8 - Courts, Institutions, and Territory: Catalonia

Summary

Catalonia is another major case that appears to connect trade to municipal governance and bottom-up organization, a connection exemplified by its history after the fourteenth century. This chapter shows that these developments are also predicated on a prior period of institutional learning under strong counts, by examining the key variables in this account. It shows how early representative activity did not include towns or relate to taxation. It examines the role of the count in the pacification of the county and in the provision of justice. It then shows how functional fusion occured in the central representative institutions, the Corts, and how territorial anchoring was stronger than in Castile but weaker than in England. Power over the nobility is shown through an analysis of their fiscal obligations. As a result, the municipal structure of Barcelona that has elicited the assessment of a strong constitutional tradition in a bottom-up mode is shown to be preceded by a precocious period of institution-building under strong counts.