The development of the extractive system

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 colonie’s 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 famous 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. 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 one of the most powerful families on the continent.

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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The political map of Europe at the end of the 15th century was shaped after the many conflictive social, political and economic events of the previous century and with a population reduced to less than 50% due to the Black Death. The new political landscape that emerged from this process showed a great variety of institutional forms of power. Alongside the two legacies of the Christian Lower Empire – the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy – the feudal monarchies that emerged from this structural impasse greatly strengthened, which legitimised them to govern differently and led them to construct a new concept of the State.

In order to sustain this new conception of the State, the European monarchies sought the basic mechanisms that would enable them to consolidate new state structures with a markedly centralising and unipersonal character. For this reason, they first fought energetically against all those powerful families – the Armagnacs, Lancastrians, Braganzas, Mèdicis and Palomas – who had the capacity to dispute their decisions. The fight would not always be through the use of violence, but plots were created to delegitimise them or a tight matrimonial policy of territorial anthropophagy would be applied to them in order to extend state property permanently, without the need for bloodshed.

The new political conception would lead to a clear cornering of the most representative organs of the citizenry – such as the Cortes, the Estados Generales or the Dietas – which would be replaced by a powerful and much more specialised council of the king. In this way, the State would multiply its presence in the territory through the creation of a powerful administrative network linked to the different activities of the new management system. Soon, the civil service would appear, with a life tenure at the end of the century, which would allow a segment of the population to become rich beyond limits simply by working in proximity to power.

Up to this point, the monarchies had been financed by their own resources through ordinary rents linked to manorial rights or the profits produced by their possessions, whether from the exploitation of forests, the stamping of coins or the slave trade. But this was no longer enough.

An economic paradigm shift

The European monarchies would assuage their ambition by imposing a three-pronged strategy: firstly, they made the supplies of the feudal system regular and plentiful, which lead to the appearance of an infinite number of extraordinary financing funds for people and goods, such as taxes on trade, the famous tax on salt, or taxes on houses, fires, and so on; Secondly, they created the need for consumption, such as new eating habits or the introduction of fashion in the need to dress; and thirdly, they freed themselves from the usual need to ask for the consent of their subjects, who – were still represented in institutional bodies – coming up against the argument that “in peacetime, this request was completely unnecessary”. But the key and fundamental element that would allow all this new machinery to work perfectly would be the creation of a standing army, aimed at domestic control – between threats and persuasion – and projecting the monarch’s power outwards.

Gold would continue to be the main problem for the European economy, since it would still be absolutely necessary for trade. Since ancient times, the East-West relationship had gone through an infinite number of ups and downs, but its balance of trade had always been in deficit – with respect to gold – as the Asian continent was poor in deposits of precious metal. The only gold that reached Europe with any regularity – since the 10th century – was Sudanese gold, but this would never satisfy the needs of the feudal economy.

The study and appreciation of the Greco-Latin classics

The atmosphere of strong economic dynamism pervaded the whole of this period, forcing the European monarchies to seek new fields of action and new sources of profit to maintain the new and very costly state structures. Europe was too small a space to satisfy the ‘grandeur’ of the nascent modern states, but above all, it showed a shortage of raw materials. It was then that the real desire to get closer to the sources of African gold or oriental spices would appear.

The worldview of medieval society was conditioned by religion, imaginary legends and geographical ignorance, but this changed radically from the Quattrocento onwards with the recovery of Greek manuscripts ignored by the Church – which controlled culture – as they were considered pagan texts. With the introduction of the basic rules of correct Latin translation – promoted by Petrarch and Boccaccio – these manuscripts were correctly transcribed and took on a new meaning. The rereading of numerous classical texts – such as Euclid, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Eratosthenes and many others – made it possible to construct new critical thinking that would lead humanist scholars to want to verify how much wisdom the ancient texts contained about the world.

This humanism would favour a definitive break with medieval tradition and would exalt the qualities proper to human nature. It would allow the discovery of the human self and give a rational meaning to its existence. This anthropocentrism would free the human being from metaphysical wonder and place him before the gates of empirical curiosity. The dissemination of this innovative thinking was made possible by the invention of the movable type printing press. But this mental change would also enable a small group of people – settled in both Sagres and Nuremberg – to begin to experiment and apply modern scientific methods based on mathematics and astronomy, which would alter the universal worldview.

