Catalonia and The Balearic Islands

Every stranger who crosses the Pyrenees knows that Catalonia differs in many important respects from every other province in the kingdom. He has heard that the natives speak of going into Spain as if they lived outside of it; he knows that they speak a tongue different from the Castilian; that their enterprise and activity distinguish them favourably among King Alfonso’s subjects, and they have kept well abreast of every other European community. All this is true, and it would be easy to enumerate many other peculiarities. The tendency, however, is to exaggerate the points of difference between Spaniard and Catalan, and to lose sight of their fundamental affinity. The language of Catalonia, though not a mere dialect as some suppose, is as essentially Spanish as the Castilian. It was spoken by those Hispani who were driven out of Spain by the Saracens and returned in the ninth century to settle in the north-east corner of the country. Thus Catalan language and people were born in the very heart of the Peninsula and have since been confined to a portion of it only by political causes. There is, of course, no such essential difference between Catalans and Castilians as between Welsh and English, Bretons and French. Both are branches of the great Iberian family. If Catalonia were an independent State, it would be its affinity to Spain that would impress us most, and set us wondering, as we do in Portugal, how two countries so much alike could continue politically distinct.

The superior enterprise and energy of the Catalans may be attributed less, I think, to racial differences than to historical and geographical causes. Far removed from the scene of the secular struggle with the Moor, and dwelling on the marge of the sea which was the principal commercial arena of the ancient and mediæval world, the people of Catalonia had from a very remote period opportunities for development denied to the inhabitants of every other part of Spain. The Moors were expelled from Barcelona at the beginning of the ninth century. Catalonia had thus a start of more than four centuries over Seville, and of six over Malaga—to say nothing further of the incontestable advantages of her geographical position.

Without wishing, it need hardly be said, to depreciate the progressive tendencies of the Catalans, I confess I am inclined to attribute them, not to any racial superiority over other Spaniards, but mainly to the causes I have indicated.

Catalonia thus bears witness to the aptitude of the Spaniard, for the most active forms of commercial and industrial life, to his ability to keep in the van of progress. The lead given by Barcelona will inevitably be followed by all the other towns in the kingdom, now that the special circumstances which retarded their development have been removed. In the most populous city of Spain I fail to recognise a miracle or the work of another people than the Spanish. I see instead the results of Spanish enterprise and capacity singular only in having had the opportunity to assert itself.

From the day—it was in the year 813—that the fleet of the Count of Ampurias gloriously defeated a Saracen squadron off the Balearic Isles, Catalonia has looked seaward. It was on the wave that the men of Barcelona found glory and riches. They were the rivals of the Pisans, Genoese and Venetians, and can boast a maritime history far longer and hardly less glorious than our own. It is recorded in one of the best historical works ever written, the “Memorias sobre la Marina de Barcelona,” by Don Antonio de Capmany y Palau, published in 1779. The learned author contrasts the naval eminence of Barcelona with that of other powers, and assigns the city a higher rank than England and Portugal. In the middle of the Eleventh century, laws regulating and favouring commerce and providing for the suppression of piracy were decreed by Count Ramon Berenguer II. In the year 1114, the third Count of that name assisted, with his own fleet, the Pisans in the reduction of the Island of Majorca; in 1147 Almeria was attacked and plundered by the allied fleets of Barcelona and Genoa; and in the following year another naval victory added Tortosa to the principality.