Them [and us]

Newton’s first law states that an object always tends to be either at rest or in motion, rectilinear motion, unless an external force alters its state. Therefore, if a centripetal force acts on this object, it will be trapped by an invisible force called the central force. In this way, the object will see its movement altered, its inertia modified, and it will be difficult for it to return to its original physical state.

The Aragonese economist and historian José Larraz López, a distinguished member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, wrote an interesting book on economics in 1943 entitled ‘La época del mercantilismo en Castilla (1500-1700)’. He was a procurator in Franco’s Cortes and Franco’s minister in 1939, just after the end of the civil war – and therefore a man committed to Franco’s dictatorship to the bone – and when referring to the unity of Spain, he argued that the political reality of that time – between the 15th and 18th centuries – had been very different from that of his own time. Consequently, we could not speak of the existence of a single unitary state – Spain – for all those centuries, which would be the case after the arrival of the Bourbons.

The fact is that both Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, León and Castile – the original core of the kingdom – and the three Basque provinces – Alava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya – plus Extremadura, Andalusia, and Murcia will end up forming part of the same integrated body. In this way, the central part of the Iberian Peninsula – the area stretching from the Cantabrian coast to the Strait of Gibraltar – will end up sharing the same border, and the same Cortes will legislate the territories – the Castilian Cortes – which will use the same currency and all together will follow the same economic and fiscal policy. Pardon, except for the three Basque provinces which, from the 14th century onwards, would be exempt from all Castilian taxes. It is therefore clear that the other peninsular territories – Portugal and the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation – were never part of this Castilian matrix.

Indeed, in the mid-15th century, the Iberian Peninsula was divided into five political blocs of unequal importance: Portugal, the territories of the Crown of Castile, the Kingdom of Navarre, the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation and the Muslim Emirate of Granada. In fact, by the middle of the 15th century, each of these groups of territories would eventually acquire a very distinct personality and become original societies with their own customs, their own legal peculiarities, their own institutions and even their own language.

That a historian of the darkest period of the dictatorship – such as José Larraz López – should serve to combat the colossal misinformation or ignorance wanted by current Spanishism should shame a part of the political class, the media – including the ‘influencers’ hidden behind the networks – who time and again, from their supreme tribunes, have not tired and will never tire of proclaiming the existence of a unitary Spain for more than five hundred years.

The Castilian oligarchy -for too long and although speaking Catalan in private-repeats over and over again the same mistake when they speak of Spain as a political reality since the 15th century, referring to it as ‘the oldest nation in Europe’. If they understood once and for all that from the 15th century to the early 18th century, Castile pursued a policy of zero integration of the Mediterranean – and Portuguese – world, and that this was only possible through the use of force, combined with persistent repression and a constant plundering of economic resources in order to modulate their legitimate aspirations, it would surely help them to understand many issues that happen to us today as a state. More specifically, it would help them to understand that the Spanish project – as it has been set out since the arrival of the Bourbons – is totally unsustainable.

The beginning of the Hispanic divergences

After the Navas de Tolosa, Castile definitively entered the interior of the lower Meseta, which provoked a period of extreme euphoria in view of the possibilities offered by the new territory. But it soon realised that, despite its determination, it was encountering the same problem that León had encountered at the end of the 12th century. It was after the Concordia de Benavent – the agreement on the purchase of the kingdom of León by Castile – that Castile – except the Granada Kingdom, acquired practically the current perimeter.

The lower plateau, with its mountainous and rugged terrain -especially in the areas closest to the Central system-had land that was unsuitable for agriculture -except for the Guadalquivir valley-, with scarce and poor quality pastures, which, added to the strong climatic variability between summer and winter, were too adverse factors to be able to take control quickly. In addition, there were three even more determining factors: the low birth rate of the population in the north, the lack of mobility of inhabitants from the north to the south – despite the promotion of the ‘presuras’ or territorial divisions – and the consequences of applying an excessively repressive policy against the native population – by arguing nonsense – which culminated in the expulsion of the Andalusian Moriscos.

All these factors would have a very negative impact on the Castilian economy because any manufacturing and commercial activity, such as trade with the East or Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar, would be nipped in the bud. In any case, the Monarchy – in order to prolong its expansionary policy – continued to need to increase its regular income, which contributed to a situation of extreme inflation, resulting in a monetary alteration and generating a permanent deficit in its balance of trade.

As a solution, the Monarchy exerted strong fiscal pressure on some sectors of the population – such as the Jews, for example – but above all on the great transhumant herds of the upper plateau, just at the time when both Flanders and northern Italy were becoming the great buyers of Castilian wool. This plains traffic had catapulted Burgos to the forefront of European cities and turned the Cantabrian Sea into an important maritime axis towards Europe, which stimulated the birth of a textile industry. But all this faded away as soon as the interests of the nobility – the owners of the land, based on ancient rights of conquest – prevailed over any private initiative of the plainsmen, which made it impossible for the economy to flourish in the following centuries.

Faced with economic suffocation, the Monarchy – in order to boost the economy – resorted to the credit offered by the Jewish communities settled in the main Hispanic cities. So it was, sooner rather than later, that kings, nobles, military orders, ecclesiastical communities and ‘councils’ – and even individuals or ‘situados’, as they were known at the time – ended up abusing credit, which in the long run became a real internal problem. Faced with the heavy indebtedness of the Castilian public treasury, the Monarchy – as a result of the generalisation of non-payments – began to reform its financial system, although the real trigger was the promulgation of the Edict of Granada – also known as the Decree of the Alhambra – by which the Catholic Monarchs decreed the expulsion of all Jews from the Hispanic territories, which meant obtaining large assets for the Monarchy in the short term.

As for the rest of the peninsular territories – above all the Mediterranean and the Portuguese Atlantic world – they were able to find in the sea a lever for growth that allowed them to continue with their expansionist policies. For example, the Catalan commercial bourgeoisie was able to take advantage of the consequences of the war with France – the famous crusade of Philip Ardid – to boost its manufacturing industry. The creation of the Consulates of the Sea and the extension of old maritime routes – begun in the 10th century – were the mechanisms of penetration that the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation used to satisfy the demand for its products – rags, iron tools, coral, leather, spices and slaves – both in the mainland markets – Lisbon, Donostia, Bilbao and Seville – and in the foreign markets of Sardinia, Sicily, Bruges, Constantinople, Tunisia, and Alexandria.

A territory made up of ‘free people

From the beginning of feudal expansion – at the beginning of the 9th century – the territories of the northwest peninsular were configured under the juridical-administrative formula of ‘dominium’, based on Roman law, which meant that the holder of the land property was a ‘dominus’ or lord. Therefore, the king or the count – the highest figure in the social pyramid – from the beginning became the final owner – directly or indirectly – of all those lands that were expropriated.