Colonial conquest and exploitation

Ambitious businessmen set out in search of maritime routes that would lead them to new territories where they could find abundant products to satisfy the growing demand of European markets. And in this context, the State would favour this expansive economy by participating – indirectly – in the commercial adventures of these daring entrepreneurs, who would boast a great deal of audacity but little Atlantic experience.

Chance and the trade winds led the first navigators to the most populated area of the American continent. The territory of the “New World” – both north and south combined – is 42.5 million km². Before the arrival of Europeans, an estimated 100 million people lived on the entire continent, as opposed to the 1 billion who live there today. Of these, some 80 million people lived in the strip between Mexico and Peru. On the other hand, in the gradual southward descent of the African continent, Europeans discovered that the Muslim world had penetrated much further than they thought. Beyond the equator, they entered a totally unknown world and discovered black Africa. With an area of 32 million km², current estimates speak of some 60 million people who could be living on the entire African continent by the end of the 15th century.

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. And in embellishing this fact, the state deployed all its modern legal and administrative machinery to possess it legitimately. Without entrusting themselves to anyone and by the right of conquest, the European monarchies began to claim ownership of those territories while ignoring the indigenous population. At this point, religion played a key role in justifying the destruction, annihilation and extermination of the ancestral cultures that lived harmoniously. A similar path would be followed on the African continent, although this process would begin some one hundred years later.

As the newcomers – already in the name of the Crown – moved into these new territories, they would discover that precious metals were not the only source of wealth. In less than fifty years, European markets would be supplied, in quantities unthinkable until then, with countless tropical products such as pepper, sugar, cotton and tobacco. The Atlantic coast would see the growth of a major port network stretching from Cádiz to Antwerp and would form the backbone of a new economic area. And then, the Crown would define itself as an Empire, always, with a shining sun!

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For the first time, we are entering a rocky path where many plans are mixed up. Historical objectivity – based on documentary rigour – has been abducted by a clearly intentional narrative that has sought to justify anything that would serve to construct universality. Doubting the official narrative surrounding the “Discovery of America” – where the Hispanic matrix is based – has forced countless historians to work outside the academy, with no other resource than their wit and intelligence.

The raw material on which history is based is documentary sources. Chronicles, cartularies, wills, contracts, dispositions, novels, chants, archaeological remains or ‘Lebenswelt’, are a specific type of documentary that each historian uses to understand and explain the past, which – filtered through his or her mental framework – will end up shaping a specific perception of that reality.

It is for this reason that, during the creation of knowledge, one will engage in passionate, constructive and sterile debates. Discrediting one’s adversary with personal attacks is a symptom of dialectical incapacity. Therefore, anything outside empirical rigour evokes us into the world of fiction or coffee shop talk. But what happens when a documentary source is shown to have been altered, tampered with or burned?

The capitulations of Santa Fe

Established in the camp of Santa Fe of Granada, the recent victors of the war of Granada, better-known as Catholic Monarchs – a title granted by Pope Alexander VI in 1496 – signed capitulations or agreements with Christopher Columbus on 30 April 1492 to carry out a major ultra-oceanic venture.

The agreements signed – known as the Capitulations of Santa Fe – would set the legal framework that would underpin the entire discovery of America, but they would also be the origin of future disputes between the Crown and the Columbus family. They will also clarify the granting of the titles of admiral, viceroy and governor-general of all the territories discovered and all the benefits derived from this enterprise.

The capitulations will acquire capital legal importance for Columbus and his descendants, and for this reason, he will never part with them during his lifetime. There is no record of the existence of this original until 1526 when it appears for the last time among the documents kept in the Columbus Archive in the Carthusian monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas (Seville). Unfortunately, this original has never reached us.

At the same time that the original of the capitulations was released to Columbus, a copy of the original was entered in the corresponding Book-Register of legal dispositions of the Royal Catalan-Aragonese Chancery in Barcelona. This entry is recorded in book 3,569, folios 135 and 136, in the ‘Diversorum sigilli secreti’ section, dated the same day of its issue, i.e. 17 April 1492. But just as the Catalan register is patented, no similar record has been found to date in any Castilian register. And it is well known that the systematic investigations carried out for centuries in the main Castilian archives -Simancas, Indias or Duque de Veragua- have so far been unsuccessful.

The legal construction of the maritime enterprise

Legislative power in the Crown of Aragon did not belong exclusively to the monarch but had to be developed together with the three estates: nobility, clergy and cities and towns. If the initiative came from the monarch, the constitution was born, while if it came from the estates of the courts, the court chapter was born.

