BARCELONA

BARCELONA. Barcelona, capital city of Catalonia, is located on the Mediterranean coast in northeastern Spain. The city is nestled on a plain between the Sierra de Collserola and the sea, in the shadow of the promontory of Montjuic, and is bordered to the north and south by the Besós and Llobregat rivers. Key to Barcelona's success as an important port in the fifteenth century was its geographic position within the crown of Aragón. The lack of navigable rivers in Catalonia limited interior trade to overland routes that converged at Barcelona's port. Barcelona served as a major node along the coastal trade route from southern France to Valencia and beyond, and together with the ports of Mallorca and Valencia, controlled the western end of the Mediterranean.

The city originated as a Roman fort constructed on a knoll, which has remained the religious and political center of the city. In the late Middle Ages, the city outgrew this fortification and expanded down to the sea. New perimeter fortifications were constructed, the seaside wall not being completed until 1536. The city's interior was renowned for its numerous religious and civic monuments. As the political seat of Catalonia, Barcelona housed in its center the palaces of the king and the Diputació del General, the principality's treasury. The city was governed from the palace of the Consell de Cent, a council of five executives and a jury of one hundred "honored citizens." The royal shipyard (the drassanes) dominated the western end of the port district, and the maritime merchant hall (Llotja de Mar) governed the busy port.

Barcelona's medieval prosperity was abruptly cut off by the civil war of 1462; ten years of violence tore apart the political, social, and economic fabric of the city, as well as damaging its international trade. By 1487, the contraction of trade was worsened by a rising of the Catalan peasantry and prosecutions of converted Jews by the Inquisition. By the end of the fifteenth century, Barcelona, with approximately 25,000 inhabitants, was the most densely populated city of Catalonia. Nonetheless, because of repeated waves of bubonic plague, the city's population rose only to about 29,000 by 1516.

The loss of Barcelona's Mediterranean markets was not compensated by the sixteenth-century exploration of the Americas, since this new market was dominated by Castile. Barcelona emerged from an unsuccessful rebellion against the Habsburgs in 1640–1652 with its traditional political privileges intact. It lost those privileges by fighting against Spain's new Bourbon dynasty in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Moreover, the city's population, which stood at about 64,000 in 1657, had fallen to 37,000 by 1713. Economically, Barcelona recovered slowly from the war, but by the end of the eighteenth century, the city benefited from a flourishing industry in cotton textiles and the opening of trade to Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carrère, Claude. Barcelona, 1380–1462: Un centre econòmic en època de crisi, vol. 2. Barcelona, 1978.

Hughes, Robert. Barcelona. New York, 1992.

Kern, Robert, ed. Historical Dictionary of Modern Spain, 1700–1988. New York, 1990.

Sobrequés i Callicó, Jaume, ed. Historia de Barcelona, 8 vols. Barcelona, 1992.

Treppo, Mario del. Els mercaders catalans i l'expansiódela corona catalano-aragonesa al segle XV. Barcelona, 1976.