It should be borne in mind that no lord would have the slightest interest in owning land, water, herds or mills if there were no peasants capable of organising stable work processes that would lead to the conversion of effort into income. Therefore, with the creation of Extremadura from the 9th century onwards, the Castilian-Leonese expansionist policy was implemented by means of the ‘villa and land’ communities, which would become the key element of political-legal organisation within the ‘new expropriated territories’. In this way, the landscape of the Meseta was articulated on the basis of the foundation of a series of major towns – walled and with representation in the Castilian Cortes – on which depended six or eight unwalled hamlets located around the main town.

For the lords, the real danger lay in the existence – within that vast territory – of free peasant communities that could escape the new jurisdiction. For this reason, they created mechanisms that involved a brutal indebtedness of those communities of ‘villa and land’ through the famous settlement charters or ‘asentamientos’ and the ‘presura’ contracts, so that they would lose all possible mobility, remain attached to the land and, in this way, ensure the return of the debts contracted.

And since the king’s life was so ‘sacrificial’ – it still is today when they indulge in the luxury of elephant hunting – they ended up ceding the land for services rendered to other lords, ecclesiastical bodies or monasteries. Therefore, it depended on who was the final rentier – that is, the owner – whether the land was known as ‘realengas’, if it belonged to the king; if it belonged to an abbot or a bishop; ‘de solariego’, if it belonged to a nobleman or a military order; or de ‘behetría’, if it was the villagers themselves who chose the lord. In the long run, all these types of property would contribute to the formation of the large estates of the region – known as the process of ‘seigniorialisation’ – which, from the 14th century onwards, would lead to the concentration of much power, both economic and territorial, in a very small part of the Castilian population.

Towards a new conception of the stat

At the end of the 15th century, the Castilian-Leonese world would end up ‘expropriating’ some 385,000 km² of land – between the upper and lower plateau – on which nearly four and a half million people would live, including the Granada population. In the rest of the peninsula, the population would be distributed as follows: in the territories of the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation, about nine hundred thousand people would live on about 110,000 km²; about one hundred and twenty thousand people would live on 11,000 km² in Navarre; and in Portugal, one million people would live on 88,000 km².

Castile, although it was the largest territory in the Iberian Peninsula, continued to experience continuous economic and demographic problems, mainly driven by the process of consolidation of ‘seigniorialisation’, to the detriment of the exhausted expansive economy, which had been based on the indiscriminate expropriation of land and the reallocation of property through physical coercion.

Then, during the second half of the 15th century, the Castilian Monarchy began a process of economic transformation through monetary and fiscal reform, which led to a major social imbalance, to the point that it ended up having a direct impact on noble interests. As a result, major disturbances broke out throughout the kingdom and, unable to calm things down, the Monarchy applied a policy of manorial satisfaction by offering more land, more rights and more pensions for life at the expense of the public treasury and financed by a special tax on the population of the towns of the ‘Comuneros0. To top it all off, in the early 16th century, the main Communities of Castile were forced to assume a considerable tax to cover the purchase of the Imperial title – by the Habsburg family – which led to the famous Revolt of the ‘Comuneros’.

Even so, this policy had an insufficient impact in placating the ambitions of the nobility, which brought to light the existence of a much deeper division within the Castilian aristocracy. The existence of two politically antagonistic factions soon became apparent: on the one hand, there were the Pacheco, Villena and Girón families, who were in favour of taking a more active part in the kingdom’s major political decisions and therefore saw the need to weaken the Monarchy in order to control it. On the other hand, there were the Santillanas and Mendozas who understood that the time had come to abstain from power because the Monarchy was the one that had to guarantee the stability of the kingdom to ensure its ‘seigniorial’ privileges… ‘in saecula saeculorum’.

After the Castilian Civil War (1475-1479), the two largest territories of the Iberian Peninsula – the Kingdom of Castile and the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation – created a new political entity known as the Hispanic Monarchy, which was soon joined by Granada (1492), Portugal (1497) and Navarre (1512). That new dynastic state was shaped by the union of only two key elements: the army and foreign policy. For the rest of the elements that would make up the modern state, such as borders, currencies, laws and institutions, they remained completely separate.

Thus, the configuration and distribution of power – agreed by both sides at the Concordia de Segovia – was structured as follows: while Castile was structured according to the sacralised authority of the queen and always above the nobility and the church – thanks to an effective policy of numbing the Cortes – the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation was organised around the Constitution of Observance, which would always oblige the king to govern and make agreements in accordance with the laws of the Principality.

In the long run, Castile would offer less resistance to the Hispanic monarchs, something that would not happen within the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation, which, while respecting all its legal-political realities, would end up limiting the non-agreed initiatives between the different arms – count-king, nobility, clergy and honest citizens – that would represent part of the confederate society. The historian John Elliott in his famous book ‘Imperial Spain (1469-1716)’ very aptly defined it as follows: the Spanish sovereigns (Castilians) were absolute kings in Castile and constitutional monarchs in Aragon (Catalonia).

The unconscious empire

Only chance and the trade winds led the first navigators of the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation to the most populated area of the American continent. From the very beginning of the westward voyages, the first navigators were certain and aware that where they had arrived was not the East Indies, but a completely different territory. Realising this fact, the Castilian Monarchy deployed all its modern legal and administrative machinery to legitimately possess it. Without entrusting itself to anyone and by right of conquest, the Monarchy once again claimed ownership of those territories, ignoring the indigenous population.

The discovery of important deposits of precious metals – between Mexico and Peru – led to the founding or re-founding of important American cities, which acquired a new territorial role in order to ensure a regular flow of wealth to Castile. Thus, acting as nouveau riche, Castile would spend an indecent amount of economic resources to build its concept of civilisation, based on Catholicism. This obsession – sometimes uncontrolled – would lead them to embark on a myriad of conflicts of all kinds, such as theological disputes, family conflicts, commercial affairs or lavish megalomaniac constructions.

However, at the beginning of the 17th century, the American mines began to show signs of depletion, which became more pronounced as the century progressed. Faced with this slowdown, and in order to maintain the same rate of expenditure, the Monarchy resorted to loans from German banks – the Fuggers and the Welsers – and the Genoese banks of the Spinola, Centurione, Balbi, Strata and, above all, Gio Luca Pallavicino families. It would then be forced to raise taxes and exert fiscal pressure on the whole of Hispanic society. We remember the famous ‘Union of Arms’ of the Duke of Olivares. Faced with a generalised avalanche of non-payments, the State entered into a process of successive bankruptcies (1627, 1647, 1652 and 1662), which contributed to projecting a very unfavourable image of Spain in the eyes of the other European chancelleries.

