Crown of Aragon

The Crown of Aragon (in Aragonese, corona d'Aragón; in Catalan/Valencian, corona d'Aragó), also known by other alternative names, encompassed all the territories that were under the jurisdiction of the King of Aragon, from 1164 to 1707. On November 13, 1137, Ramiro II the Monk, King of Aragon, in what is known as the resignation of Zaragoza, deposited the kingdom (although not the dignity of king) in his son-in-law Ramón Berenguer, who henceforth signed as Count of Barcelona and Prince of Aragon. Petronila took the title of "Queen of Aragon" and Ramón Berenguer, the prince and dominator of Aragon. According to some modern historians, the marriage was made in the form of Marriage at Home (this means that, since there were no male descendants, the husband fulfilled the role of government, but not the head of the house, which will only be granted to the heir), although there is no historiographical consensus on the matter. In 1164, Alfonso II of Aragon would inherit the joint patrimony.

Later, by conquest of new territories and marriage, this union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona under the same crown (the so-called "Crown of Aragon") would expand its territories to include other domains: fundamentally the kingdoms of Mallorca, Valencia, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Naples, as well as the duchies of Athens (from 1331 to 1388) and Neopatria (between 1319 and 1390).

With the wedding of the Catholic Monarchs in 1469, the process of convergence with the Crown of Castile began, forming the basis of what would later become the Catholic Monarchy, although the different kingdoms would retain their legal systems and characteristics. With the Nueva Planta Decrees of 1705-1716, Felipe V finally eliminated most of these privileges and privileges.

Some current historians tend to refer to monarchs by their aliases and not by their numbering, because some of them had a different numbering depending on the territory referred to. For example, "Peter the Catholic" instead of "Pedro II of Aragon".

Alternate names

The name "Crown of Aragon" is applied in current historiography from the dynastic union between the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona, although it was not used historically until the reign of James II the Just at the end of from the 13th century, and between the XII and the XIV the most widespread expression to refer to the domains of the king of Aragon was that of «Casal d'Aragó». Expressions such as "Reinos y tierras del rey de Aragón" or "kingdoms and principality of the Crown of Aragon".

Between the 13th and XV, the whole of the king's possessions was designated with various names such as «Corona regni Aragonum» (Crown of the Kingdom of Aragon), «Corona Regum Aragoniae» (Crown of the Kings of Aragon), “Corona Aragonum” (Crown of Aragon) or “Corona Regia”, and Lalinde Abadía points out that there are not many more reasons to speak of "Crown of Aragon" than to do so of the "Crown of the Kingdom of Aragon" or other denominations whose common element is being the set of lands and people that were subject to the jurisdiction of the King of Aragon. Other names of late XIII century are «Royal Crown», «Royal Heritage» and exceptionally, and in the context of Privilege of the annexation of Majorca to the Crown of Aragon, from 1286, the expression appears ession «regno, domain et corona Aragonum et Catalonian» (Kingdom, domain and crown of Aragon and Catalonia, alluding to the Kingdom of Aragon and the Catalan Counties integrated within the Crown of Aragon), although only five years later, in 1291, in the renewal of these privileges, there is already talk of «Kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and Barcelona County». From the century XVIII the term "Crown of Aragon", "Kingdoms of Aragon" or simply "Aragon" is used more.

On the other hand, there is a sector of historiography that considers the territorial structure of the Crown of Aragon equivalent to that of a current confederation. However, this conception is disputed, since it applies current political concepts to political structures of the Middle Ages. Another point of dispute is referring to the Crown of Aragon as the Catalan-Aragonese crown, since this denomination was established in the XIX< century< /span> and arises from the renaixença, in works such as Antonio de Bofarull's monograph, La confederación catalano-aragonese (Barcelona, Luis Tasso, 1872). Finally, it should be noted that the term Crown of Aragon itself, despite its deep roots and wide use in current historiography in Spanish, is not free from controversy among specialists either.

The formation of the Crown of Aragon

The formation of the Crown has its origin in the dynastic union between the kingdom of Aragon and the county of Barcelona.