From 1363, there is evidence of this legal practice when it came to the pairing of armies by the king with the deputies of the different estates of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. It is for this reason that King Ferdinand signed the capitulations with Columbus, which is why one of the agreements states “perquè sia feta Armada en la Senyora del Senyor Rey, de Galées”. Therefore, neither in the legal sources of contemporary Castilian law nor in those of Indian law itself, will we find norms through which the legal concepts that appear in detail in the capitulations can be established.

The capitulations were negotiated and prepared in Barcelona by a committee formed by Joan de Coloma – representative of the Catalan Chancellery and the king’s personal secretary – and Joan Peres – Columbus’ representative – who was a prominent doctor of medicine and renowned cosmographer and owner of the castle of Sant Miquel, on the outskirts of Pals d’Empordà. And it was from the old port of this Empordà town, which no longer exists, that the ultra-oceanic expedition set sail.

When the two parties reached the agreement – on 17 April 1492 – the capitulations were immediately sent to the camp at Santa Fe de Granada – where the Catholic monarchs were staying – for official ratification (on 30 April 1492) and were subsequently handed over to Christopher Columbus. Finally, at the beginning of 1493, the Cortes Generales held in Barcelona ratified the agreement. All this justifies why these ‘Capitulations’ were kept only in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon: because that is where the documents of the magistracy concerned were recorded and archived.

The financing of the maritime enterprise

All the surviving texts show very clearly that the money for the ultra-oceanic venture was advanced – to a large extent – by a Valencian settled in Barcelona, Lluís de Santàngel, who was the scribe of rations for the Catalan Chancellery, which often performed fiscal functions. The company was also financed by other illustrious figures such as Gabriel Sanxis – general treasurer of the Crown of Aragon -, Joan Cabrero – King Ferdinand’s waiter – and Alfons de la Cavalleria, royal adviser. It so happens that all these illustrious figures had had commercial links with the Columbus family in Barcelona for decades.

All the documents referring to the royal payments for the ultra-oceanic enterprise, count the figures in ducats, which was the Catalan currency. However, this currency was not used in Castile until 1497, when, after strong opposition from the Castilian municipalities for considering it a foreign currency, it was imposed by the monarchs.

It should be borne in mind that the structures of the two states, Aragon and Castile, always remained separate, despite the creation of bodies common to both crowns, such as the Inquisition. Therefore, each crown had its treasury, with its treasurer, its scribes and its royal archives. Consequently, if we apply the scientific method to find out who paid for the enterprise of discovery, we only have to go through the account books of both treasuries. Unfortunately, it is impossible to review the account book of the Catalan treasury, as it has disappeared. On the other hand, other contemporary Catalan sources say that thousands of ducats were being allocated to pay for ships and crews throughout that period.

But what happens when we look at the account book of the Castilian general treasury? By the way, it is public and in a modern edition! Well, there is no record of any money being spent on any maritime expedition during the nineties of the 15th century. There is no document that speaks of money referring to ships, pilots, crews or expeditions of any kind.

The triumph of the maritime enterprise

Christopher Columbus was received with full honours by the Catholic monarchs at the Royal Palace in Barcelona on 3 April 1493, after completing the first transoceanic voyage. Contemporary chronicles explain that the audience was very well received, and attracted many curious onlookers from all over the world.

Columbus had succeeded in finding the lost continent spoken of in countless ancient texts: the lands on the other side of the Atlantic “which since the sinking of Atlantis had been cut off”. And as proof of this discovery – of this “New World” – he presented the indigenous people, animals, metals and plants that they had brought back to the kings and to the highest authorities of the kingdom. Reliable proof that they came from lands hitherto unknown.

In fact, in the Capitulations of Santa Fe, it is written that the company undertook to discover territories “which are in the direction of the Indies”. Since at that time there was no geographical reference to illustrate an expedition that aimed to go to the other side of the Atlantic, the geographical reference of the Indies and China of the Great Khan was used. Both cases are extensively described in Marco Polo’s Travels at the end of the 13th century.

As the official documents of the first Columbus voyages state, the toponyms used to designate the “new places” were: Florida, l’illa Montserrat, the region of Valençuela, l’illa Margalida and la Jamaïca. It was after the expulsion of Columbus from all his American possessions and the change in the Crown’s policy in the mid-16th century that Castilian place names began to appear.