Spain’s history is still stigmatised today by a ‘black legend’ conceived between the 16th and 17th centuries – both by the Lutherans of Wittenberg and the Dutch of Dillenburg – which sought to chip away at its hegemony in the world. Subsequently, in order to control the raw materials of the Castilian and Portuguese colonies, the English would amplify Protestant propaganda as a key element of discrediting the colonial elites, something that would help them to initiate and finance the independence processes of the Spanish colonies throughout the 19th century.

The Bourbon drift

Castile – and later Spain – has always found itself in a dangerous vicious circle, in which the State’s expenditure has been excessive, and it has needed to continually increase taxes to balance its income, which has led – over a prolonged period of time – to an excessive fiscal pressure on the population as a whole.

With the entry of the Bourbons – after a long campaign to discredit the Habsburgs – the economic problems worsened when, through the use of continuous loans, on-lending, negotiations and renegotiations, these only served to satisfy their personal ‘grandeur’, to the detriment of the modernisation of society by the Enlightenment spirit that prevailed throughout Europe.

The Bourbons were always aware that the only way to economically sustain the entire Hispanic kingdom was to annex all the peninsular territories and thus form a new geopolitical hexagon. However, this was not possible because from the end of the 17th century, Portugal was no longer part of the Hispanic Monarchy, although attempts were made to annex it on three occasions during the 19th and 20th centuries. Therefore, efforts could only focus on the territories of the Levant peninsular which, first with the War of Succession and then with the Nueva Planta Decrees, allowed the Bourbons to link productive sectors – master craftsmen and merchants – to the new centralist system. As a result, this loyalty to the Bourbons allowed those who supported the new regime to gain access to large public contracts, which led to their absolute dependence on the new centralist system, which ended up weaving a web of widespread corruption at all levels of public administration.

There is no shortage of examples, such as when at the beginning of the 19th century Queen Maria Cristina – widow of Ferdinand VII – handed over power to the Spanish liberals, who at the same time made a pact with the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie to forge a self-interested political and socio-biological alliance that would materialise with the institution of a protectionist system. In this way, the Catalan mercantile tradition was squandered and the spirit of 1705 was betrayed, because the Bourbon refusal to free trade the Principality with England and the Netherlands – its main trading partners – initiated the whole process that would converge on 11 September 1714.

Nor did the establishment of the ‘democratic regime of “78” improve matters for the interests of the Levant peninsular. In fact, we Catalans, Valencians and Balearic Islanders suffer the consequences on a daily basis when, year after year, we contribute a massive amount of our GDP to the State coffers for the sake of a ‘solidarity-based centrality’ and, let us remember, with the approval of politicians, industrialists, and bankers. And the story continues to the present day, when after a politically and socially intense decade, the State has just proposed to Catalonia – soon it will also propose it to Valencia and the Islands – a singular financing, surely conditioned by a great solidarity.

History had already warned Philip II when he visited his father, Emperor Charles of Habsburg, for the last time in the monastery of Yuste, when he advised him that if he wanted to increase the empire, he should locate the capital in Lisbon, because this would mean linking it to the New World; if he wanted to preserve it, he should locate it in Barcelona, in other words, link it to the classical tradition; and if he wanted to lose it, he should locate the capital in Madrid. And indeed, Madrid was the most poorly communicated capital in Europe until the beginning of the 20th century, when, thanks to the development of airlines and the construction of reservoirs, it managed to revitalise that solitude in the middle of the Castilian plateau.

We return to Newton. And how can we move from a centripetal force to a centrifugal force? Well, this will only be possible if there is a tangential acceleration that allows the velocity modulus of the object to vary and, in this way, it will be able to return to its original physical state. So, will technological innovation bring about an acceleration of the economic movement that, by taking advantage of ‘Open Banking’ and ‘Embedded Finance’, will bring about the tangential force that will make it possible to return to our original stage? It is up to us to achieve this!

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

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

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

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

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

Dismantling “the unity of destiny as a universal fact”

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

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

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

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

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

Delegitimising the origins in order to cancel out the differences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The will to alter reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Setting limits to power

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

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

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

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

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

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And the next day, nothing was ever the same again. The Catalan state disappeared ‘ipso facto’ with the abolition of the Generalitat, the municipal dismemberment and the annulment of the Catalan constitutions following the loss of the War of Succession (1701 -1714). After this, the only administration that remained active in Catalonia was the army of occupation, which, by maintaining some 25,000 permanent soldiers within the Principality, consolidated the Bourbon objective by means of harsh repression that would last until the mid-18th century. But not everyone faired badly…

As a result of the victory, the elite of the Bourbon army was permanently installed in Catalonia: the Royal Castilian Guards and the Royal Walloon Guards, reinforced by other special military occupation contingents. The total number of troops deployed throughout Catalonia was 47% of the total for the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. And if we add those deployed in the rest of the territories of the Catalan Countries – Valencia, Majorca and Aragon – the figure rises to 65%. A full-blown invasion.

The drafting of the Nueva Planta Decree would turn Catalonia into just another province of a new centralised monarchy that would rule over the entire Iberian Peninsula without legal differences. Thus, the dream of a Hispanic monarchy based on the existence of different kingdoms and cultural realities on the peninsula would crumble, but it would not disappear. From then on, there would only be a single Cortes, those of Castile, which would represent the whole of the peninsular territories, but would focus on a new political construction structured around identifying Castile with the new state.

Eighteenth-century Catalonia would be a territory governed solely by the military. The supreme head of the administration of Catalonia would be the Captain General. Territorial administration – the ‘corregimientos’ – would be in the hands of the ‘corregidores’, who would always be military men. Public order – in the first instance – would always be in the hands of the army and the famous “Veciana Squads”. This institution was founded in 1719 by Pere Anton Veciana Rabassa, a deserter from the Austracist cause who in early 1713 decided to place himself at the service of the Bourbon king and create a paramilitary and police organisation that would work at the service of the Captain General -Francisco Pío de Saboya y Moura-, with the mission of continuing to repress internal Bourbon resistance.

Veciana would set up a system of criminal files – known as ‘summary files’ – which would enable the corps to systematise police information. He also created a network of informers throughout the territory and organised the first agents to infiltrate the resistance. In 1735, Veciana had to resign his post for reasons of age, and it was then that the Captain General transferred the responsibilities of the corps to his son, Pere Màrtir Veciana. From then on, the command of the corps would be inherited by the Veciana family for five generations, until 1836.