After the death without issue of Alfonso the Battler in 1134, during the siege of Fraga, his will ceded his kingdoms to the military orders of the Holy Sepulchre, the Hospital of Jerusalem and the Templars. Faced with this unusual event, the inhabitants of Navarre, which at that time was part of the possessions of the King of Aragon, proclaimed García V Ramírez king and definitively separated from Aragon. In this context, the Aragonese nobles did not accept the testament either and named Ramiro II the Monk, brother of Alfonso and who was then bishop of Roda-Barbastro, the new king. Faced with this situation, Alfonso VII of León took the opportunity to claim succession rights to the throne of Aragon, while García V expressed his aspirations and the Pope demanded compliance with the will.

León's claims created a problem for the Count of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer, as they coincided with the rivalry between the county and the kingdom of Aragon for the conquest of the Muslim lands of the Taifa of Lérida. King Alfonso VII made his intentions clear when in December 1134 he entered Zaragoza with a daring expedition and put Ramiro to flight. However, these events did not end up being favorable to the aspirations of the Leonese king, who would finally have to renounce his claims over the Aragonese kingdom. For his part, Ramiro II, despite his status as an ecclesiastic, married Inés de Poitiers, a marriage from whom they had a daughter, Petronila, in 1136. This forced them to plan the future marriage of the girl, which meant choosing between the Castilian or Barcelona dynasties.

Analyses of the Crown of AragonJerónimo Zurita.

The county of Barcelona, at that time, was in the hands of Ramón Berenguer IV. Previously, he had already consolidated his supremacy over other Catalan counties such as Osona, Gerona or Besalú. At the same time, the power of the Barcelona fleet had been revealed, with events such as the momentary conquest of Mallorca (1114) or the expeditions carried out by the Barcelona counts in Moorish lands in Valencia, although their intentions were frustrated by the intervention of Castile, personified by Alfonso VI and El Cid (defeat of Berenguer Ramón el Fratricida in the battle of Tévar). At the same time, a policy of ultra-Pyrenean alliances began that would culminate in the union of Barcelona and Provence through the marriage of Ramón Berenguer III with Dulce de Provenza.

Alfonso VII presented the candidacy of his son Sancho, the future Sancho III of Castile, but the Aragonese nobility ended up choosing the House of Barcelona, with which the terms of the agreement were negotiated in detail, by which Ramón Berenguer IV would receive the title of "prince" and "dominator" from Aragon. It was specified that if Queen Petronila died before Berenguer, the kingdom would not remain in the hands of the count until after Ramiro's death. In addition, the Kingdom would go to the hands of Berenguer if Petronila died without issue, or she had only daughters, or sons but they died without issue.

Ramón Berenguer makes an agreement with the Aragonese king Ramiro: And I, King Ramiro, be king, lord and father in my kingdom of Aragon and in all your counties as long as I please, surrendering the Crown of Aragon all his domains as "dominator" or princeps to exercise the royal potestas , but he did not cede the title of King or the dignity or the surname or lineage.

The ability of Ramón Berenguer to exercise royal potestas in Aragon is shown in facts such as that he is the Count of Barcelona (venerande Barchinonensium comes), as ruler of Aragon, to whom the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, the Hospitallers and the Templars grant their rights as heirs of King Alfonso in accordance with his will, thus recognizing him as acting sovereign over the Aragonese territories.

In 1164, the son of Ramón Berenguer and Petronila, Alfonso II of Aragón, would become the first King of the Crown and both he and his successors would inherit the titles of "king of Aragón" and of "count of Barcelona".

The resulting entity was a mere dynastic union, since both territories maintained their uses, customs and currency, and from the XIV century were developing their own political institutions. In the same way, the territories annexed later by the expansionist policy of the Crown would create and keep their own institutions separate. decisively to the diffusion of this denomination, which was imposed from the XVI century. The term "Crown of Aragon" obeys the preeminence of the main title of dignity with which the set of territories was known, already recognized by Pedro IV the Ceremonious: "the kings of Aragon are obliged to receive anointing in the city of Zaragoza, which is the head of the Kingdom of Aragon, which kingdom is our main designation and title". Thus, apart from the common figure of the monarch, the various political entities that made up the Crown always maintained their respective administrative, economic and legal.

The territories of the new Crown

Peninsular and Balear Expansion of the Crown of Aragon.

