The historical sciences and the social sciences proper have increasing difficulties in analysing the significance and after-effects of historical experiences and processes for current developments in the ‘globalization’ and/or ‘glocalization’ debate in a reliable and methodologically sound way.Reference Perez Herrero ¹ This is currently true in the ‘European Union’, above all for the regions of Scotland and Catalonia, both seeking independence from their respective ‘nation states’(the United Kingdom and Spain), ² and both of which have meanwhile become semi-independent regions under a federally organized monarchy, equipped with their own regional parliaments. Of the two political systems, Spain at least defines itself in its constitution as a ‘nation state’ which is composed of numerous ‘nationalities’, through which the various regionally and historically founded ‘autonomies’ are defined. Both independence movements, in Scotland and in Catalonia, seek to constitute themselves as their own nation states within the framework of the ‘European Union’. It remains to be seen to what extent the newer political movements opposing centralizing tendencies in the ‘European Union’, which can be observed in the United Kingdom and – to a lesser extent – in Spain, represent a reaction to the aforementioned independence movements, and this will not be discussed here. ³ Nevertheless, it is significant for the present context that Scotland had a long history as an independent kingdom until the early modern period, while Catalonia, an autonomous principality with its own capital of Barcelona, also belonged to the independent Kingdom of Aragón, along with the Kingdom of Valencia, until the dawn of the early modern period. Dynastic change connected Scotland to England, which was at least more populous, and Catalonia to Castile, which was also territorially much larger, with England and Castile developing into the centres of extensive empires. In contrast, Scotland and Catalonia have preserved a legal, cultural and religious distinctiveness to this day.

The Crown of Aragón had had itself an imperial history in the Mediterranean region since the Middle Ages, which had led to the incorporation of the kingdoms of Mallorca, both Sicilies – Naples and Sicily – and at times the other large islands in the western Mediterranean region as well as the duchies of Athens and Neopatras. Within this tradition, both Catalonia and Barcelona played an especially central role. In contrast, the imperial tradition of Castile, which likewise reached back to the Middle Ages – one is reminded of the temporary empire of León – was more focused on the struggle against Islam as far as North Africa and then, in the wake of the rivalry with Portugal, increasingly on the Atlantic. With the conquest and colonization of large portions of America, Castile increasingly attained ascendancy in comparison to the realms of the Crown of Aragón.

These attempts at independence are interpreted in the historical and political sciences as, on the one hand, an expression of historically conditioned nationalism, and on the other hand as resulting from current political conditions and tensions with the centres of the respective ‘nation states’, each of which can be explained differently. In the case at hand, that of Barcelona and Catalonia, the question of Catalan nationalism and its historical roots are the focus of interest for further considerations. With reference to both Spain in general as well as Barcelona/Catalonia, it should be remembered that state and nation building is a topic that has already long been discussed in European as well as Spanish historiography.Reference Pietschmann ⁴ A 12-volume history of Spain, which appeared a few years ago even had a closing volume devoted to the subject, composed by four Spanish- and English-speaking authors.Reference Álvarez Junco ⁵ Since another quite prominent Spanish historian working in Andalusia described Spain as an ‘incomplete project’ a few years previously,Reference Bernal ⁶ this is hardly surprising.

When one applies this complex of problems to the terms ‘nation’, ‘nationality’ and above all ‘nationalism’, the difficulties become particularly complicated and controversial, for various reasons. The use of the term ‘nationalism’ for historical developments before the French Revolution is particularly divisive, especially among specialists in nationalism, as can be seen in Gellner’s and Hobsbawm’s widely known books on the subject. This is the case despite the fact that a conference transcript published in the 1980s, spawned by a centre for research on nationalism in Cologne, attempted not only to extend the question of nationalism into the early modern period with the term ‘proto-nationalism’, but also contained numerous contributions attempting to address the definition of ‘nation’ in the late Middle Ages and early modern period.Reference Dann ⁷ Although earlier studies of ‘Catalanism’ avoided a clear reference to ‘nationalism’,Reference Brunn ⁸ Hans–Jürgen Puhle speaks of ‘Catalan nationalism since the 19th century’.Reference Puhle ⁹

The many attempts to avoid, at least in the titles of relevant works, the problem of chronologically delimiting nationalism in this context, nevertheless lead to a central point with regard to Catalonia: namely, the defeat of Catalonia and the Kingdom of Aragón in the War of Spanish Succession from 1700–1714, in which the largest part of the Crown of Aragón, not least Catalonia with Barcelona falling as the last bastion, allied themselves with the Hapsburg pretender to the throne. The elimination of Aragonese legal traditions, the incorporation with Castile with the adoption of many Castilian institutions, and the repression of linguistic and cultural particularities by the new King Philip V of the House of Bourbon which followed were all experienced as a defeat and a historical break, above all in Catalonia, and today are cited as a historical rationale by the current independence movement. This author built upon this background in a lecture which shall be summarized subsequently, as part of the Academia Europaea conference in Barcelona in 2014 and the symposium dedicated to Barcelona and Catalonia in the 18th century through the end of the Spanish empire in 1808. The references to America were intended as contributions to the question of whether the example of Catalonia promoted the growing attempts at autonomy and finally independence in Spanish America in the 18th century, particularly in New Spain/Mexico.

