In the 15th century, the Caspe Compromise began in Catalonia, a kind of assembly of notables convened for the sole purpose of electing the next king of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. The death of Martí l without legitimate descendants and without having officially named the natural candidate James of Urgell as his successor, gave great strength to the candidacy of Fernando de Antequera, regent of Castile. That’s all, what does it have to do with the discovery of America?

At the end of the 13th century, the process of expansion that had affected the whole of Europe during the previous two centuries came to an abrupt halt. This was the first symptom of the exhaustion of the feudal system. From then on, the great famines and epidemics of the 14th and 15th centuries would reveal the serious imbalances of an already obsolete system.

The widespread crisis of feudalism impacted all material, social and mental structures. Famines and epidemics led to readjustments in farming systems, the contradictory nature of which encouraged peasant struggles and manorial reactions, typical of the period. The cities, which initially benefited from slow peasant emigration, were shaken by the immobilise tendencies of the oligarchies and the democratising programmes of broad urban social sectors.

The European monarchies were caught in this context of conflict. Their autonomy of action demanded a more efficient drain on resources, overcoming the old web of feudal rights, complex management and uncertain, but clearly insufficient, returns. The oft-repeated concept that the king ‘must live off his own’ was a clever ploy to limit the monarchy by wresting control of financial resources from it.

The unequal economic and social texture of the countries that made up the Catalan-Aragonese Crown determined specific chronologies and developments in the crisis. In 1333, ‘lo mal any primer’ was still a symbol of the Catalan agrarian crisis, a situation that extended to Mallorca; but Aragon, and also Valencia, experienced serious difficulties as a result of the crisis of the Guilds (1347-48) and the War of the Two Peters (1356-75). The social and institutional diversity of the Crown imposed differentiated contents on the crisis: the problem of the remensa was a specific issue in Catalonia; in Mallorca, the peasantry was free; and in Aragon and Valencia, the Mudejars constituted the mass of workers in conditions of rigorous servitude. For the same reason, in Catalonia they fought for the acquisition of economic and legal rights. In Mallorca, foreigners fought, to the sound of ‘qui deu que pac’, against the administrative corruption generated by the public debt and the management of taxes. And in Aragon and Valencia there were no peasant struggles, except for isolated anecdotes, during the 14th and 15th centuries.

The political-institutional framework of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown

The dynastic union of Aragon and Catalonia in 1137 determined the political and administrative structure of the Crown. On that date, both Aragon and Catalonia were constituted as entities that kept their economic, fiscal and institutional disparities intact. It was a confederation. The conquests of Mallorca and Valencia in the 13th century did not remain extensions of Catalonia or Aragon, but both entities were incorporated into the Crown as kingdoms with internal autonomy. Sicily, Sardinia and Naples, also with the title of kingdoms, were later incorporated into this peculiar structure.

Behind this institutional façade, however, Catalonia exercised leadership for much of the 14th century. The design of the Mediterranean expansion was its work. Mallorca, populated overwhelmingly by Catalans, was in some respects an extension of the Principality; with no courts of its own, when it attended general convocations its representatives joined the Catalan representation, even if it sporadically asserted its status as an independent kingdom. During the 15th century, Valencia took over Catalonia’s economic role, but not the leadership it had held in the confederation.

The federative structure of the Crown and the different circumstances of the incorporation of territories determined the unequal intensity of monarchical action in each kingdom. There is a clear distinction between the territories united by dynastic pact, Aragon and Catalonia, and the conquered territories, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. In the latter, as a general rule, the monarchy acted with less input. Neither Mallorca nor Valencia had figures comparable to the Justicia of Aragón or the Diputació del General de Catalunya. In Mallorca and Valencia, the king went so far as to appoint the governing bodies of the municipalities and the members of the assemblies to ensure the continuity of the economic drain. For these reasons, in the second half of the 14th century, Majorca yielded to the financial demands of the monarchy to the limit of its possibilities. During the 15th century, Valencia took over; its contribution to the enterprises of Alfonso the Magnanimous and, above all, Ferdinand the Catholic, brought the municipality to the brink of bankruptcy.

Despite the unequal efficiency of the monarchy in obtaining resources, the Crown’s action in the legislative, judicial and financial spheres was subject to control. This was the theory of pact. The principle was clearly enunciated by Francisco Eiximenis, who pointed out that all authority emanated from the community, since the latter was nothing more than the synthesis of the exercise of law which, in turn, was the body of customs. Royal power emanated from a tacit contract between the monarch and the people, and both were obliged to comply with the law. The system worked, in practice, in such a way that the king was not proclaimed until after he had sworn the “fueros” or constitutions. Nor could he establish or abolish general provisions without the knowledge and consent of the courts. The application and administration of law, that is, of justice, was limited by the network of feudal jurisdictions in the old style, by the vigilance exercised by the courts and by institutions such as the justices of Aragon.