Peninsular territories of the crown, within the current Spain. In pink tone: The Rosellion, delivered to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659); the Principality of Andorra, which was part of the Urgel County; the current municipalities of Santa Cruz de Moya (current province of Cuenca), which belonged for a brief period of time to the Kingdom of Valencia, and Caudete (current province of Albacete), which also historically belonged to the Kingdom of Valencia. Note that the current municipalities of Villena and Sax are excluded for having historically belonged to the Kingdom of Murcia (Corona de Castilla) until 1836, and part of the current region of Requena-Utiel, which also belonged to the Crown of Castilla until 1851.

Following the testamentary resolutions of 1243 and 1244, Jaime I de Aragón defined the limits between Catalonia and the Kingdom of Aragon. The limits of Catalonia were extended "from Salses to Cinca" and the limits of the kingdom and land of Aragon were constituted "from Cinca to Ariza":
Incipit: «Quia super limitibus Cathalonie et Aragonum (...) predecessorum nostrorum vestigiis inherent comitatum Barchinone cum Cathalonia universa a Salsis usque Cincham ex certa scientia limitmus (...) Regnum autem terram Aragonum a Cincha usque ad Ferizam consituimus»
(ACA, Canc. Perg. Jaime I, n. 935 d.)

The Crown of Aragon at its maximum extent.

The territories that became part of the Crown of Aragon were the following:

• The Kingdom of Aragon (Jaca, Roda de Isábena, Huesca, Barbastro, Monzón, Tarazona, Zaragoza and Calatayud).
• Barcelona County (which included the capital, Barcelona, as well as the counties of Berga, Besalú, Gerona, Manresa and Osona).
• The feudal and vassal territories of the Crown: Vizcondado de Bearne (Pau), County of Bigorra (Tarbes), County of Cominges (Saint Bertrand), County of Carcassonne (Citadel of Carcassonne), County of Rasés (Limoux) and the Catalan counties of the Pallars Sobirá (Sort), Pallars Jusá
• The Marquesado de Provenza, heritage of the house of Barcelona since the marriage of Ramón Berenguer III with Dulce de Provenza, of direct sovereignty for thirty years of the reign of Alfonso II de Aragón between 1166 and 1196: Provenza (Arles, Nice, Aix-en-Provence, Marseille), Carladès (Carlat), Gavaldá (Mende); and Millau (since 1172).
• The conquests of Ramón Berenguer IV for the Crown of Aragon: Daroca, Monreal del Campo, Montalban, Caspe, Fraga, Lérida and Tortosa.

Regarding legal status, the new acquisitions of Ramón Berenguer IV (Daroca, Monreal del Campo, Montalbán) and Alfonso II (Teruel, Alcañiz) in the Aragonese territories south of Zaragoza, which had already been subdued and then lost by Alfonso I the Fighter, they were incorporated without a solution of continuity to the kingdom of Aragon and its uses and customs, obtaining charters and population charters inherited from those of Jaca and Zaragoza.

Regarding the independent counties: Urgel, the Counties of Pallars (which lacked a border with the county of Barcelona, separated from this county by the powerful county of Urgel and was made up of Pallars Sobirá or Alto Pallars and el Pallars Jussá or Bajo Pallars), Roussillon and Ampurias County, each one of them has been incorporated into the Crown in different ways since the second half of the century XII to the XIV century. Some, such as Urgell, maintained an independent count dynasty until 1314, although from the XIII century it was linked by vassal ties to the King of Aragon.

