A Brief History
Barcelona was originally called Barcino, named for the Carthaginian general and father of Hannibal, Hamilcar Barca, who established a base on the northeastern coast of Iberia in 237 b.c. Phoenicians and Greeks had previously settled the area, and Barcino occupied the site of an earlier Celtiberian settlement called Laie. But the Romans, who conquered all of Iberia, left the most indelible marks on Barcelona. They defeated the Carthaginians in 206 b.c. and ruled Spain for the next 600 years, a period in which Roman law, language, and culture took firm root across the peninsula. The Roman citadel in Barcelona, surrounded by a massive wall, occupied high ground where the cathedral and city hall now stand. From the first century a.d., Christian communities spread through Catalonia.
After sacking Rome in a.d. 410, the Visigoths swept into Spain. They adopted Barcelona as their capital from 531 until 554, when they moved it to Toledo. The invasion of the Moors in 711 brought the Visigothic kingdom to an end, and Catalonia was briefly overrun by the invaders from Africa. After their defeat beyond the Pyrenees by the Franks in 732, the Moors withdrew, without ever retaining a lasting foothold in Catalonia. Charlemagne’s knights installed themselves in the border counties to guard the southern flank of his empire.
A feudal lord, Guifré el Pilós — Wilfred the Hairy — became the Count of Barcelona. He founded a dynasty in 878 that would rule for nearly five centuries. While much of Spain was under Moorish domination, Barcelona and most of Catalonia remained linked to northern Europe, a geo-political wrinkle that would do much to determine the distinct Catalonian character.
Catalonia’s legendary founding father also gave the budding nation its flag of four horizontal red stripes on a gold field, the oldest still in use in Europe. Legend holds that the stripes were etched in Wilfred’s blood, drawn on his shield as an escutcheon by the fingers of the Frankish king after the count had courageously defended his overlord in a battle.
When King Louis V refused to come to their aid against Moorish raiders, the counts of Barcelona declared their independence in 988, a date celebrated as Catalonia’s birth as a nation-state. The Catalan nation was soon enlarged through marriage and military adventure. Ramón Berenguer III (1096–1131) captured Mallorca, Ibiza, and Tarragona from the Moors and acquired the French county of Provence through his heiress wife. His successor, Ramón Berenguer IV, united Catalonia with neighboring Aragón by marriage, and his son Alfonso II became the first joint-king of Aragón and Catalonia and was known as “the Emperor of the Pyrenees.” His kingdom extended all the way to Nice. But much of this territory was lost by the next king, Alfonso’s son Peter the Catholic, who picked the losing side in the French crusade against the heretics of Albi.
Successive generations turned their attention towards the conquest of the Mediterranean basin. Jaume I (1213–1276), known as “the Conqueror,” consolidated control over the Balearic Islands and claimed Valencia. Pedro III (1276– 1285) annexed Sicily in 1282. Over the ensuing century, Barcelona reached the peak of its glory: Its mercantilist trade grew rapidly throughout the Mediterranean, and its territories included Sardinia, Corsica, Naples, the Roussillon in southern France, and briefly, Athens. 
The Middle Ages, from the late-13th–15th centuries, were a time of great building in Barcelona, giving rise to the cathedral and other great Gothic palaces and monuments. Wedged between Europe and the Muslim territories, Barcelona served as a channel for the exchange of scientific knowledge and scholarship. The arts flourished in the cities and monasteries of Catalonia, patronized by a vigorous class of artisans, bankers, and merchants, including an important Jewish community. Nascent democratic institutions appeared with a code of laws, the Usatges de Barcelona, in the 11th century; a municipal council with participation of leading citizens called the Consell de Cent (Council of One Hundred) was formed in 1249; and in 1283 a parliament, or Corts, for Catalonia, originated, later to become the Generalitat, the civil government.
Barcelona’s fate took another decisive turn when the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragón-Catalonia (Ferrán II to the Catalans) to Isabella of Castile joined their two crowns and formed the nucleus of a united Spanish state. Under Los Reyes Católicos — called “The Catholic Monarchs” because they finally captured the last Moorish redoubt on the Peninsula at Granada in 1492 — Catalonia was fully incorporated into the Castilian state. After Christopher Columbus discovered America, he was received by the monarchs in Barcelona’s Royal Palace. Despite the symbolic gesture, Castile, the power center of Spain, exclusively exploited New World riches, excluding Barcelona for 300 years. The Catholic church’s hard-line Inquisition expelled Jews from Spain; communities in Barcelona and Girona were particularly affected. 
During the 16th century, a Golden Age for Spain, the political influence of Catalonia and Barcelona declined even further. The Dutch-speaking Hapsburg grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella was anointed Charles I of Spain in 1516. He inherited the title of Holy Roman Emperor and became Charles V, with duties throughout Europe that gave him little time for Spain. His son Philip II moved the capital of the great Spanish empire from Toledo to previously insignificant Madrid.
In 1640, with Spain and France at war, Catalonia declared itself an independent republic, allied to Philip IV’s enemy France. After the French defeat in 1652, the Catalan territories north of the Pyrenees were delivered to France, fixing the border where it is today. The ensuing years were rife with constant wars, shifting alliances, and disputes over succession to the crown. In all of these conflicts, Barcelona automatically sided with whomever opposed Madrid, and usually ended up the loser.