In any case, the executive management of the monarchs was particularly limited by the scarcity of ordinary resources at their disposal. As in any feudal monarchy, the king had a private patrimony, made up of monopolies, royalties on agricultural and commercial activity, court fees and other random revenues. Growing economic needs led to improved financial management and coordination, with the creation of the rational master at the end of the 13th century. But the system, despite its virtualities, soon proved limited. The design of an imperialist policy in the Mediterranean, hard fought by Genoa, demanded colossal financial efforts in relation to the possibilities offered by the royal patrimony. This patrimony was adapted to outdated historical circumstances because it had an agrarian base that made it not very adaptable. But its magnitude allowed certain margins of manoeuvre, although always dangerous, as a guarantee for mortgage loans and mortgages and, ultimately, the sale of rights and jurisdictions.

The Trastamaras arrive at the Catalan-Aragonese Crown

Along with the treaty of Corbeil (1259), which meant the renunciation of Catalan predominance in the south of France, the Caspe Compromise has possibly been the second great subject of controversy in Catalan historiography.

After the death of Martí the Younger in 1409, Martí I launched several successive initiatives: his marriage to Margarita de Prades and the appointment of James of Urgell as governor and lieutenant general, a position generally reserved for heirs. None of them worked. Neither the king achieved the desired succession, nor did James of Urgell know how to ensure it from his privileged position. A few months before his death, the king still tried a new formula, which consisted of gathering an assembly of notables to advise him on the succession. The assembly did not meet due to the death of the monarch at the end of 1410. The question of succession was thus left open.

After a dramatic interregnum, in the spring of 1412 the representatives of the Catalan, Valencian and Aragonese parliaments met in the Aragonese town of Caspe to elect, among the four candidates -Fernand of Antequera, James of Urgell, Alfons of Gandia and Frederic of Moon-, the new king of the Confederation. At the request of the Aragonese and supported by the Castilian army, the Majorcans had been excluded from the election with the clear intention of avoiding a possible tie. Thus, after three months of deliberation, the representatives elected Ferdinand of Antequera, which meant for the first time the enthronement of a Castilian dynasty -the Trastamara- to rule the Catalan-Aragonese Crown.

The outbreak of the urgellist revolt

In fact, the Trastámara candidacy to the Catalan-Aragonese Crown had already been planned by Henry III of Castile -Ferdinand’s father-, but his ambitions had always been opposed by the nobility and Catalan society in general. A situation that the controversial the Caspe Compromise managed to turn around, violently destabilizing Catalonia.

The refusal to accept the Caspe resolution led a large part of Catalan society to openly oppose the new King Ferdinand. Thus, countless revolts broke out —founded by the more than obvious Castilian trickery used in the election— which were led by the Count of Urgell himself. For this reason, the revolt (1412-1414) pitted the supporters of the Urgelist cause against the Trastámara troops, and led to violent clashes. After almost two years of bloody fighting, the Castilian —and Aragonese— troops imposed their superiority, arrested the Count of Urgell -as the main instigator- and imprisoned him for life.

With the aspirations of the Urgellist stifled, the reign of Ferdinand I was characterized by the inability to carry out or consolidate any concrete political action. And when his son Alfonso the Magnanimous ascended to the throne in 1416, the situation worsened even more as the king fostered a climate of isolation, sometimes confrontation, between himself and the Catalan estates. In addition, with the transfer of the Court to Naples, he distanced himself definitively from the reality of his Iberian kingdoms, which contributed to the appearance of new revolts, this time led by the peasantry, that is, the Remensas.

The Catalan civil war

On the death of King Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458, he was succeeded by his brother John II, who found a Catalan oligarchy even more suspicious of the Trastámara’s policies, especially of their authoritarian practices. For this reason, and progressively, the Catalan oligarchy began to lean towards the option represented by the Prince Charles of Viana -of a more dialogic disposition-, who, although he was the son of John II, was openly opposed to him. The disputes between father and son became increasingly heated, which ended with the imprisonment of the prince and, therefore, with the violation of the foundations of the Catalan constitutions. Or at least, this was the excuse for the Generalitat to take up arms against King John II, thus initiating the Catalan civil war (1462-1472).

During the conflict, the Generalitat tried to detach King John II from the Catalan-Aragonese Crown, offering it, first to Peter of Portugal, as grandson of Count James of Urgell, who would rule until his death in 1466; and second to the Duke of Provence, in Renato of Anjou, who would contribute French troops to the war. However, the victory was on the side of John II, who promised a general pardon and fidelity to the Catalan laws and constitutions.

Meanwhile, John II had married his son Ferdinand in 1469 to his second cousin, the Infanta Isabella of Castile, who five years later would accede to the Castilian throne. Thus, upon the death of John II in 1479, Ferdinand ascended to the throne of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown, which meant the dynastic union of both Crowns, but not territorial.

The consolidation of the Castilian dynasty of the Trastámara on the throne of Catalonia was accompanied by constant revolts and armed confrontations. This is important to understand the mutual distrust that floated in all relations between King Ferdinand the Catholic and the Catalan oligarchy. In this context we must frame the frustrated regicide that, on December 7, 1492, King Ferdinand suffered when he was stabbed by the rebellious John of Canyamars in the middle of a public audience held in Barcelona. And it was in this political environment that the discovery of Columbus was forged.