• The County of the Rosellón was ruled by Count Gerardo II of Rosellón, who died without succession in 1172. His testament established that the Rosellion "all I give to my lord the king of the Aragones" by the faith deposited in his sovereign Alfonso II, who was immediately recognized as king in Perpignan.
• The Alto Pallars (Pallars Sobirá) was located in the basin of the Noguera Pallaresa bordering the valley of Aran, where Pedro I had died directly intervening in the affairs of this territory. In 1170 the count of Bigorra Céntulo III was declared vassal of Alfonso II of Aragon, which granted him in return in 1175 the title of count of Pallars will go up and count of Ribagorza, receiving the possession of the Aran Valley.
• The Bajo Pallars was an independent county with greater economic resources than that of the Alto Pallás, and his Count Arnal Mir de Pallars Jussà was a feuder of Alfonso I el Batallador and played an important role in the union of the queen Petronila and Count Ramón Berenguer IV. In 1193 Alfonso II of Aragon intervened militarily in Lower Pallás in defense of the interests of the descendants of Arnal Mir, who (as Martin Aurell points out in 1995) handed him to “tibi Ildefonso, venerabili rege Aragonis et comiti Barchinone et marchio Provincie» because of the fidelity and tribute to Aragon for more than a century.
• Urgel County had an individual historical trajectory since the beginning of the century IXIn that Aznar I Galíndez of Aragon was appointed count of Cerdaña and Urgel, and it was succeeded by his son Galindo Aznárez. After the government of several counts named by the French emperor, Wifredo el Velloso hereditated the county to his third son Sunifredo II, thus beginning a dynasty that lasted until the centuryXIV. Ermengol VIII of Urgel suffered a rebellion and his death, his widow Elvira of Subirats accepted the concertation with Peter II in 1209 of the wedding of his daughter Aurembiaix with the future Jaime I who did not fruitful. Taking advantage of the prevailing chaos in the Crown following the death of Pedro II in the battle of Muret, Urgel County remained in the hands of Geraldo de Cabrera. After various war clashes and the death of Aurembiaix, the last descendant of the first dynasty of Urgel, Ponce I, the son of Geraldo, was recognized as a feudant of Jaime I of Aragon. Later, at the beginning of the century XIVErmengol X de Urgel agreed with James II of Aragon to appoint Teresa de Entenza as heir to Urgel County in exchange for marrying her with the future Alfonso IV of Aragon. The county passes to integrate the Crown for all purposes after the military defeat (1413) of the last counts of Urgel, Jaime II the unfortunate, in front of the first king of the House of Trastamara, Fernando de Antequera, who had been appointed a year before king of Aragon among the rest of the candidates, among whom was the count of Urgel, at the Compromiso de Caspe.
• The first count of Ampurias County was Hugo I (991-1040). After the participation of Hugo II de Ampurias together with Ramón Berenguer III in the pisano-barcelonesa expedition to Mallorca (1114), his son Ponce II renewed the vassal to the Count of Barcelona, but then faced him, was taken prisoner and lost the lordship of Perelada. His successors maintained a nominal independence of the county that, without growth possibilities and surrounded by the Barcelonan domains, maintained its relative autonomy by paying rents to the sovereign of the Crown of Aragon until in the century XIV it's definitely incorporated into it.

The expansion of the Crown of Aragon

Weapons of Aragon and Sicily

During the government of Ramón Berenguer IV and Petronila, the cities of Tortosa, Lleida, Fraga, Mequinenza were conquered, as well as the Sierra de Prades, Siurana, Miravet...

Also during the government of Ramón Berenguer IV, the episcopal see of Tarragona recovered in 1154 the category of metropolitan see, thus separating itself from the see of Narbonne. The sees of the county of Barcelona, the county of Urgell and the Ebro valley as far as Calahorra and Pamplona remain as their suffragan bishoprics. This is, according to Ubieto, a key element in the formation of a political identity.

Under the reign of Alfonso II of Aragon, more lands were conquered to the south reaching Teruel, and with the treaties of Tudilén (1151) and Cazora (1179), the Crown established its line of peninsular expansion over the Muslim kingdoms from Valencia and Denia.

Conquests of the Crown of Aragon on the Iberian Peninsula.

To consolidate his monarchy, Pedro II of Aragon had appeared before Pope Innocent III in 1205 with the aim of infeuding Aragon to the papacy. However, shortly after the Aragonese king faced the interests of Rome by defending his vassals from beyond the Pyrenees against the crusade against the Cathars promoted by the Holy See. The defeat of Pedro II in 1213 in the battle of Muret forced the Crown to renounce its ultra-Pyrenean interests and direct its expansive energy towards the Mediterranean and the Levant.

