BARCELONA

History:

The origins of the city of Barcelona, which have been defined thanks to archaeological remains and literary and cartographic sources, date from the 1st century A.D., when the Romans established a small colony around the Taber mount. In this way Barcino started, to form part of Eastern Hispania, the capital of which was Tarraco.

Between the fourth century and the thirteenth century the city nucleus founded by the Romans was consolidated, and a process of expansion began that later would give a definitive shape to the city. After many political upheavals and the retreat of Moorish Spain, Barcelona experienced feudalism and a growing maritime trade, which allowed it to strengthen its position as a political, religious and trade centre.

The walls of the 13th century sheltered the viles noves (new houses) built outside the area of the Roman city, and from the 14th century on Barcelona gained a third stretch of walls around the cultivated fields of the Raval area.

After the departure of the royal court, the Mediterranean seemed small and insignificant alongside the Atlantic trade. Within the confines of the newly established city, Barcelona erected a Gothic city around its geometric and political centre, the Plaça Sant Jaume, while artisans flourished around the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, in the barri of La Ribera, turning Barcelona into a city of merchants, navigators, traders and professionals. Especially noteworthy about the city was the level of participation, its corporate identity, its selective and gradual approach to affairs. This was the Barcelona of the gremis (guilds).

In modern times Franco banned the Catalan language and culture, and although not the first to do so, the return to democracy after his death has seen a massive surge in the number of people speaking the language and re-establishing Catalan traditions. Today, Catalunya's two offical languages are Catalan as well as Castillian Spanish, and most signs in the city are in Catalan first.

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