Disputes following the discovery of the maritime enterprise

When Columbus returned from his first voyage, the kings confirmed all the powers stipulated in the Capitulations de Santa Fe. But on returning from the second expedition, the monarchy realised that the lands discovered were not four lost islands, but were actually the mainland. This perception caused the monarchy to reconsider the powers granted to Columbus.

The legal problem the monarchy encountered was serious: they were aware that they had accepted and signed capitulations, which allowed the birth of a new dynasty installed in a New World and where Columbus would become viceroy for life, as well as being a hereditary title!

Aware of this problem and in the absence of the person concerned – since he was on an expedition – King Ferdinand changed the rules of the game. The viceregal reform of 1493 led to a limitation of the viceroy’s power, which would be subjugated to the power of the king and the possibility of removing him from office whenever treason against the Crown was proven. In 1500, Francisco de Bobadilla accused Columbus of betraying the Crown.

All documentation on the trial against Columbus has disappeared. From indirect sources, it is known that the Crown seized all the documentation that Columbus had to provide in his own defence. And it is also known that the reports on which the accusations were based were drawn up by Pere Bertran Margarit and Bernat Boïl.

And after all this setup, Columbus was released but deprived of all the titles signed in the capitulations. In other words, he became an inoffensive character for the powers that be. From the 16th century onwards, a long period of litigation began – first against Columbus and then against his descendants – to restore the agreements. For more than eighty years, the Columbus family would sue the monarchy, but it would prove to be a fruitless affair.

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

David Bassa i Jordi Bilbeny: Totes les preguntes sobre Cristòfor Colom. Col·lecció Descoberta, Llibres de l’Índex, 2015.

Jordi Vila: Les Capitulacions colombines de 1492: un document català. 1r Simposi sobre la Descoberta Catalana d’Amèrica, Arenys de Munt, 2001.

Jordi Bilbeny: Cristòfor Colom, príncep de Catalunya, Proa, Col. Perfils, Barcelona, 2006.

Jordi Bilbeny: Inquisició i Decadència: Orígens del genocidi lingüístic i cultural a la Catalunya del segle XVI, Librooks, Barcelona, 2018.

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

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

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

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

Manipulated documentation

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

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

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

The departure point of the expedition

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

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

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

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

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

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

The point of return and reception of the expedition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

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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!

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The conflict in Ukraine is the latest example of the growing importance of economic sanctions as instruments of coercion in international geopolitical relations. We analyse how SWIFT, a communication protocol between banks, has become a strategic weapon of the West.

The origin of telecommunications between global banking networks dates back to the mid-19th century, when the newly developed electric telegraph enabled more agile communications between stock markets. The telegraph established a continuous, near real-time trading system that reduced the differences between the prices of securities in markets separated by large geographical distances.

In 1872, Western Union used its existing telegraph network to launch the first widely used wire transfer service. A sender paid money to a telegraph office, and the operator transmitted a message to allow the transfer of money to another office, which was verified by passwords and code books so that the funds were released to a recipient.

In the early 20th century, the telegraph was slowly replaced by teletype or telex machines, a system developed by Germany that took advantage of telegraph lines and allowed users to write a message somewhere and have it printed on the other side of the world. Although telex provided the banking sector with a basic platform for business, and an operational medium through which they could begin to expand, the need to ensure that messages were secure and accurate added much complexity to the system, which soon found itself unable to cope with the pressures of an increasingly globalised financial world.

As the increase in transactions made it clear that the limits of this communication system were a constraint on the expansion of the banking business, banks, especially European banks, decided to explore other options. A decision spurred by a subsidiary of the American bank, the First National City Bank (FNCB), which wanted to force other banks to use its proprietary telex system. This ultimatum horrified the European banks, which saw a change from a system based on cooperation between rivals to a monopoly at the hands of the American partner.

The banks of 15 countries created a private company, SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunication, based in Brussels and run as a global cooperative enterprise. SWIFT simplified procedures and minimised errors by using a standardised messaging format that was adopted globally.

Communication networks and state coercion

The tug-of-war between the new and old continents over control of a global interbank communications system highlighted a phenomenon that had already been seen with the emergence of the telegraph during colonial times. While these communication systems were not created with geopolitics in mind, it was inevitable that the big players in the global economy would use them as tools to control, spy on, and punish other states competing for the same interests.