During the reign of James I, the conquest of Majorca and the kingdom of Valencia took place, during the first half of the XIII century< /span>. Once the conquest of the old kingdom of Denia to Biar was completed, the limit agreed in the Cazola treaty, the Levantine lands were not incorporated into Catalonia or Aragon, but rather constituted a new kingdom, that of Valencia, which would acquire Cortes, privileges and its own currency, the money from Valencia; and an army made up of militias. The settlement process of the Kingdom of Valencia was a long process that did not end until the XVII century, after the expulsion of the Moors and that would involve people of different origins (Catalans, Aragonese, Navarrese, Occitan...). Immigration to Valencian lands throughout the Middle Ages has been a topic that has raised, and continues to raise controversy among researchers, according to some authors, the one of Catalan origin predominated, which initially had 1018 houses for 597 of the Aragonese, while other authors consider the Aragonese element to be predominant, with 1,832 houses for Aragonese compared to 993 for Catalans. Likewise, after the death of the Conqueror, his will would give rise to the kingdom of Mallorca, which inherited his son Jaime's and which included the Balearic Islands, the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne and the lordship of Montpellier. This kingdom of Majorca would be politically very unstable and would finally be annexed again and definitively to the Crown by Pedro the Ceremonious.

Corona expansion in the Mediterranean by 1385.

From the end of the XIII century, the expansion of the Crown throughout the Mediterranean also began. Jaime II retained the domain achieved by Pedro III of Aragon of the crown of Sicily, although until the XV century it would remain under the domain of a secondary branch of the dynasty. Jaime II also received the investiture of Sardinia, which he would conquer in 1324 and would mean a hard effort to dominate during the following years. Likewise, he extended to the south the limits of the kingdom of Valencia, which by means of the Arbitral Judgment of Torrellas (1304) would reach the definitive limits.

The Llibre del Consolat de Mar (The Consulate of the Sea) is created, a code of maritime customs. In addition, various maritime companies were founded, such as the Magnas Societas Cathalanorum (Great Catalan Company), thanks to which in 1380 territories such as the duchies of Athens and Neopatria would be conquered, remaining under the sovereignty of Peter the Ceremonious. In this way, the banner of the four bars of Aragon waved for almost a century on the Acropolis of Athens.

The Royal Chancery

During this historical moment of great territorial expansion and political influence, the Crown of Aragon endowed itself with a bureaucratic and administrative structure, the royal chancery, which acquired its fullness from Pedro the Ceremonious, who reformed and rigidly structured it, incorporating, among other notaries, secretaries and prothonotaries and strictly setting their functions. On her fell the responsibility of preparing the correspondence of the king and that of his council, both in reference to domestic and international politics, as well as keeping the corresponding copies in the royal archive, which has survived practically in its entirety to this day, in a which constitutes one of the most important medieval documentary collections in the world.

All the members of the chancellery had to be extremely skilled in the elaboration of texts in Latin, Catalan and Aragonese, working languages of the chancellery, which in modern terms we would call official. The origin of the current extension of Catalan is found in the Crown of Aragon, where Catalan was the dominant and most widely spoken language, since it was spoken by 80% of the population ^{[citation required ]}. This joint mastery of vernacular and cultured languages had various effects of great importance for the history of Aragonese and Catalan:

• Stylistic, rhetorical and grammatical elements were transferred to the vulgar languages which acquired special precision and formal elegance.
• The territorial capillary of the documentation of the cancery established a linguistic model that was adopted in the respective territories, exerting a unifying and supradialectal influence both in the administrative and literary prose, that the rest of the vulgar languages would take centuries to acquire with the constitution of the academies.
• The officials of the Foreign Ministry approached the Latin-based literature, from Cicero to Petrarca, translating their works and forming one of the earliest manifestations of humanism, and later of the literary Renaissance. Without these precedents it is not possible to explain the appearance of figures such as Juan Fernández de Heredia for the Aragonese case or Bernat Metge and the Valencian Golden Age, singularly in relation to the prose Valencia, for the Valencian.

Capital of the Crown of Aragon

The seat of the coronation was the Seo de Zaragoza from Pedro II (XII century). The Courts Generals almost always met in Monzón (XIII centuries-XVI) the other occasions took place in Fraga, Zaragoza, Calatayud and Tarazona. The seat of the chancellery (XIII centuries-XV) was Barcelona and Naples was during the reign of Alfonso V. In the period between the end of the reign of Martín el Humano and the beginning of that of Alfonso V, the capital is considered de facto of the Crown of Aragon was Valencia. On the other hand, the General Archive of the Crown of Aragon, which was the official repository of royal documentation of the Crown since the reign of Alfonso II (XII), was first found in the monastery of Sigena until the year 1301 and then finally in Barcelona. The historian Domingo Buesa points to Zaragoza as the permanent de facto political capital, although not in other areas such as economics or administration.