It was Philip II who had the laws of his Spanish component kingdoms – Castile, Aragón, Navarre and also those of Latin America – collected, systematized and published, each in their own law books, called ‘Recopilaciones’ or, in Latin, and for Aragón, ‘Fori Aragonum’. The collection of laws for ‘the Indies’ (America), ordered during his reign, and already long completed in detail, was only published and put into effect for the first time in preparation for the first secret negotiations of the great powers over the Spanish succession of 1680. It established the status of the Spanish overseas territories as ‘reinos y provincias’ for the first time, in the form of general laws. They therefore had the status which the territory of the Crown of Aragón lost as a result of its defeat in the War of Spanish Succession after 1714. Concurrent with the legal collections, in 1580, Philip II merged the two large fraternities of Aragonese and Castilians which existed in Rome around their two ‘national churches’ into a single ‘Spanish’ fraternity, named himself and his royal successors as the ‘born head’ of this fraternity, and granted a yearly annuity. During this procedure Philip II also defined for the first time who could be counted a Spaniard, namely all of his vassals born in the Kingdoms of Aragón, Navarre and Castile, including America.Reference Dandelet ¹⁰ In this time of intensive connections within the Habsburg Empire and Christian alliances to combat the Turks pushing west on land and at sea, Barcelona was not only Spain’s central bridgehead to communication with Italy, but also with the imperial court in Vienna and/or Prague. By the decline of the Spanish monarchy during the Thirty Years’ War in the time of Philip IV, these conditions had undergone a radical change. In 1640 it came to a violent revolt of the Catalans, including large rural areas, against the regent named by the king. In the course of this revolt, the viceroy, himself a Catalan nobleman, lost his life, and the authorities temporarily lost control of the area. After this period, Catalonia remained an unsettled region through to the end of the century, which, shortly before the question of succession became acute, could only be quieted with French help.Reference Elliott ¹¹

As would be expected, an abundance of literature is available on the history of the War of Spanish Succession. ¹² Still, the broad and long-lasting previous history of international negotiations – the problem of the succession in Spain made itself known, in view of King Charles II’s physical deficiencies, long before the monarch’s death in 1700 – is mostly only briefly mentioned. Nevertheless, it is essential for explaining the behaviour of the crown lands of Aragón to understand the history of the great powers’ secret partition agreements, their agreement on a compromise candidate (a prince from the House of Wittelsbach who died young, resulting in the regency of a Wittelsbach in the Spanish Netherlands), the factional battles that broke out at the Spanish court over this, and finally the testament of Charles II in favour of the grandson of Louis XIV, the later Philip V, as well as its swift transfer to the French court after the death of Charles II with Philip’s proclamation that immediately followed. The crown lands of Aragón initially acknowledged Philip V, but then declared themselves for the Habsburg pretender and fought on the latter’s side first in the major war on Spanish territory, in which France and Philip V were finally able to prevail. After this they fought as rebels against the acknowledged king at the time, who did away with their ancestral laws and privileges.

In the academic literature, the preceding history of this war is consistently summarized quite briefly with a sketch of the mutual legal claims of the Bourbon and Habsburg dynasties, the European dimension of the conflict, and, in view of its spread overseas, even its significance as a world war, in addition to which the internal constellations of the Spanish court and provinces are briefly depicted. The fact that the Great Northern War was also taking place around the Baltic Sea in parallel to the War of Spanish Succession, holding broad swathes of Central Europe in suspense as well as demanding the attention and diplomatic efforts of the Habsburgs as neighbours of the involved powers, is consistently overlooked in the literature.Reference Baumann and Bleile ¹³ This is not insignificant with regard to the chronology and motives of the Aragonese lands positioning themselves first with Philip V and then with the Habsburg pretender. Specifically, in old narrative sources, references can be found to the fact that the Viennese court was surprised by the events in Spain and France. For instance, supposedly no documents on the division of Charles V’s kingdom between his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand could be found, so that they felt it necessary, in order to clarify the question of legal ownership, to obtain copies of the appropriate documents through secret contacts in then-Spanish Milan, and in so doing, lost time that could have been used responding quickly to the activities of the French. ¹⁴ As much as these kinds of contemporary narratives confirm the European dimension of the conflict, they also make the problems of interpreting this European dimension clear, in that they show how many archives could be drawn upon to clarify such questions. This is particularly impossible in the aforementioned context and therefore not intended; however, it should illustrate that the problems that will subsequently be touched upon should only be understood as questions for the appropriate specialists and if applicable as food for thought.

