After their break from the Franks, the Sovereign Counts of Catalonia carved out their own identity as a loose federation of states anchored by Barcelona. The federation expanded into Southern France, and with the marriage of their Ramon Berenquer IV to the infant daughter of Aragon’s King Ramiro in 1137, Catalonia became a formidable power in the Mediterranean.

Jaume I el Conqueridor (1208-1276) is viewed as one of the greatest figures in Catalonia’s history. At the age of five we was captured by the French after his father Pere I was killed in battle. He managed to return to Catalonia when he was seventeen years old, was proclaimed king, and continued to rule for fifty years. Jaume conquered Majorca, Ibiza, and Valencia. The city of Barcelona also expanded during his reign with the construction of new city walls around the neighborhoods of Sant Pere and Ribera. Jaume also fostered legal and political development, compiling laws and practices in the Llibre del Consolat de Mar. Elections in 1283 led to creation of one of the oldest parliaments in Europe (the Consell de Cent). The Consell continued to play a municipal advisory role until 1714. One of Jaume’s successors (Pere II el Gran) set up another governing body in 1283 called the Corts de Barcelona. It became know as the Generalitat in the 14th century and continues to govern Catalonia to this day.

Pere III (1336-1387) was the ruler who saw the apex of Catalonia’s expansion. During his rule the Empire expanded northward to Montpellier, France and far into the Mediterranean from the Balearic Islands to Sicily and Sardinia. The House of Aragon even held Athens as a colony from 1311-1381. As a seat of naval and economic power, Barcelona became a magnet for imported raw materials and a major exporter of manufactured goods such as steel weaponry and textiles. Eventually that power was eroded by the growth of the Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe.

This spring we are planning to take a trip to Barcelona, Spain. I wanted to visit the city because I knew of its fabulous modernist architecture and status as a blossoming metropolitan center of the Mediterranean area, but I didn’t know much else about the history of the city, or its region’s (Catalan) distinct cultural history. Over the next couple of weeks I will be publishing a handful of articles that trace the history of the region from the Pre-Roman Iberian tribes to the modern day political environment. This first installment talks about the periods of the Laitetani, Roman, Visigoth, and Frankish peoples, ending in 988 A.D. with Catalan sovereignty.

The Path to Catalonian Sovereignty (Prehistory to 988 A.D.)

Controversy has always enshrouded the stories of Barcelona’s origins. Legends have said that the city was founded by the Hamilcar Barca of Carthage (Hannibal’s father). More far fetched legends attributed Hercules as the founder, but archaeologists have found that the area’s earliest inhabitants were a group called the Laietani. The Laietani were an indigenousness Iberian tribe who practiced agriculture in the hills between the mouths of the Llobregat and Besos Rivers. These people are remembered with the naming of Via Laietana (a grand boulevard in modern Barcelona) but there is no clear evidence directly linking the civilization of these people to the development of modern, urban Barcelona.

Roman influence on Barcelona is clear. The language of Catalan evolved from Latin independently from Castilian Spanish. It bears strong influences from the regional Celtic and Iberian languages. Romans established the first urban center on the spot of Barcelona. It was called “Barcino”. Initially Barcino was nothing more that a crossroads station north of the city of Tarraco (modern day Tarragon). Barcelona’s original city walls were built during Rome’s Pax Romani of the 1st century. Caesar Augustus also constructed a forum and a temple to his own glory. Some traces of the Roman construction are still visible in the city’s Barri Gotic district. The entire territory of Spain was referred to as “Hispania Citerio” by Romans. The majority of Roman officials settled in the south of Spain, while soldiers and traders gravitated north toward Barcino and Valencia, perhaps laying groundwork for the area’s strong independent nature.

As Roman domination began to crumble in the 3rd century, the area was overtaken by the Visigoths. Visigoth King Ataulf set up court in the city, ushering in a period of prosperity until the Visigoths moved their capital to Toledo in the mid 6th century. Moors advanced from the south and established Muslim rule over the city from 717 to 801. In 801 Charlemagne’s Frankish forces came from the north to take control of the region. The Franks called the area “Marca Hispania” (Spanish March). Barcelona lied on the vanguard of the Frankish empire. It was a buffer against the Moors. To rule the area more effectively, Franks divided the area in semi-autonomous counties. The combination of geographic and political isolation eventually led to an strong spirit of independence in the region. In 897 Guifre el Pilos (Wilfred the Hairy) was the strongest of the sovereign counts in the region. Rather than wait for the official decree of the central Franish government, he passed his governing power directly to his son. This strongly symbolized the Catalonian independence. Frankish power had diminished to point that they were no longer able to exert central leadership. In 988 Barcelona was sacked by the Moorish leader Al-Mansur. Barcelona’s sovereign count Borrell II requested military aid from the Frankish central forces. He received no help. Catalan was now on its own as an independent nation.

MyHeritage’s Face Recognition web site allows you to upload photos and then it searches a database to find people with similar faces. It presents the results in a cool Flash interface. MyHeritage sells genealogy services, but this demo only searches against celebrities instead of their full genealogy database. I used this photo. It matched me to Pierre Boulez, but Whoopie Goldberg came back as one of the matches for Tony. Regardless, it is fun to play with.

Just once I wish that Cincinnati (my hometown) would make the national news with a nice, normal story instead of something like this. The video with the coroner interview is really bad.

Tom Abate at the Chronicle published an article on the Commerce Department’s latest personal savings numbers for 2005. In the 1980s Americans saved an average of 9%, the 1990s 5%, and 2004 saw an annual savings rate of only 1.8%. December 2005 numbers haven’t been factored in yet, but it looks 2005 is going to end in negative territory. In other words, most Americans are saving nothing at all and spending more than they make. August 2005 (the month of Katrina) saw a national -3.4% savings rate. Monthly rates below zero occasionally happen due to natural disasters, terror, real estate and swarms of locusts. However, 2005 will be the first full year of negative savings since the Great Depression. So, for those of us that actually managed to put away some money in 2005, I advise buying gold bullion and fortifying your houses, because soon people aren’t going to be able to pay their cable bills, they are going to find out that they aren’t Paris Hilton and they are going to be pissed.

The other morning I was waiting for the 51, when I noticed a very disturbing advertisement on the side of a bus across the street. The poster was adverting a family-friendly movie called “Yours, Mine and Ours”. It is apparently a remake of a 1968 Lucille Ball/Henry Fonda film about a buttoned-down, military-man widower who marries an artsy, flamboyant widow (you know the type). They both had tons of the kids, wind up netting a twenty person family, and (much like on the Brady Bunch) wackiness ensues. Oh, and of course there is a pig involved…

Anyway, back to the poster. It showed a bunch of kids acting precociously while the parents (Dennis Quaid and Renne Rosso) looked on with baffled amazement. This is pretty standard fair for tween empowerment marketing, but the part that really got me was the large, central image of a pig munching down on a pepperoni pizza. Now, I don’t doubt for a minute that a swine would go cannibalistic when faced with such tasty Italian fare, but I was disturbed the ad’s the total detachment from that reality. I am sure that the pig and the pig-based pizza were used completely for symbolic value. The pizza represents fun-loving, down-to-earth, good times with the family, while the pig is there as a wild and crazy gatecrasher, snorting his way into the suburban household. Watch out you uppity pig, there’s 18 hungry kids in that house!