Repression and state terrorism

For eleven years, Catalonia was subjected to harsh military repression, which lasted until 1725, when, through the Treaty of Vienna between the representatives of Philip V of Castile and Charles VI of Austria, the two sides mutually recognised each other’s succession rights and put an end to the dynastic dispute.

And what happened to the supporters who fought in favour of the Archduke of Austria’s choice? During the war, as the Bourbon armies occupied the Principality, a kind of ‘military terrorism’ was applied, which consisted of persecuting the local population, regardless of the degree of connection they had had with the Austracist cause, with the aim of undermining morale. After the fall of Barcelona, the main military commanders who had not been able to flee to Austria – such as Antoni de Villarroel – were indiscriminately persecuted and sent to prisons scattered around the Iberian Peninsula. Most of them ended up dying without ever regaining their freedom, while others were sent to the galleys.

The long post-war period allowed the repression to continue against all the armed elements that were still fighting against the new legal system, such as the notorious ‘carrasclets’. But all those families whose members were in exile in Austria were also persecuted and forbidden from maintaining any correspondence. The losers of the war were to have their property seized and all their rights revoked. They would even be banned from taking part in all public tenders or applying for state aid.

The establishment of permanent contingents in Catalonia would lead to a significant increase in military demand due to the need to supply royal troops. According to the General Manuals of the Quartermaster’s Office of Catalonia – an institution created to manage the post-war period – between 1714 and 1735 a total of 271 ‘asientos’ or contracts directly related to the supply of materials to the army and navy are recorded: gunpowder, weapons, artillery trains, uniforms, food, ironwork for horses.

The ‘asientos’ were also used for the construction or supply of barracks, such as the Ciutadella, and to produce everything necessary for subsequent Bourbon military campaigns, such as those in Italy. And this supply would come about thanks to the existence of a considerable productive, commercial and financial structure that had remained unchanged despite the war, and which would be capable of solvently producing the ‘seats’ that the monarchy would need over the following decades.

Catalan collaborationism

So, the question to ask ourselves is clear: how was it possible to maintain a Catalan productive structure in the context of the war at the beginning of the 18th century? How was it possible to supply the Bourbon army during the invasion of Catalonia and the siege of Barcelona in a territory that was completely unknown to them? Well, with the help of local characters who supplied, lent or helped the Bourbon army of occupation with food, money and logistics throughout that turbulent period. They were a group of merchants who changed sides – just like Pere Anton de Veciana – in search of a more favourable personal situation and taking advantage of the circumstances to improve their social and economic position.

Names such as the Milans of Arenys, the Mates and Lapeira of Mataró or the Massiques of Vilassar and many others would be great family names that would establish their prestige throughout the 18th century for having obtained important privileges as thanks for the services rendered during the occupation of the Principality. Many of these “illustrious” figures would be placed in key institutions for the deployment and execution of the Nueva Planta Decree, because otherwise it would not have been possible.

The new regime would pass “a disinfectant cotton wool over Catalonia”, in order to subsequently build a new network of local loyalties that would consolidate it within the territory. This reason why they were placed at the head of key institutions, such as the General Treasury (Catalonia’s taxation), the General Intendancy (Catalonia’s supply and logistics), the Confiscations of Catalonia (seizure of property) and the Bureau de Change (communal bank), a minority but large sector of the Principality’s population who, for various reasons, sided with the Bourbon proposal. In this way, the monarchy combined the principle of authority, as represented by the laws deployed in the Nueva Planta Decree, with a large institutional bureaucracy and flexibility with certain local social sectors, mainly the master craftsmen and merchants, who had sufficient economic resources to boost the economy.

The self-interested attachment of these sectors of Catalan society to the new Bourbon State gave them access to new sources of income derived directly from the new policies of Bourbon absolutism. Loyalty would give them access to large public contracts, which would lead to widespread corruption at all levels of public administration.

Until the end of the 1740s, Catalonia underwent a painful period of adaptation to its new status as a defeated nation, always suspected of disaffection. From then on, economic policy decisions were no longer taken in Barcelona, but at the Bourbon Court, following criteria based on the dreams of grandeur of the new reigning monarchy, regardless of the needs of its subjects.

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benet Oliva i Ricós: ‘Els proveïdors catalans de l’exèrcit borbònic durant el setge de Barcelona de 1713/1714’, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2014.

David Ferré Gispets: Els efectes del “Contractor State” borbònic a la Catalunya d’inicis del segle XVIII, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 2019.

Josep Maria Delgado Ribas: ‘Barcelona i el model econòmic de l’absolutisme borbònic: un tret per la culata’, Barcelona Quaderns d’Història, 23 (2016), pàg. 225-242.

Josep Juan Vidal: ‘Les conseqüències de la guerra de Successió: nous imposts a la Corona d’Aragó, una penalització o un futur impuls per al creixement econòmic?’, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, 2013.

Find out about the families that were enriched by the defeat of 1714 on 11Onze TV.

Durant la Diada els catalans ens deixem endur pel romanticisme i els ídols de la resistència que van intentar preservar les llibertats. Casanova, Villarroel, Moragues, Carrasclet… però les guerres són una qüestió de diners i cal mirar-les amb fredor i autocrítica. Hi ha una colla de catalans que van optar per fer negoci amb l’invasor, essent així decisius per a la seva victòria.

Toni Mata. Director de continguts i mitjans d’11Onze.

Que les guerres les guanyen els diners és una cosa que se sap des de fa més de 2.400 anys. Ja ho va deixar escrit Tucídides parlant de les guerres del Peloponès. Però quan s’acosta l’11 de setembre els catalans tendim a treure la llista de greuges en lloc de posar-nos a pensar on la vam cagar. El cap del general Moragues exposat durant dotze anys en una gàbia, la brutalitat de la repressió, la resistència de Villarroel, la persistència de Carrasclet, el poble enterrant els traïdors fora muralles perquè “al Fossar de les Moreres no s’hi enterra cap traïdor”… Tot això està molt bé. Però qualsevol país que pretengui ser-ho s’ha de prendre una mica més seriosament a si mateix i deixar-se de romanços. Si l’any 1714 Catalunya va caure va ser perquè es va perdre una guerra i, si es va perdre va ser per molts factors. Un dels que va ser clau és el col·laboracionisme.

Qui es va fer ric amb la victòria de Felip V?

L’avenç de Felip V per Catalunya no hauria estat possible sense que una sèrie de catalans hi contribuïssin prioritzant el benefici econòmic individual per davant del país. Potser aquells ciutadans no tenien consciència de país, però qui sí que la tenia era l’exèrcit borbònic que, tal com explica l’historiador d’11Onze Oriol Garcia en aquest article, va mantenir el 65% de les seves tropes als Països Catalans durant anys per consolidar la invasió.