A Barcelona family of the 15th century

The existence of abundant documentation referring to the Barcelona family of Columbus is very extensive and contrasted. His family album includes humanists, deputies, diplomats, merchants, navigators, bishops, admirals, military men, cosmographers, bibliophiles, and bankers. The Columbus family, in fact, were the founders of the Mesa de Cambio, the first modern bank in Europe. In other words, they were a family closely linked to the royal court and to taxation.

According to the chronicles, the Columbus was linked to the four great European courts: the Portuguese, the French, the English, and the Spanish (because in those times Spain did not exist He is actually talking about of Catalonia). It is known with certainty that Christopher Columbus from Barcelona was linked to the Urgell family, that he married a Coimbra -Filipa- which linked him to the Portuguese court and, in turn, to the English court, because the royal family of Portugal were the Lancaster’s, the English royal dynasty, and that he had access to the French court, since the Urgell and Anjou families were related.

All this is amply documented, but the official historiography ignores it because it starts from the premise that the Columbus could not be Catalan. But it is clear that historians have been unable to justify all these real links with the wool-producing, uneducated and plebeian Colombo. For them, the Court, instead of being the political extension of the royal family -as experts claim-, is a sort of charitable institution, where any vagabond is taken in, maintained for seven years and paid for his nautical vices.

In short, the documentation relating to the Barcelona family of the Columbus reveals the existence of a very prominent figure in navigation and commerce, who began his formative career as a sailor at a very young age. Through the Columbus account book – a sign of an important family —we can deduce that he sailed all over the Mediterranean— from Barcelona to Greece, passing through Egypt – and the Atlantic —from Greenland to equatorial Africa— something that the Genoese Colombo family never moved from Genoa. Therefore, it is grotesque to think that a man to whom the kings granted the positions of viceroy and admiral would lie about his trajectory, experience, and family tradition.

The last rebel bastion

The Empordà —always favourable to the Generalitat— was the last stronghold of the Catalans loyal to Renato of Anjou when they surrendered to the troops of King John II Without Faith. In fact, it became an important centre in which part of the Catalan oligarchy— opponents of the Trastamara — ended up living, together with a contingent of French troops and a considerable handful of Portuguese corsairs, who came during the time of Peter of Portugal. And among those ‘rebels’ were the Yanes or Yáñez Pinzón —one of them, captain of the castle of Palau-saverdera— or Pero Vascos de Saavedra, signatory of the surrender document —signed in Peralada— of whom the chronicles speak as ‘who was mayor of the town and fortress of Palos’. It goes without saying that the Andalusian Palos never had any walls.

Moreover, it was the Discoverer himself who, in a letter to Ferdinand the Catholic, explained that he had previously directed a naval operation near Marseilles, under the orders of King Renato of Anjou, when the latter was proclaimed king by Generalitat in 1466. He will also describe in great detail other naval battles and historical events that took place during the Catalan Civil War.

However, once the war was over, King Juan II Sin Fe demanded that all the rebellious towns pay a fine as compensation for their betrayal of the Trastamara. For this reason, there is an infinite number of documents that speak of these fine payments or the claims for them. Therefore, it also fits in with the historical references that explain that ‘this town of Palos, as it had a strong kinsman for its actions against the Crown…’ refers to the Pals of Empordà.

And it is even more evident that during the negotiations with the monarchy to materialise the enterprise of discovery, the Columbus explicitly asked the monarchs to allow ‘Palos to settle its debt with the Crown by offering men for the expedition’ and when Queen Isabella replied in this way: ‘the Queen and Lady of Palos confirms that the debt you owed us is redeemed, but you will have to pay it with men’.

Finally, when the Capitulations of Santa Fe are drawn up, this clause will be written in the form and in its entire content. In this way, the Discoverer assured himself that the Catholic Monarchs would not take advantage of his departure to lend them the properties, as revenge for his rebellion. The distrust shown by this clause can only be understood in a context of political confrontation and mistrust, such as that which had been experienced in Catalonia with the Trastamara.

And what would have happened if Columbus had been able to enforce the clauses contained in the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe? We will never know! But we do know that, without knowing it, the Catholic Monarchs had signed a contract – the Capitulations – with the Discoverer that would allow the birth of a new royal dynasty, since the Indies would become a new kingdom and Columbus would be the viceroy for life. What is more, the position would be hereditary.

As Father Casas‘ chronicle explains, the gold that arrived from Columbus’ second voyage was confiscated in its entirety by the kingdom’s officials and customs officers, which paid for the campaign to recover Cerdanya and Roussillon, whose territories had been pawned by John II to finance the civil war against the Generalitat. But the most worrying thing happened during the course of the third voyage, when Francisco de Bobadilla – with broad powers to judge the Admiral – confiscated all his merchandise, arguing that not all the riches promised to the Crown had been sent. Thus began a veritable campaign of public discredit that would end with Columbus arrest.

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