A fact that is not without irony in the case of SWIFT, created by Europe to maintain its sovereignty vis-à-vis the United States, but which has ultimately been unable to resist obeying Washington’s orders, even when they run counter to European interests, as happened when President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the Iran nuclear deal.

Political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman define this as “weaponised interdependence“. As for SWIFT, they explain: “In this world, the networks that enable global interdependence no longer serve as neutral means of transmitting information or money. Instead, they are becoming the power projection tools of large states“.

The use of sanctions by the US government, against enemies and allies, purely for economic and geopolitical interests, did not begin with the administration of President Donald Trump, but it is true that Trump made an unprecedented expansion of punitive economic measures to promote his administration’s agenda. An abuse of a position of privilege that initially yields good results, but is counterproductive in the long run when other states question alliances with the United States, and seek alternatives to monetary tools linked to the hegemonic power of this country.

Alternative systems and cryptocurrencies

The latest economic sanctions against Russia, and the exclusion of some of its banks from the SWIFT system, follow the same trend of recent years, and only consolidate the efforts of China, Russia, and even the European Union, to seek alternative systems that can shield their economies. A new blow to the system that could trigger a chain reaction of change.

In 2017, Russia launched the Financial Messaging System of the Bank of Russia (SPFS), equivalent to SWIFT, and in 2015, China launched a similar system called The Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). Two alternative systems that are still far from being able to fully replace SWIFT, but which at least help to reduce the effectiveness of the possible sanctions imposed on banks in these two countries to exclude them from the interbank communication protocol established by Western banks.

On the other hand, the blockchain-based cryptocurrency revolution is another tool that countries such as North Korea and Iran have already used to circumvent economic sanctions, and the exclusion of their banks from the SWIFT ecosystem. The digital rouble is just one of several digital tools through which the Russian government can boost bilateral trade with allied countries, as China has already done with the digital yuan.

Nevertheless, the use of economic sanctions will undoubtedly have a significant impact on Russia’s economy, and to a lesser extent on that of the European Union. Even so, it is also clear that the abuse of this tool of persuasion or punishment is reducing its effectiveness and promoting the creation of alternative systems, which are ultimately inevitable in a multipolar global geopolitical scenario, which is no longer content to be subject to the impositions and interests of a single country.

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L’economia ha estat una de les grans protagonistes de la relació entre Catalunya i Espanya. Tot realitzant un exercici de síntesi, recollim nou d’aquests moments claus de la nostra història. Potser no són els més coneguts, però, sens dubte, sí que són els que han marcat un abans i un després. Un rere l’altre, ofereixen una cronologia dels encontres i desencontres.

“Mentre Espanya no comprengui el fet català,
Espanya estarà sotmesa a tots els infortunis.”
Américo Castro, 1924 

1479. La construcció d’un Estat dinàstic

Després de la Guerra Civil castellana, els dos regnes més extensos de la península Ibèrica (Castella i la Confederació Catalana) van crear plegats una nova entitat política coneguda amb el nom de Monarquia Hispànica. Aquest Estat dinàstic es va configurar a partir de la unió de només dos elements clau: l’exèrcit i la política exterior. Per a la resta d’elements que configuren un Estat modern, com ara fronteres, monedes, lleis i institucions, van romandre totalment separats. Així, pel que fa a la configuració i repartiment del poder, cal tenir present que, mentre Castella s’articulava segons l’autoritat de la reina (Isabel), sempre per sobre de la noblesa i l’església, en canvi, la Confederació Catalana es va organitzar al voltant de la Constitució de l’Observança, que obligava el rei (Ferran) a governar i pactar d’acord amb les lleis del Principat. Vet aquí una primera diferència en el sistema d’organització polític i econòmic entre Espanya i Catalunya.

1556. La deriva de la història

A la mort de la reina castellana (Isabel), l’Estat dinàstic peninsular va estar a punt de desfer-se. Després de vicissituds familiars, el tron l’acabarà ocupant el net, per incapacitat de la filla (Joana) i per la mort del gendre (Felip). D’aquesta manera, la unió dinàstica entre els dos regnes va quedar confirmada definitivament en les persones de Carles (futur emperador) i els seus successors. Durant anys, l’emperador Carles va buscar consolidar la idea d’una monarquia universal que fos políglota i oberta per a tot el territori de l’imperi dels Habsburg. La política de l’emperador va anar encaminada a canviar el rumb de la història europea. De res li va servir creure que era possible la convivència entre els drets de les ciutats i els de les regions amb l’estructura imperial, atès que la idea de l’Estat Nació s’estava imposant, empesa en gran part per la Reforma. Tampoc no va aconseguir mai crear les complicitats necessàries entre castellans i catalans per forjar un país comú.