The kings of the Crown were buried mainly in the monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet. Other places were the monastery of Santes Creus, the monastery of Santa María de Vallbona, the monastery of Sigena (Peter the Catholic), the convent of San Francisco in Barcelona, the cathedral of Lleida and the cathedral of Granada (Ferdinand the Catholic, last exclusive king of Aragon before the union with Castile).

From the change of dynasty to the dynastic union with Castile

Equestrian Heraldic Representation of the King of Aragon in the Equestrian Armorial of the Golden Toison1433-1435.

After the death of Martín the Human in 1410, the Crown was forced into a period of interregnum, as he died without having named a successor. In this context, six candidates for the throne appeared: the infante Fadrique de Luna, Alfonso de Aragón the Elder (and upon his death his brother, Juan de Prades), Luis de Anjou, Jaime de Urgel and Fernando de Antequera, whose aspirations to the throne were elucidated through the Caspe Commitment. The difficulty of the ruling bodies of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia to come to an agreement evidenced a serious division within the Crown, which would evolve in a favorable manner to Fernando de Antequera, of the Castilian Trastámara dynasty. The legal and non-military resolution was helped by the actions of Pope Benedict XIII, who, in the midst of the Western Schism, chose to promote a consensus in which a limited group of jurists and experts in matters of State recognized for their ethical integrity would elucidate which suitor had more rights to the throne. In this way, in 1412, Fernando was named monarch of the Crown. The new dynasty would persist in its expansionist policy, so that his successor, Alfonso V, would conquer the kingdom of Naples in 1443.

The increase in the patrimony of the Aragonese Crown led to increasingly prolonged absences of the monarch in the different kingdoms of the Crown, which increased the weakness of the Crown and made relations with the subjects difficult. In this way, the figure of the lieutenant was created, as the monarch's alter ego, a temporary position to guard the monarch's absences, which were not supposed to be permanent. These lieutenants not only belonged to the blood family but also the domestic family linked to the king's family.

In 1460, the Cortes de Fraga registered the oath of the new king Juan II and a declaration that the kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily would be in perpetual and indivisible unity in the Crown of Aragon, but governed in a particular way; and in 1503 Ferdinand II acquired the kingdom of Naples. The kingdoms of Sicily, Naples and Sardinia were configured as singular states of the Crown of Aragon, with the presence of a viceroy with royal powers, so that they had a royal house (vice house) and could to preside over the Parliaments, which the lieutenants in the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula could not do, which meant that the viceroyalty in the Italian kingdoms was a figure to cover the permanent absence of the king, recreating a permanent presence through the viceroy.

The wedding between Fernando el Católico and Isabel la Católica, celebrated in 1469 in Valladolid, and the consequent alliance allowed the Castilians to support the expansionist line of Aragon in the Mediterranean, by having a common foreign policy. Despite the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs in 1469, both kingdoms mostly preserved their political institutions and the courts, laws, public administrations and currency were maintained, although they unified foreign policy, the royal treasury and the army. They reserved political issues for the Crown, and acted jointly on domestic policy. The effective union of the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Navarre was made under the reign of Carlos I, who was the first to adopt, along with his mother Juana, the abbreviated title of King of Spain and the Indies.

The territories of the Crown of Aragon in the Modern Age

Catalan constitutions based on the old Usatges of Barcelona

The integration of the territories of the Crown of Aragon in the Hispanic Monarchy of the House of Austria was marked by the hegemonic power of Castile within the Crown. Its articulation took place fundamentally through two institutions: the Council of Aragon and the viceroy. The Supreme Council of Aragon was a consultative body of the crown created in 1494, as a result of a reform in the Royal Chancellery carried out by Fernando el Católico, which from 1522 would be made up of a vice-chancellor and six regents, two for the kingdom of Aragon, two for the kingdom of Valencia and two for the Principality of Catalonia, Majorca and Sardinia. For their part, the viceroys assumed military, administrative, judicial and financial functions.

Conflicts occurred throughout the modern centuries, until the War of Succession. In 1521 the Germanías took place, a movement that emerged in Valencia among the incipient bourgeoisie, which lasted until 1523. In Mallorca another similar movement took place in the same years, led by Joanot Colom. The final defeat of the agermanados supposed a strong repression and the reaffirmation of the seigneurial domain. Already during the reign of Felipe II, the subjects of the Crown of Aragon were prohibited from studying abroad, facing the risk of Calvinist contagion (1568). Likewise, in 1569, all the deputies of the Diputación del General were imprisoned under the accusation of heresy, in the framework of the dispute over the payment of the toilet tax.