Parts of Catalan historiography in particular have interpreted the victors’ measures as a punishment; indeed, as the loss of their own history, which cast the land into a perceived deep and broad depression.Reference Lluch ¹⁵ In contrast, the French-oriented elite, which came to power with the new dynasty, found Habsburg Spain to be backward and desperately in need of modernization. These criteria, which are rather superficial and can be varyingly interpreted from different perspectives, in combination with dynastic problems – Philip V’s second marriage was to the Italian Isabel Farnese, who hoped to provide her subsequent sons, who had little hope of a Spanish inheritance, with Italian kingships – long provided the explanatory framework for the historiography of the Spanish 18th century. Not until recently did the debates concentrate more on cultural aspects and political goals, such as the removal of Catalan as the written and administrative language, ¹⁶ and the loss of political representation as a result of a centre striving for absolutist modernization and territorialization, which however could only be put into effect in stages.Reference Pietschmann ¹⁷

As a matter of fact, internal and external political causes, above all the English occupation of Gibraltar and Mallorca, very soon caused the Crown to shift its traditional connections to Italy back to the centre of its politics and attempt to reconquer the ‘Kingdom of the Two Sicilies’. This policy especially benefited the lands of the former Crown of Aragón, whose elites maintained manifold familial and economic relationships with Naples and Sicily in particular. ¹⁸ Even before Philip V’s son Charles, later Charles III, became King of an independent Naples in 1730 with ministers delegated from Madrid, and Italian influence from the coast of the Levant became significant in Spain,Reference Gittermann ¹⁹ a jurisdictional conflict in Rome had made the bipolar history of Spain between Aragón and Castile a matter of debate. A Castilian who died in a hospital of the Aragonese fraternity, the Venerable Archicofradía de la Santísima Resurrección, gave the impetus for a fierce dispute over the administration of the deceased’s estate with the administrator of the Castilian hospital belonging to the Santiago y San Ildefonso brotherhood. The administrative proceedings in Rome mobilized both regional factions and led to substantial briefs, published on the Spanish mainland, on the roles of Aragón and Castile in Spanish history since the Romans ruled the peninsula. This costly and thorough discussion about the leadership role in the formation of the ‘Spanish nation’ must have caused a sensation. The use of the term ‘nation’ moved from a traditionally corporate sense to a modern individualizing interpretation of each ‘nacionales’. What certainly seems significant is that the Nación Española was not fundamentally in question, but only the historical role of the two Nacionales that belonged to it. Even without a detailed philological examination of the documents, the reader senses the differentiation of the modern Spanish version of a ‘Spanish nation’ composed of various ‘nationalities’.Reference Pietschmann ²⁰ If, and if so what kind of impact these had on the debate taking place in 1723, cannot be determined without deeper investigation. ²¹ It could however be possible that this problem was part of a hidden discussion that lasted the entire 18th century, over whether Spain, which as before spanned the Atlantic, should be ruled as a territorial state or as an empire with more or less widely autonomous areas. Charles IV even secured Napoleon’s agreement, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau of 1808, that after a peace agreement he would declare himself ‘Emperor of America’ and send Bourbon Infants to the four American viceroyships as kings. Obviously, once Napoleon was victorious in Jena and Auerstedt he changed his plans.Reference Pietschmann ²²

One of the advocates of imperial policy at court was certainly the leader of the party of the nobility, Conde de Aranda from Aragón.Reference Escudero ²³ In Mexico itself, this opinion appears to have been held by the Catalan Diego García Panes, among other things the commander of the Perote fortress, with his son-in-law José Mangino, the superintendent of the Casa de Moneda and later member of the Consejo de Indias, and the Oidor Antonio Joaquín de Rivadeneira y Barrientos, as others before them at court. In the second half of the 18th century Catalans and people from the crown lands of Aragón found leading positions in America. It is therefore not surprising to encounter in 1790s Mexico City a society of Catalans who publicly celebrated the Feast of the Virgin of Montserrat. Since Renate PieperReference Pieper ²⁴ was able to prove that a high percentage of the fiscal revenues of the crown were already invested in Catalonia in Ferdinand VI’s era, one may assume that the court made an effort to bind the former crown lands of Aragón tighter to the monarchy and to adequately include these subjects in the allocation of political leadership positions. The establishment of a privileged trade company in Barcelona for trade with America in the middle of the 18th century, long before the Crown allowed trade with America in all Spanish harbours in 1778, also speaks to this fact.Reference Oliva Melgar ²⁵ Nevertheless, these connections need further inspection. In summary, when one does not consider the attempts which can be seen in the 18th century to integrate Catalonia into the monarchy, one would have to agree with the previously quoted historian, Antonio Miguel Bernal and his book España, proyecto inacabado (Ref. 6). However, sound historical rationales from this epoch cannot be found to explain Catalonia’s pursuit of independence.