis XIV.

But in less than ten years, that economic cushion evaporated. Bourbon centralism did not reform the system, but rather shielded it. The state continued to live off rents and depend on external resources, while public assets remained at the service of the private interests of the circles of power—an inertia that, in fact, has continued to this day.

The new administrative apparatus, modelled on the French system and marked by the French mentality—the conception that France is not just a state, but a territorial project that always seeks to be more compact, more controlled and with “perfect” borders—served to control all the peninsular territories and the flow of wealth they generated more directly. Therefore, this system was not used to modernise the economy, let alone to redistribute opportunities. Cronyism, corruption, and the distribution of positions to loyalists not only continued, but became systemic. In this way, the historical imbalance between the peninsular territories was perpetuated.

The hexagon that never closes

Ultimately, the change of dynasty did not mark the birth of a modern Spain, but rather the continuation of a secular mechanism, now with a French accent and wrapped in a more polished narrative. A narrative that drew on the expansionist mentality of the hexagon, but which remains unfinished to this day.

Following this political logic, Castile reached the Cortes of Cadiz (1812) —in the midst of the war against Napoleon— to formulate ‘Spain’ as a unitary state for the first time. The underlying objective was territorial homogenisation, something that was never achieved due to the existence of internal linguistic, legal, cultural and economic diversity.

Napoleon’s defeat and the subsequent Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) drew up a new continental map. The great European powers, obsessed with containing France, created several ‘buffer states’ —such as the Netherlands, Bavaria and Piedmont-Sardinia— to curb possible future French expansion. In this context, Catalonia, due to its geographical position, historical identity and political tradition, had the opportunity to become the fourth leg of this defensive belt in the south. However, the combination of a Spain ruled by an absolutist and discredited Ferdinand VII and Catalan economic elites more interested in maintaining commercial privileges in the empire than in redefining their sovereignty closed that historic opportunity. This episode demonstrates that borders are not always marked by geography, but by political decisions—and renunciations.

Since then, Spain’s clienteles system and structural corruption have not only survived, but have adapted to each regime: from the networks of influence woven during feudal expansion, later evolved through the process of lordship under the Old Regime, to the caciques of the 19th century, the elites of the Restoration, and the intermediaries of the 20th and 21st centuries. The mechanism has always been the same: to concentrate power and resources in a like-minded minority, while proclaiming a unifying discourse that ignores or erases internal differences.

And this is where the concept of ‘Reconquista’ becomes the cornerstone of all Spanish political ideology over the last two hundred years. Through an apparently historical narrative—spanning an uninterrupted period of about a thousand years—this concept was used by the Castilian elites not only to justify unity, but also to present it as an indispensable condition for sustaining the very structure of the state. This structure is nourished by creating economic and political dependencies of the territorial elites on the centre: privileges, contracts, positions, and aid that ensure their loyalty and neutralise any dissent. Without this network of dependencies—where corruption acts as cement—the system would become ungovernable.

Likewise, this dynamic of the Spanish state has also generated internal resistance in some territories which, despite pressure, have managed to fight to preserve their uniqueness, language, culture, and institutions. But this resistance —often underestimated— has also had to combat not only the offensive from the centre, but also the betrayal of those who, without scruples, have sold their country in exchange for favours and perpetual income.

Thus, the imposition of Castilian supremacy over the peninsular plurality is the mechanism that allows this architecture of power to be perpetuated. The hexagon is still unfinished, not because of a lack of centralising will, but because the peninsular reality—radically diverse since its origins—has never been homogenised towards the centre. Only a multifaceted approach would allow Spain to finally take shape.

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