Efectivament, hi ha catalans que van decidir fer negoci amb els Borbons mentre aquests destruïen el país i les llibertats de tots. I es van fer rics! Es van fer rics subministrant aliments o tota mena de necessitats que tenia l’exèrcit invasor a mesura que avançava. Què hauria passat si aquests subministraments bàsics haguessin quedat tallats a la rereguarda? Felip V hauria pogut mantenir la contesa bèl·lica? Fa de mal dir, però és ben sabut que la flota naval austriacista (que comptava amb el suport català) era capaç de mantenir el subministrament de les seves tropes, però la borbònica no. Depenien del que poguessin comprar a terra ferma.

Per això, a 11Onze hem volgut demanar al nostre historiador que se submergís en els estudis sobre aquesta idea: quins catalans hi van guanyar amb la victòria de Felip V? És a dir, qui el va ajudar i se’n va beneficiar? I el resultat és espaordidor. Prop d’una trentena de famílies catalanes es van fer riques traint el seu propi país. Famílies que van obrir les portes a l’invasor i van ser convenientment recompensades amb contractes públics a partir de 1714. La nova elit catalana es va configurar durant la guerra de Successió. El poble intentava resistir, però alguns apostaven per intentar fer fortuna a costa d’entregar el país a l’enemic. Hem llistat els casos més rellevants, amb noms i cognoms, perquè més de 300 anys després siguem més conscients que mai que alguns catalans van tenir un paper clau en la derrota de Catalunya. 

Trencar la dependència

És el que en podríem anomenar, les paguetes de 1714, fent un símil amb la terminologia actual. La història és reiterativa i és imprescindible conèixer-la per detectar els errors que duen a les desgràcies. És possible defensar Catalunya i que el teu negoci o el de la teva família depengui directament dels ajuts espanyols de l’ICO? O el teu sou? La història diu que no. De la història sabem que és impossible parlar cara a cara o defensar-se d’algú de qui tens una dependència econòmica. I sabem que hi ha catalans capaços de vendre a Déu i a sa mare per un plat de llenties. La consciència nacional estava al segle XVIII (i potser ara?) en un segon terme, per a alguns.

En qualsevol cas, per començar a canviar les coses és ben clar que el primer que hem de fer és dir-nos la veritat. És un compromís que tenim a 11Onze. Per això hem volgut fer aquesta revisió històrica per poder-nos dir clarament: Catalunya no va ser derrotada el 1714 perquè fos abandonada pels anglesos. No tot és culpa d’algú altre. Catalunya va ser venuda per alguns catalans. 

Descobreix les famílies que es van enriquir amb la derrota de 1714 a 11Onze TV.

The economic exuberance of the late 17th century will make the European monarchies believe that the wealth of the world is static and just needs to be shared out. The constant inflow of gold and silver into the economy would allow them to universalise their idea of civilisation, and they would take advantage of the wonder caused in those cultures with ancestral practices and beliefs. Of the 700 million people who will inhabit the world, almost 120 million will live in Europe, given that globalisation – begun two centuries earlier – will provide them with a food variety that will allow them to extend their life expectancy.

Oriol Garcia Farré, historian and 11Onze agent

By the end of the century, Europeans will have empirically verified the whole of the earth, which will enable them to generate cartography based on observation of reality. Gone will be the imaginary geography based on dogmatic superstitions. Thus, an infinite number of descriptions of exotic civilisations would appear in the European imaginary, which would bring about a change in tastes -more orientalised- and would give rise to a progressive critical attitude towards the beliefs that Europeans held about the world. This feeling of cultural universality will be diluted as Europeans understand that the world is also inhabited by a multitude of cultures and civilisations, which are different from the descriptions contained in the Bible.

Therefore, the adoption of critical thinking will entail the encyclopaedic codification of nature through the revolutionary scientific method, which will be based on observation, experimentation and empirical speculation. Physics – written in mathematical language – will describe the shapes and measurements of celestial bodies, using the newly created analytical geometry. And from this moment on, science will become a body of knowledge differentiated from philosophy and religion. All this will lead to a perception of reality that will cause European intellectual elites to question such basic concepts as property, justice, power and, above all, religion.

The questioning of the divinisation of power

Clearly, the Church – both Catholic and Protestant – will have to face a multitude of dissenting voices that will doubt the divine origin of the sacred texts, since the divine authorship of the Holy Scriptures will be questioned. Religion will then become an individual and private matter between man or woman and God. And by virtue of this privatisation, Europeans will progressively free themselves from compulsory dependence on the dogmatic disciplines imposed by the Church since the 10th century.

The fact of questioning the sacred foundation that justified the existence of Christian states would crack the confessional legitimacy of the political authority represented by the monarch. With the awareness of the self – through the rational principle “cogito ergo sum” – modern philosophy was inaugurated, which led enlightened scholars to openly question the divinisation of royal power. 

This innovative rational thinking will provoke a frontal clash between the supporters of absolute power – in the hands of a single person and fiercely defended by all the European monarchies – against the defenders of the natural state of the human being, who will argue that “no man can be subjected to the arbitrary will of another man, nor can he be forced to obey laws that another man would not follow as he would”. This thought will provoke a profound crisis of European consciousness, which will open the way to the invention of liberty and the claim for social equality.

Absolute power and mercantilism

The theorists of monarchical power – such as Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes – justified absolutism as the most perfect form of government and the only one capable of managing the vast accumulation of wealth extracted from the colonies. The high civil service – appointed by the king himself – will develop ever more efficient mechanisms to meticulously organise the state’s finances, since its profits will not only be made by introducing large quantities of gold and silver into the economic system but also by maximising exports and minimising imports with the help of strategic tariffs.

Convinced that the wealth of the world was static because it could only be taken, traded or stolen, absolutist monarchies would persecute any intrusion or private initiative that would destabilise the international trade system, such as the systematic persecution of piracy. On the other hand, the multitude of war conflicts between the different European monarchies – throughout the 17th and 18th centuries – will be seen as a necessary exchange of wealth, territories or people in which everyone will either win or lose and in this way, the economic system will be maintained, which will always have to add up to zero.

The European monarchies – overjoyed by abundance – will completely forget about the lives of their subjects. Marvelling at the situation, they were incapable of implementing social and economic improvements and soon came up against the serious problem of collective poverty within their societies. And in a context of incipient social conflict – such as that of the early 18th century – the economists of the time, Colbert, Mun, Serra or Misselden, defended the application of a low wage policy as the only way to achieve competitiveness in international trade, followed by the perverse argument that “if the population has wages above subsistence level, these will be the cause of the reduction in labour effort”.

