Culture

Characterized by rebellion against the powers, overwhelming sieges, roller-coasting fiscal states, burying and resurrecting Catalan culture and language, political devotion and upheavals and aggressive development of commerce and industry, Barcelona history has made pride its people’s birthright.

For centuries, Barcelona fell in the silhouette of greater powers, largely due to their strategic coastal location placing them right in the line of fire, starting circa 230 BC, most likely by the Carthaginians, then the Visigoths and then the Muslims. France drove away the Muslims in 801 AD. By the 12th century, the Muslim caliphate of Córdoba crumbled; Catalunya got rich in the aftermath. By the 14th century, still wealthy Barcelona lorded over certain Greece areas, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Valencia, the Balearics, the French regions of Rousillon and Cerdagne. By the 15th century, the deadly plague, bank crashes, and the Genoese economic squeeze ran the mini-empire aground. Barcelona took cover of the kingdom of Castile (Spain mainland), which drove them further down.

When Franco took over, thousands of Catalans fled to faraway lands rather than bow to Franco. While the ground was still fresh from Franco’s burial, Catalan was resuscitated with a vengeance, the local parliament reinstated, and Barcelona evolved into what we know today.

It’s as if Barcelona was tossed into the washing machine of time, spun around through decades of anarchists, Republicans, bourgeois regionalists, gangsters, police terrorists, political gunmen, leftists and centrists, drained and squeezed dry to briefly regain autonomy, only to be re-drowned and spat out and oppressed again.

After centuries of fierce battles and conquests of and by their people, the feisty Catalans of Barcelona carry an intense pride in their heritage, and never was their fire for independence extinguished. Today, having become too busy getting rich and comfortable, the independence issue sits in the backseat for now.