1585. La perversitat del sistema

La tardor de 1585, el rei Felip II de Castella va presidir la celebració de les Corts Generals de la Confederació Catalana a Montsó. Seguint la tradició instaurada pel seu pare (Carles), Felip II reconeixia així la dualitat de poder en el territori peninsular que conformaven les corones de Castella i Catalunya. El sistema parlamentari sempre comporta tensions —perquè el debat ho té—, però semblava que s’arribaria a un acord. El problema va sorgir quan els oficials reials van intentar boicotejar descaradament les resolucions de les Corts. I encara és més pervers quan la Monarquia —de manera unilateral— decideix manipular i tornar a redactar els acords presos per les Corts Catalanes per afavorir els seus interessos. Entre les alteracions més destacades i que van afectar de ple tota la Confederació Catalana, hi havia aquelles relatives al control del comerç, a l’augment de la despesa de la Reial Audiència en territori de la confederació i que van diluir el control que la Diputació del General (la Generalitat) pogués tenir sobre el Sant Ofici (la Inquisició), el braç repressor de la monarquia.

1626. Cap a una unitat centralitzada única

El març del 1626, Barcelona rep el rei de Castella, Felip IV, que havia arribat a la ciutat per jurar les Constitucions catalanes. El motiu no fou altre que poder desencallar l’ambiciós pla del ministre del rei, el comte duc d’Olivares. El projecte, conegut com la “Unión de Armas”, pretenia que cada regne que formava part de Castella —o sigui, principalment la Confederació Catalana— aportés un nombre determinat de diners i soldats. Però el que no van calibrar bé les oligarquies castellanes va ser que si Felip IV jurava les Constitucions catalanes, certament se li atorgava automàticament el títol de comte de Barcelona, cosa que l’obligava a fiscalitzar els seus recursos. Per tant, els catalans estaven més interessats que s’aprovessin les seves propostes de noves Constitucions catalanes i que s’atenguessin els greuges, que no pas a participar en guerres absurdes. Curiosament, dues dècades més tard, el territori nord-català serà extirpat del cos principal de manera deshonesta. I no serà fins quaranta anys més tard que Castella notificarà oficialment a la Generalitat la pèrdua del territori nord-català.

1760. Les regles del joc canvien

Des de feia unes dècades, una nova família d’origen francès ostentava el tron de Castella, els Borbons. Enrere havia quedat la disputa oberta sobre aquell ascens, fins al punt que s’havia hagut de dirimir en el camp de batalla. Passades quatre dècades del Decret de Nova Planta, el rei Carles III va convocar les Corts generals a Madrid. En aquell nou paradigma polític sorgit del camp de batalla, els representants dels antics territoris de la Confederació Catalana —format per Catalunya, Aragó, València i Mallorca— van presentar plegats un memorial que contenia una crítica frontal al sistema borbònic vigent. Simplificant molt, el document conegut com el “Memorial de Greuges” defensava que el nou Estat havia de vetllar per la pluralitat territorial i havia d’allunyar-se d’estructures centralistes i unificadores.

1810. La construcció d’una nova realitat política

En un context de guerra europea, arribaren fins a Cadis més de 240 diputats d’arreu del territori convençuts que anaven a fer història, atès que s’anava a redactar una moderna Constitució. El rei Carles IV d’Espanya havia estat deposat per absolutista, després de l’ocupació francesa del territori peninsular. A les Corts de Cadis es va establir que el poder residia en el conjunt dels ciutadans, representats a les Corts. Però Cadis també va suposar —per primera vegada— l’oportunitat real per la qual els polítics catalans van ser cridats a participar activament en el nou sistema polític espanyol que s’estava creant. En aquell revolucionari context, la delegació catalana va defensar obertament la proposta de modernitzar Espanya d’acord amb el projecte austriacista liquidat feia menys d’un segle. Per tant, calia fonamentar el desenvolupament econòmic i social d’acord amb la industrialització dels territoris. Però pel Tractat de Valençay es va restituir en el tron a Ferran VII com a monarca absolut, i va frustrar totes aquelles idees modernes sorgides de les Corts de Cadis i de la seva revolucionària Constitució, que havia sacsejat Espanya.