The wealth extracted from the colonies will not only be accumulated or transformed into the productive resources that the economy requires but above all it will be used to be exhibited through the arts – architecture, painting and sculpture – the sciences and culture. And all this will lead to a paradox when the main absolutist monarchies – French, Austrian, Russian or Castilian – will be able to live in their lavish palaces, in the most exquisite and refined opulence, regardless of the scarcity of resources on which most of their subjects lived. Even so, this structural dynamic would crumble with the irruption of enlightened rationalism in European thought, which would contribute to the definitive rupture of the status quo of centuries of monarchical excesses. Enlightened despotism attributed to the monarch the mission of bringing economic progress and social welfare to all his subjects, which led to an infinite number of social conflicts. On this point, not all European monarchies tackled the problem of redistributing wealth in the same way.

Two solutions to the same problem

One of the answers would be provided by the Crown of Castile through its economic policies, which would still allow it to enjoy relative international predominance. However, the massive extraction of precious metals from the “New World” – which had allowed it to become obsessed with its particular idea of cultural universalisation – had led to short-sightedness and a lack of adaptability to the changing movements of the economy. Therefore, faced with the challenge of redistributing prosperity among its subjects, it will find itself trapped between a gigantic debt and a lethargic society that will depend mostly on royal decisions and the resources coming from the colonies. All this will reveal the existence of a parasitic social pyramid that will result in a single peasant – constrained by the system of censuses and privileges – being obliged to feed thirty non-producers.

Therefore, the strategy followed by the Crown of Castile – through the king’s ‘valid ones’, the famous Duke of Lerma, the Count-Duke of Olivares or Father Nithard – would be to exert strong fiscal pressure by increasing or creating new taxes on the fragile peasant economies, or on the urban classes by constantly raising prices and lowering wages. This economic programme sought to obtain the maximum resources to continue to support the idea of Empire, given that until then it had allowed them to enjoy a positive balance of trade. In contrast, the nobility and the clergy would be completely exempt from all these tax burdens, as well as allowing them to increase their income. In the end, all this led to a significant impoverishment of Castilian society, with disastrous consequences for the birth rate and the depopulation of large areas of the ‘Meseta’, which would not fully recover until the beginning of the 20th century. And to top it all off, society would be hijacked by the Court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which would ensure – through censorship, the creaming of “banned” books and misogynist fundamentalism – that no critical thought that shunned the official line would germinate.

On the other hand, we find the response of the northern European territories – such as the English Crown and the seventeen United Provinces – which will involve firmly introducing Enlightenment ideas into society, politics and economics. While England was to become a parliamentary monarchy through a political process that limited the power of the monarch and the separation of powers, the military union of Utrecht – made up of the seventeen United Provinces – fought energetically until the Peace of Münster against the occupation of the Crown of Castile to become the republic of the United Provinces of the North. Both territories will adopt a new approach to trade that will lead to a mutation of the economic system and will adopt a free market logic without restrictions or state protection. The generation of wealth will no longer be through blood but through the individual’s ability to accumulate capital, which will lead to the emergence of surplus value, the source of the new conflict. And in this new economic paradigm, the State will no longer have a place, given that the basic and irreducible elements that will drive this new mentality will be – both for companies and individuals – under the economic imperative of maximising profits and minimising losses.

Change of the economic paradigm

The cultural universality that had prevailed until then would be replaced by new reasoning based on “if it can be shown that the economic output of all the world’s industrial production must be concentrated in Madagascar or Fiji or that the entire population of black Africa must move to the New World to work on the cotton or sugar cane plantations, there is no economic argument that can stop these initiatives”. And so capitalism will impose ever more extensive globalisation and reach ever more remote regions, which will be more profoundly transformed.

The world will be divided into productive plots according to global criteria such as “it makes no sense to produce bananas in Norway because they are much cheaper to produce in Honduras”. Therefore, when Argentinean landowners will only produce meat or Australian farmers will only be expert wool producers, they will have abandoned their own agricultural production, since it will be more profitable for them to buy grain production for their own consumption abroad. Thus, these transactions will allow them to speculate and get a better economic return on their investments.

And in this sense, both England and Holland were the only exporters of capital and financial services to the American or Asian colonies in order to destabilise the old empires – Castile and Portugal – and thus secure the raw materials for the incipient industrial revolution. The London and Antwerp stock exchanges – founded at the end of the 17th century – would become the commercial capitals of the new economy based on the expectation of speculative dynamism, which would be mainly participated in by the descendants of the Sephardic Jews expelled by the Hispanic Monarchy at the end of the 15th century.

From the beginning, both England and Holland were certain that in order to develop the new economic paradigm, a process of concentration of economic activity by means of the urbanisation of coastal areas had to be set in motion, which enabled them to promote shipbuilding and the development of manufacturing close to the ports. This allowed them to turn their coastlines into economically very dynamic and powerful areas. A similar situation occurred on the Mediterranean peninsular coast, which became one of the territories with economic growth similar to that of the territories of Northern Europe. It was then that Catalonia would acquire territorial cohesion on the basis of an urban system closely intertwined with Barcelona – as a commercial and political centre – while at the same time, the industry would develop for the nearby towns – Sants and Saint Martin de Provençales – and mercantile activity would be reoriented towards the Atlantic and the interior of the peninsula.

The economy has been one of the main protagonists in the relationship between Catalonia and Spain. 11Onze agent Oriol Garcia Farré compiles nine of these key moments in our history. They may not be the best known, but they are undoubtedly the ones that have marked a before and after. One after the other, they offer a chronology of encounters and misunderstandings.

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

1479. The construction of a dynastic state

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

1556. The drift of history

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

1585. The perversity of the system

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

1626. Towards a single centralised unit

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

1760. The Catalan mercantile culture of the 18th century

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

1810. The construction of a new political reality

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

1870. History always gives a second chance

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

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

1931. The mountains are a good place to think

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

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

2004. Towards a new historical paradigm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The colonial mercantilist system

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

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

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

Financing the empire with precious metals

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

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

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

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

Indebtedness of the Castilian Crown

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

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

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

Relaxing the trade monopoly

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

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

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

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

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

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Choose your words wisely, because they will be decisive in your mood, in your relationships, and even in your happiness. We all carry fears, insecurities, and negativity within us, and language has the power to transform this in our favour.

Language is one more community element, and perhaps the most powerful. It is from speeches that we vote for one political party or another, or that a football team enters the field more or less motivated. From birth, we learn through language, whether spoken, written, or through symbols. And it is these words, to which the community gives meaning, that describe the world around us, and ourselves.

Building a community through language

“Speaking is half his who speaks, and half his who hears.” This is how the philosopher Michel de Montaigne described it. The language we share makes us part of a community, either generically or personalized through slang or words that are only used in our area. 