The worst of these episodes came in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713) between the backers of Philip of Anjou, the 17-year-old grandson of Louis XIV of France, and the Hapsburg claimant, Archduke Charles of Austria. Charles was enthusiastically received when he landed in Catalonia, but Philip, supported by France, won the war and became the first Bourbon ruler as Philip V. After a 13-month siege, on 11 September 1714, the royal army captured and sacked Barcelona. The Catalan Generalitat was dissolved and the city’s privileges were abolished. The Ciutadella fortress was built to keep the populace subdued, and official use of the Catalan language was outlawed. Catalonia celebrates this defeat as its national holiday, a symbol of the spirit of nationalist resistance.
Discord within the Spanish government or conflict with foreign powers frequently served as an excuse for Catalan separatists to rise up, though their rebellions were usually summarily quashed. From 1808 to 1814, Spain again became a battleground, with British forces taking on Napoleon’s troops in the Peninsular War. Napoleon attacked and destroyed Catalonia’s sacred shrine, the monastery at Montserrat. 
The spirit of liberalism prevalent in Europe was tardy in reaching Spain. After many reverses, a democratic constitution was finally proclaimed and constitutional monarchy was instituted in 1874. Four years later, Barcelona was at long last given the right to trade with the colonies of the New World. 
Meanwhile, the city had gone about its business, devoting its energies to industrialization. Barcelona’s medieval walls were torn down to make way for an expansion in the mid-19th century. The Eixample, an elegant modern district, was laid out on a grid of broad avenues where the new industrialists built mansions. Wealthy patrons supported forward-looking architects, including Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Muntaner, who embraced modernisme. Prosperity was accompanied by a revival in Catalan arts and letters, a period known in Catalan as the Renaixença (Renaissance). In a burst of optimism, the city bid for worldwide recognition with the Universal Exposition of 1888, built on the site of the hated Ciutadella fortress.
With the industrial expansion, an urban working class evolved in Barcelona. Agitation for social justice and regionalist ferment created a combustible atmosphere, and Barcelona became the scene of strikes and anarchist violence. The modern Socialist Party and the U.G.T., Spain’s largest trade union, were both founded in Barcelona at this time. For their part, industrialists sought Catalan autonomy as a way to be freed from interference (and taxation) by Madrid. In 1914 a union of the four Catalan provinces — Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida (Lérida), and Girona (Gerona) — was formed, known as the Mancomunitat, with limited autonomy. The region profited from Spanish neutrality in World War I by trading with both sides, further expanding its industry. 
The Mancomunitat was dissolved in 1924 by the Spanish General Primo de Rivera, who established a military dictatorship and once again banned the Catalan language. Despite this setback, an optimistic Barcelona plunged energetically into the preparation of another International Exhibition, with monumental buildings, pavilions, and sports facilities erected on Montjuïc hill. It opened a few months before the stock market crash of 1929.
In 1931, general elections brought the Republican party to power, and King Alfonso XIII escaped in exile. The following year, Catalonia won a charter establishing home rule, restoration of the regional parliament and flag, and recognition of Catalan as the official language of the region. For the next several years the pendulum of power in Spain swung back and forth between Left and Right. The army rebelled in 1936, initiating the brutal and bloody Spanish Civil War, in which both sides committed atrocities. Many of Barcelona’s churches were put to the torch by anti-clerical mobs. The city, firmly Republican, briefly became the capital in late 1937 and was a rallying point for the International Brigade. Barcelona was one of the last cities to fall to the rebel troops of General Francisco Franco at the war’s end in 1939.
The Civil War ended with some 700,000 combatants dead on both sides; another 30,000 were executed or assassinated, including many priests and nuns; and perhaps 15,000 civilians were killed in air raids. Barcelona was repeatedly bombed and its people suffered great hardship.
Catalonia paid a heavy price in defeat. Franco abolished all regional institutions and established central government controls. The Catalan language was again proscribed, even in schools and churches. For years, Barcelona received little financial support from Madrid, and Spain remained essentially cut off from the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, the city’s industry recovered, and at least one million job hunters from less prosperous parts of Spain migrated to the Barcelona area. From the 1960s a tourism boom along the Costa Brava lifted the local economy and brought the people of Franco’s conservative Spain in touch with modern Europe.
When Franco died in 1975, Spain rapidly emerged from its isolation. The coronation of his designated successor, Juan Carlos, the grandson of Alfonso XIII, brought the restoration of parliamentary democracy and a relaxation of customs and laws. The 1978 Constitution granted degrees of autonomy to Spain’s fractious regions. While a militant Basque minority demanded greater independence and resorted to terrorist tactics that continue to this day, most Catalans were content with the restoration of the Generalitat and regional parliament and the return of Catalan as an official language.
Charismatic Felipe González, a Socialist, was Prime Minister of Spain from 1982 to 1986. Spain became a member of the European Economic Community (now European Union, or EU) in 1986, hastening the country’s modernization. Though González was credited by many as the architect of the new Spain, he finally succumbed to incessant charges of corruption and incompetence in the highest levels of his government. The EU’s freeing of trade tariffs and controls, and Barcelona’s hosting of the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, acted as catalysts for the city and Catalonia — Spain’s industrial engine and bridge to the rest of Europe — to embark on a significant economic boom.
In 1996, the surging Partido Popular, led by a rather uncharismatic former accountant, José María Aznar, was elected, forming the first conservative government in Spain since the return of democracy. Barcelona, meanwhile, continued to be ably steered by a progressive Socialist mayor, Pascual Maragall, who oversaw the Olympics bid and subsequent civic works that contributed to the transformation of the city. Maragall stepped down in 1999 to run for leadership of the Catalan Generalitat and was succeeded by Joan Clos I Matheu.