In 1591, the Alteraciones de Aragón took place, produced when the former secretary of the king, Antonio Pérez, convicted of the death of the secretary of Don Juan de Austria, took refuge in Aragón taking advantage of the Privilege of Manifestation before what the monarch, for his part, used the jurisdiction of the Court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to arrest him in the Aljafería, which was assaulted by Zaragoza militias, which caused a confrontation between troops armed by the Generalitat and led by the Mayor Justice, Juan V de Lanuza, and the real Tercios. Finally, after the king's victory, the High Justice of Aragon was executed and courts were convened in Tarazona in 1592 that severely curtailed Aragonese privileges, suppressing the competence of Defense and Guard of the Kingdom that the Provincial Council had and preventing it from having access to the collection obtained from the Generalities tax to convene its own army, with a "reparo" (reform) that sought to prevent the General's Deputation from exceeding the fiscal powers for which it had been created.

During the 17th century, the tensions were much higher. The financial needs of the monarchs led them to try by all means to increase the fiscal pressure on the territories of the Crown of Aragon, whose charters had important restrictions on the collection needs of the Hispanic Monarchy. After the crown went to war with France in 1635, the deployment of the tercios over Catalonia generated serious conflicts that unleashed the War of the Reapers in 1640. Thus, the General's Council, first proposing the formation of a Catalan Republic, ended up recognizing Louis XIII of France as Count of Barcelona. The conflict was finally overcome with the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), by which the County of Roussillon and the northern half of the County of Cerdanya passed forever under French rule, and Spain retained the lower Cerdanya region. At the end of the century, in 1693, the Second Germanía would also break out in Valencia, a peasant and anti-seigneurial uprising, around the division of the crops.

The extinction of the Crown of Aragon: the War of Succession

Real Cédula de Carlos III (1768).

Despite the seriousness of the Reapers' conflict, Catalonia and the rest of the Crown's territories preserved their privileges, their own institutions, and political autonomy. However, the events after the proclamation of Felipe V as heir to Carlos II would mark the end of the institutional model that had characterized them since the Middle Ages.

When Charles II died and finally left Philip of Anjou, Philip V, as his heir, the Great Alliance of The Hague was formed in Europe, between England, the United Provinces and Austria, which did not accept the establishment of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain and supported the aspirations of another applicant, Archduke Carlos of Austria. Initially sworn in as king by the Catalan (1701-1702) and Aragonese courts, in 1705, the strength of the archduke's supporters and the conflicts with the viceroy Francisco Antonio Fernández de Velasco led to a new uprising in arms of the Catalans, who, supported by an English fleet, allowed the triumphal entry of that one in Valencia and Barcelona. The following year, 1706, Carlos was proclaimed king in Zaragoza and in the kingdom of Majorca. However, the allies were not supported in their advances on Castile, which led them to withdraw to the kingdom of Valencia. The warlike reaction of Felipe V in the following year led to the conquest of the kingdom of Valencia, after the battle of Almansa (April 25, 1707). The same happened with Zaragoza and the kingdom of Aragon, which were quickly taken. After that, Felipe de Anjou signed the Decrees of Nueva Planta with which he abolished the privileges, civil law, and the tariff borders of said kingdoms. A new penetration of the allies in Castile in 1710, despite their entry into Zaragoza and Madrid, did not help them either to consolidate their positions and forced them to abandon Aragon. In September the Archduke left Barcelona and through the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the allied troops gradually left Catalonia. On September 11, 1714 Barcelona was taken and in 1715 the island of Majorca. The Bourbon triumph was followed by a radical remodeling of the political system of the kingdoms of the Crown, assimilating them to the Castilian regime through the Nueva Planta Decrees.

The Crown behind the New Plant

Spain on a map of 1852, attending to the ruling regime. Signed in green, the "Spain incorporated or assimilated"formed by the eleven provinces of the crown of Aragon, "still different in the way of contributing and in some points of private law".