The richer the vocabulary, the easier it will be for society to describe the environment and everything that happens in it. In Galician, for example, there are more than 70 words to describe rain. Thanks to this, this community will have more knowledge in this field for the simple fact that their language has the ability to describe it. A word at a time, we build the environment and our present, but we also build ourselves.

The power of positive language

As the Mexican philosopher Octavio Paz said, we are made of words, and they are our only reality. Therefore, the way we speak will describe this reality, and we can do so in a positive or negative way.

Luis Castellanos is one of the world’s leading figures in positive language. The writer and philosopher has found, after years of research, that positive language directly influences our happiness. The words we choose to describe how we feel, how we see ourselves, or the ones we use to socialize condition our lives. 

He argues that all words, positive or negative, have an emotional charge. To get an idea, he theorizes that if we use a negative word when socializing, we must provide five positive words to counteract them and deserve the relationship again. This is the impact of negativity on words.

Building happiness a word at a time

Actions as simple as changing the words we use in our day-to-day life can have a huge impact on our mood and behaviour. Here are some examples:

• Difficult / challenging: changing “it’s hard” to “it’s a challenge” is enough to transform the information we give to the brain. Instead of closing our doors to the positive result, we emphasize that we will work to achieve it.
• I have to do / want to do: it will help us avoid the negative feeling of obligation.
• I’d like to do it, but…: our attention will be focused on everything that comes after the “but”. Let’s change it to an “although”, for example: “I would like to set up my business even though I’m a bit afraid”. This fear is not an impediment, but another challenge.
• Little by little / step by step: for many, “little by little” does not have a negative connotation, but it is true that it expresses slowness and poverty. Changing it to “step by step” involves movement and achieving goals, even if they are small.
• Removing NO from our vocabulary: when say “yes”, we open a whole world of possibilities that “no” closes. Eliminating “no” will also eliminate many frustrations.
• Adjectives: when describing the environment or people, always prioritize positive feedback. Seeing the world with optimism is the best serotonin discharge for your body.

While at first it is a frustrating exercise, as it does not come naturally to us, this practice of transforming language into a more conscious and positive narrative can change our lives. This is the great power of language. And you, do you dare to try it?

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More than 3,000 years ago, before the emergence of Greece, humanity already had developed and economically interconnected societies. This type of past globalism caused a chain collapse when climate change, migration and new technologies knocked down the first piece of the domino.

Globalization is not an invention of the 21st century, nor of the 20th century, nor even of colonialism and imperialism that shed so much blood. Long before, humanity had already woven a commercial network connecting societies more advanced than we often think. In the Bronze Age, around the second millennium BC, there were several well-developed civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea. We are talking about ancient Babylon (in present-day Iraq), the Mycenaean culture (in present-day Greece, which controlled trade with the Italian peninsula), the Hittite empire (present-day Turkey) and Ancient Egypt. These four civilizations had established commercial relations that, beyond occasional conflicts, allowed them to progress mutually.

How did they collapse?

That globalized and cosmopolitan world was wiped off the map in what is considered one of the great catastrophes of humanity. And it all began with climatic catastrophes: a sharp decrease in rainfall (for three centuries) left the key food production centers of civilization very affected. The mirror with the present is frightening if we think of the accumulation of bad harvests and the consequent rise in prices of basic foodstuffs that have been cutting into the pockets of the citizens of our country for years.

The lack of rain caused hunger, and hunger turned into desperate and violent migration. These miserable people are now known as the Sea Peoples, a multitude of people united by hunger who moved around the world looking for something to eat and who first devastated Mycenae, then the Hittite empire, and who found their retaining wall with Egypt. Pharaoh Ramses III was able to stop them at the mouth of the Nile, but the enormous military expenditure left their society also in a state of death. Thus, poverty spread throughout Egypt and Babylon, especially because they had lost their two main customers and had no one to sell to or buy from. These modern, interconnected empires collapsed and gave way to small, self-sufficient city-states, closed in on themselves, just trying to survive. This is what is known as the Dark Age, which lasted until the appearance of the polis Greek.

Will we repeat history?

Modern societies and economies are more connected than ever, so it is not comparable to the Bronze Age. If Japan has an economic downturn, the pain reaches the entire world in a devastating butterfly effect. There are also more mechanisms and resources than ever before in history to prevent the catastrophe from becoming tragic.

The first key, as history teaches us, is food production. Ensuring a minimum level of well-being for the bulk of the world’s population is essential for mutual survival. However, there are elements that are difficult to control. Nature, climate change, fears, and mistrust that generate conflicts of all kinds… the world is a powder keg always ready to explode. The question is whether humanity will be able to wet the fuse.

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La confiança és l’ingredient fonamental de l’economia moderna. Sense ella, els mercats tendeixen a desplomar-se com un castell de naips. Des d’11Onze, repassem 11 moments de la història en què la histèria s’ha apoderat dels inversors i l’economia ha pagat les conseqüències.

Ja en l’Edat Antiga es poden trobar els primers capítols de pànic financer. Tot i això, ha estat amb el desenvolupament del capitalisme i els sistemes financers moderns quan s’han multiplicat els episodis d’histèria col·lectiva, ja que la confiança ha guanyat pes com la pedra angular de tot l’entramat econòmic.

La realitat de l’economia productiva no canvia radicalment d’un dia per a un altre. No es poden construir ni destruir moltes fàbriques en un breu espai de temps, però un succés puntual pot alterar completament la percepció dels inversors i desencadenar una crisi de grans proporcions.

Mentre tothom vol comprar, els preus no deixen de pujar i l’economia sembla gaudir d’una salut de ferro, però quan, per alguna raó, s’imposa la febre venedora, l’efecte bola de neu pot arrasar qualsevol estructura econòmica. Aquí tens alguns dels moments més paradigmàtics de pànic financer dels últims segles.

Febre de les tulipes

Les tulipes es van fer molt populars als Països Baixos entre finals del segle XVI i principis del XVII. Com són flors de temporada, es va crear un mercat de futurs i l’especulació va fer que els preus es disparessin entre 1636 i 1637, en la considerada com a primera bombolla econòmica de la història capitalista. Al final la bombolla va esclatar, va provocar la ruïna de molts inversors i gairebé va provocar el col·lapse de l’economia holandesa. En el segle següent el fenomen de les bombolles es va reproduir al Regne Unit amb la Companyia de les Mars del Sud i a França amb la Companyia del Mississipí.