1870. La història sempre ofereix una segona oportunitat

Aquell estiu del 1870 a París, Maria Isabel Lluïsa de Borbó i Borbó-Dues Sicílies, reina d’Espanya, abdicà. Aquesta renúncia del poder —igual que l’emperador Carles— era la conseqüència d’un intens debat polític sobre com s’havia d’articular la modernitat d’Espanya. La disputa entre carlins i liberals s’havia dirimit en els camps de batalla durant les darreres tres dècades. Però durant les dècades següents l’atzucac continuaria. Espanya havia entrat en un laberint del qual trigarà cent anys a sortir. La modernitat va comportar una profunda transformació estructural, inclòs el repartiment del poder. La historiografia ha abordat aquest període des de la perspectiva de la primera crisi del capitalisme espanyol. Però, en realitat, a l’origen del problema econòmic de tot plegat hi ha la corrupció. 

Polítics, militars i nobles van especular tant en les companyies ferroviàries com en la construcció, fins al punt que a finals de la dècada hi va haver un crac borsari de dimensions bíbliques. La Guerra Civil dels Estats Units va provocar un augment dels preus de la matèria primera —el cotó—, motor de la indústria tèxtil catalana, que —per manca de previsió de l’Estat— va provocar la ruïna de molts empresaris d’aquest sector. I un període perllongat de males collites va provocar un augment estrepitós del preu dels aliments bàsics, que va afectar negativament les classes més populars. En aquest context tan difícil i atès que l’Estat estava tan endeutat, es van aportar dues solucions: per una banda, augmentar la pressió fiscal sobre les classes populars i, per l’altra, embolicar-se en una aventura colonial com va ser la Guerra de les Illes Xinxa, davant les costes del Perú.

1931. La muntanya és un bon lloc per pensar

Aquella primavera del 1931, Espanya va optar per gestionar el poder seguint una fórmula fracassada en el passat. La corrupció havia esgotat el sistema de la Restauració borbònica i, per tant, calia buscar una nova relació amb el poder. La pregunta que es plantejava llavors —i encara avui— era si Espanya podia ser una federació de nacions. Calia provar-ho! En aquest context, s’instal·laren al Santuari de Núria els diputats del recentment creat Govern de la Generalitat de Catalunya, encarregats de redactar una proposta de relació entre Catalunya i Espanya. Tothom tenia la certesa d’estar davant d’un moment històric. 

El resultat fou un text constitucional que responia a la voluntat de Catalunya i al seu legítim dret d’exercir l’autodeterminació. S’estava proposant una situació d’igualtat jurídica i política respecte als altres pobles de l’Estat. Es plantejava ampliar la mirada. Davant del text, l’Estat es va posar nerviós. Un any més tard, les Corts espanyoles van aprovar un Estatut que ja no tenia res a veure amb el que havia refrendat mesos enrere el poble de Catalunya. Es rebutjava la fórmula federal, es reduïen competències de la Generalitat i s’instaurava la cooficialitat del català i el castellà en un model bilingüe. Catalunya quedava reduïda a una “regió autònoma dins l’Estat espanyol”. Va ser aleshores quan a la llunyania començaren a sentir-se remors de sabres que obligaven Espanya a tornar al camp de batalla.

2004. Cap a un nou paradigma històric

Amb la ressaca dels esdeveniments de la darrera dècada del segle passat, tothom va creure que Espanya havia optat per reconèixer la seva diversitat. La llengua catalana era —fins i tot— parlada en els cercles més íntims de l’oligarquia castellana. En un clima de puixança econòmica, estabilitat social i de reconeixement mutu, Catalunya va creure que podia tornar a plantejar la seva relació amb Espanya. Era possible? L’escrupolositat de l’escomesa —igual que en el passat—, en l’elaboració d’un nou marc constitucional com fou el nou Estatut de Catalunya, va suposar un important esforç per trobar un punt d’encontre on hi fossin representades tots els espectres socials. La continuació és sabuda per tothom. L’1 d’octubre de 2017 és la constatació de la impossibilitat del diàleg i la necessitat de tornar a l’inici de tot: a molt abans de la Guerra Civil castellana de 1479.

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

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

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

The “nation,” the subject of dispute

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

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

The kingdom of “nationalities”

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

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

Everything revolves around the “reconquest”

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

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

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

From confederation to absolutism

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

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

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

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

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

The failed illusion of the “federative republic”

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

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

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

Does it exist, then, a nation of nations?

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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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