With the Decrees of Nueva Planta promulgated between 1707 and 1716, a captain general was placed in charge of the territory, a successor of the former viceroy who would no longer submit to his own laws. The mayors came to control the financial and treasury system, where the traditional revenues of the Crown, the old taxes of the Diputaciones del General and the new taxes applied to equate the tax burden of the territories of the former Crown of Aragon to the of the Castilians. The Nueva Planta also brought the suppression of municipal autonomy, of all types of municipal assembly, the designation of all positions by royal authority and the replacement of administrative units by corregimientos. Spanish became the only language of the Royal Court, to the detriment of Latin and the vernacular languages (Catalan/Valencian and Aragonese) in the administration of justice of the Bourbon Monarchy. All this set of reforms implied the homogenization of Castilla y Aragón within the framework of a new almost centralized absolute state and only the foral particularities were maintained in private law (civil, commercial, procedural and criminal), the Consulate of the Sea and in the territories that had not fought against Felipe V in the War of Succession: the Aran Valley, the Basque provinces and Navarra.

The Austrian exiles from the old Crown formed some temporary settlements in Europe, such as the case of Nueva Barcelona, active from 1735 to 1738. For its part, the Memorial de Agravios of 1760 was a claim document presented jointly by the deputies from the cities of Zaragoza, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona in political representation of the "four kingdoms" of the extinct Crown. In the Cortes convened at the beginning of the reign of Carlos III of Spain, the deputies representing the former Crown of Aragon denounced the grievances to which they were subjected since the New Plant Decrees of Felipe V, and the remedies to solve them. The politician The Catalan Antoni de Capmany claimed the constitutional monarchy of the Crown of Aragon during the Cortes of Cádiz in 1812. But the collapse of the Old Bourbon absolutist regime in 1833 did not mean the recovery of the constitutional system of the states of the Crown of Aragon. Subsequently, the memory of the Crown of Aragon would occasionally be recovered, as in the case of the newspaper La Corona de Aragón, founded in 1854, and it would be a concept used in politics by some parties, as in the case of the Pact of Tortosa of 1869.

Euroregion Mediterranean Pyrenees as proposed in 2003. Created in 2004, the Valencian Community did not join the project. In 2006, Aragon suspended its participation in the Euroregion.

More recently, in 2003 the President of Catalonia Pasqual Maragall called for the creation of a Euroregion corresponding to the former Crown of Aragon, also incorporating the French regions of Languedoc-Rousillon and Midi-Pyrénées. Pasqual Maragall affirmed that the Spanish state should not see this as a threat, since «it is perfectly in line with the concerns and priorities of the European Union», constituting «a group of regions that they come together to manage a series of common interests". Spain, «as if it were different from Spain». The first vice-president Mariano Rajoy spoke along the same lines, charging against the proposal for a Euroregion of the Crown of Aragon, stating that it would be a threat that "would endanger Spain's model of coexistence." Finally, in 2004, the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion was created, to which the Valencian Community did not join, but Aragon, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Languedoc-Rousillon and Midi-Pyrénées did. In 2006, Aragón suspended its participation in the Euroregion due to differences over the assets of the Strip.

The kings of the house of Bourbon continue to use in their titles, among many others, those of King of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, Count of Barcelona, Lord of Molina, etc. and, like the Habsburgs, the abbreviated form of King of the Spains and the Indies.

Numbering of monarchs

The numbering of the monarchs varies, depending on the territory to which reference is made. Hence, some current historians prefer to use aliases to refer to them: Pedro the Catholic (Pedro II of Aragon), Pedro the Ceremonious (Pedro IV), Alfonso the Magnanimous (Alfonso V). However, the ordinal refers to the main royal title, which was that of Aragon, as even the aforementioned Pedro IV declares:

...and whatever the kings of Aragon are obliged to receive the anointing in the city of Zaragoza, which is the head of the Kingdom of Aragon, which kingdom is our principal designation, [—that is, last name— (N. of the A.)] and title, we consider it convenient and reasonable that, in the same way, in it receive the kings of Aragon the honor of the coronation and the other royal badges, just as we saw the city of Rome.

Apud Sunday J. Buesa Conde, The King of Aragon, Zaragoza, CAI, 2000, pp. 57-59. ISBN 84-95306-44-1.

Sovereigns of the Crown of Aragon

Specialized bibliography