Crisi de crèdit de 1772

L’optimisme per la marxa de l’Imperi Britànic va provocar una ràpida expansió del crèdit al Regne Unit. L’eufòria va arribar a un abrupte final el 8 de juny de 1772, quan un banc es va enfonsar a causa de les pèrdues en les seves inversions i un dels seus socis va fugir a França. La notícia es va difondre ràpidament i va desencadenar el pànic bancari a Anglaterra, amb llargues cues als bancs per exigir la retirada dels seus diners. La crisi es va estendre ràpidament a altres parts d’Europa i les colònies britàniques d’Amèrica. Les posteriors dificultats per les quals va travessar la Companyia de les Índies Orientals a causa de l’escassetat d’efectiu va portar al govern britànic a aprovar l’any següent una llei que li concedia el monopoli de la venda de te a Amèrica del Nord. Les protestes acabarien per provocar la independència dels Estats Units.

Pànic de 1873

Va ser el causant de la primera “Gran Depressió”, una denominació que després es va associar a la crisi dels anys trenta del segle XX als Estats Units. A Europa, al col·lapse de la Borsa de Viena li van seguir les fallides de diversos bancs a Àustria i Alemanya. Als Estats Units, l’enfonsament de diverses entitats bancàries va provocar que la Borsa de Nova York interrompés les seves operacions per primera vegada en la seva història. Diversos països a un costat i un altre de l’Atlàntic van patir un prolongat estancament econòmic. La desmonetizació de la plata a Alemanya i als Estats Units, l’augment de les inversions especulatives, la inflació i la Guerra Franco-Prussiana van ser algunes de les causes del desastre.

Recessió de 1914

A mesura que la Primera Guerra Mundial semblava cada vegada més inevitable, l’afany venedor en els mercats globals va anar augmentant. Al final, es va desencadenar el pànic entre els inversors, que tractaven de desfer-se d’accions i bons per acumular or. El mercat borsari dels Estats Units i la Borsa de Londres van haver de tancar el 31 de juliol i no van reobrir fins a diversos mesos després. La crisi es va contagiar a desenes de països i la majoria de borses del món també van haver de tancar en els següents dies i setmanes.

Crac de 1929

Els bojos anys vint van portar al crac de Wall Street l’any 1929 i la Gran Depressió que va venir a continuació. La bonança econòmica havia estimulat l’especulació en la borsa, moltes vegades gràcies a préstecs que es concedien alegrement. Només en les primeres setmanes d’octubre d’aquest any les cotitzacions borsàries van arribar a pujar un 300%. Però el 24 d’octubre, en el que es coneix com el Dijous Negre, la Borsa de Nova York va patir la pitjor devallada de la seva història. Milers d’inversors ho van perdre tot de la nit al dia i el pànic es va generalitzar. Al final, la crisi va travessar fronteres i va provocar una depressió econòmica mundial. Només als Estats Units uns 15 milions de persones es van quedar sense feina en els anys següents.

Crisi del petroli de 1973

L’enviament d’armes a Israel durant la Quarta Guerra Àrab-Israeliana va provocar l’embargament de petroli als Estats Units i els seus aliats per part de l’Organització de Països Exportadors de Petroli (OPEP), integrada majoritàriament per països àrabs. Això va donar lloc a un període d’estagflació en les economies occidentals, caracteritzat per una elevada inflació a causa del repunt dels preus del petroli i l’estancament econòmic. Al Regne Unit es va arribar a racionar el subministrament elèctric.

Dilluns Negre de 1987

Després de cinc anys de febre alcista en les Borses, el 19 d’octubre de 1987 els mercats de valors de tot el món es van enfonsar en un breu espai de temps. La devallada es va iniciar a Hong Kong i la histèria financera es va propagar cap a l’oest a mesura que les Borses europees i nord-americanes anaven obrint. L’índex Dow Jones va perdre més d’un 22% en aquesta jornada. Les turbulències dels següents dies van fer que els descensos en molts mercats borsaris superessin el 20% i a Nova Zelanda es va arribar al 60%.

Crisi asiàtica de 1997

La crisi es va iniciar a Tailàndia i es va estendre ràpidament a altres països com Indonèsia, Malàisia, Singapur, Hong Kong i Corea del Sud. Els fluxos de capital especulatiu davant l’elevat creixement dels anomenats “tigres asiàtics” havia generat un excés de deute en les economies d’aquests països. El fet que el govern tailandès es veiés obligat a abandonar el tipus de canvi fix enfront del dòlar nord-americà al juliol de 1997 va desencadenar una onada de pànic en els mercats financers asiàtics i el retorn de milers de milions de dòlars d’inversió estrangera. El Fons Monetari Internacional va haver de sortir al rescat de les economies més afectades per evitar impagaments.

Bombolla de les ‘puntcom’

Algú es recorda de Terra? Va sortir a Borsa el 17 de novembre de 1999 i el primer dia es va revaloritzar un 184%. Després de revaloritzar-se més d’un 1.000% en un trimestre a principis de l’any 2000, el valor de les accions es va desplomar en la Setmana Santa d’aquell any. Tres anys després, Telefónica va acabar recomprant les accions a menys de la meitat del preu al qual van sortir inicialment. Va ser una de les nombroses empreses ‘puntcom’ que, amb l’eclosió d’Internet a finals dels noranta, van veure com se sobredimensionava el seu valor. Es calcula que només en l’Estat espanyol entre 1999 i 2000 es van llançar més de mil empreses el model de negoci de les quals girava entorn d’Internet. Després de l’esclat de la bombolla l’any 2000, molt poques ‘puntcom’ van acabar sobrevivint.

Crisi financera de 2008-2009

El 15 de setembre de 2008 Lehman Brothers, el quart banc d’inversió més gran del món, es va declarar en fallida. Va ser la constatació d’una situació insostenible que va fer que els mercats immobiliari i financer es desplomessin, també al nostre país. Fins llavors, els bancs d’Estats Units havien estat concedint préstecs a clients de dubtosa solvència i els havien reempaquetat com a productes financers “segurs” que es venien a institucions financeres de tot el món. Mentrestant, aquí vivíem la nostra particular bombolla immobiliària, que semblava no tenir sostre. La festa va acabar amb la crisi financera més greu des de la Gran Depressió i una factura milionària per als contribuents, que van haver de salvar al sector bancari.

Pandèmia de COVID-19

L’aparició de la COVID-19 va inocular la por en els mercats de tot el món en els primers mesos de 2020. El que inicialment semblava ser un problema estrictament xinès, es va convertir en poques setmanes en un malson global, que incloïa dues crisis interdependents: una sanitària i una altra econòmica. En menys d’un any van morir milions de persones i el PIB mundial va caure gairebé un 6%, segons les dades del Banc Mundial.

Tots aquests exemples ens mostren com l’eufòria o el pànic poden condicionar la visió de la realitat econòmica. La història està plena de bombolles i cants de sirena que s’han d’evitar.

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