Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (30 page)

Roussillon’s folklore differs markedly from that of other French regions.
⁸
The
sardana
is pure Catalan; men and women hold hands in a ring, and circle back and forth to measured patterns in 6/8 rhythm. The typical band is the
coble
; nine or ten wind-players blow
tenora
and
tible
(high and low oboes),
flabiol
(flute), and the goatskin
bodega
(bagpipes), usually accompanied by drum and double bass. An international folk festival is held every August at Amélie-les-Bains (Els Banys d’Arles).
⁹

Unlike Roussillon, Cerdagne (Cerdanya in Catalan, Cerdaña in Spanish) is entirely landlocked, and is nowadays split into French and Spanish halves. It grew strong through its relative inaccessibility, and rich from an ancient trans-Pyrenean trade route. Its historic capital and county seat stood at Llívia. The counts of Cerdagne-Conflent, who reached their apogee during the eleventh century, founded the abbeys both of St Michel de Cuxa and of Montserrat, before bequeathing their inheritance to their descendants, the counts of Barcelona. Their legacy stayed intact until the seventeenth century. During the negotiations held at Llívia in 1659, when Cerdagne was divided, the French commissioners demanded 130 communes in northern Cerdagne; the Spanish commissioners argued that Llívia was not a commune, but a city. Llívia has remained a Spanish enclave inside French territory ever since.
¹⁰
A visit there is instructive. At the start of the local ‘Historical Trail’, Llívia is proclaimed to be the ‘cradle of the Catalan State’.

At some 12,300 square miles, modern Catalonia or
Catalunya
is much larger than either Roussillon or Cerdagne. It is triangular in shape, and is divided into forty-one
comarques
or ‘rural districts’. The top side of the triangle follows the Pyrenean frontier. The coastal side runs down at a right angle along the Costa Brava, past Barcelona and the Costa Dorada, and as far as the province of Valencia. The inland side of the triangle links the southernmost point on the coast with Catalonia’s westernmost point in the mountains. Since 1978, after painful experiences under General Franco, the province has enjoyed autonomy within Spain, and has successfully reinstated the official status of the Catalan language.

The section of the eastern Pyrenees where upper Catalonia abuts the old French County of Foix reveals some of the region’s geographical, historical and linguistic complexities. The Catalan district of Pallars nestles in the vicinity of three diverse neighbours. To its west lies a clutch of Spanish-speaking districts, starting with Sobrarbe and Ribagorza. To its north lies the Vall d’Aran, which can only be approached by vehicles through the Vielha tunnel and which, though located on the French side of the ridge, still belongs to Spain. The people of the Vall d’Aran speak a unique language that mixes Basque and neo-Latin elements (
aran
means ‘valley’ in Basque). To the east lies the Principality of Andorra, one of Europe’s oldest states.

Andorra occupies a tiny mountain retreat wedged between France and Spain. For 700 years from 1278, its government was jointly supervised by the comte de Foix (or later by the préfet of the Ariège) and by the bishop of Seu d’Urgell. Since 1993, however, it has joined Monaco, Liechtenstein and San Marino as one of Europe’s sovereign mini-states. The Andorrans, like the inhabitants of the ‘
Franja d’Aragón
’ – a strip of territory immediately adjacent to Pillars – speak Catalan, but their national anthem is bilingual. Few countries can boast a national song more redolent of history:

(‘My father, the great Charlemagne, / saved me from the Arabs, / and Meritxell, my great mother, / gave me life from Heaven. / I was born a princess, an heiress / neutral between two nations. / I remain alone, the one and only daughter / of Charlemagne’s empire. /Faithful and free /for eleven centuries, / I wish to be so for ever, / may the customary laws be my tutors / and the princes my protectors.’) The Andorrans still sing of Charlemagne for their country started life under his rule and was never incorporated by the great powers which succeeded him.

Nowhere can one understand the lie of the land better than standing on the high Franco-Spanish frontier south of Perpignan. The strong afternoon sun shines in one’s face. The sea glistens on the horizon to the left, the last outcrop of the French coast merging into the Costa Brava. On the right, the line of the mountain ridge leads off towards Andorra and the central Pyrenees. Roussillon and Cerdagne are at one’s back, and beyond them Languedoc. In front, the steep hills of Catalonia stretch out as far as the eye can see. Catalonia’s chief port and city, Barcelona, is just out of sight, but it can be reached by car in little more than an hour by following the Autoroute/Autopista E-15, which snakes over the foothills below.

Thanks to the present dominance of centralized national states, it is easy to think of this Pyrenean region as peripheral, both to France and to Spain – far from Paris and far from Madrid. Rambling round the Pyrenean ridge, however, prompts doubts. Landscape, itself the product of aeons of change, evokes thoughts about the changeability of everything else. Not so very long ago, France was nowhere in sight in these parts, and Spain did not even exist. Perpignan was once a capital city. So, too, were Barcelona and Zaragoza. Then, people on both sides of the eastern Pyrenees became subjects of one king, members and beneficiaries of a political community whose furthest bounds stretched far beyond the shining horizon.

II

The origins of the kingdom can be traced to a mountain stream – the Aragon
*
– that flows down from the high pastures of the central Pyrenees into the broad valley of the Ebro. The river gave its name to the landlocked district, now known as the
Alto Aragón
, or ‘High Aragon’, whence it springs. The landscape that it traverses consists mainly of a desert plain covered by thin, chalky, salt-ridden soil. In most seasons it is characterized by dry watercourses and ash-coloured shrublands. The summers are scorchingly hot, the winters cold and snowbound. Yet the mountains which ring the plain carry oak, pine and beech forests, and the high pastures form a fine habitat for merino sheep. The Pyrenean ridge, dominated in this section by the peaks of the Aneto and the Perdido, creates a formidable barrier. A few oases of greenery nestle in the steep, upland valleys, but the only area suitable for large-scale agriculture spreads out below the mountains among the wheat fields, orchards and vineyards that line the Ebro. One of the oldest trans-Pyrenean trade routes runs across the pass of the Port de Canfranc from Zaragoza to Béarn.

Here, towards the end of the first millennium, Christian lords ruling the north-eastern perimeter of Iberia started to fight back against the Muslim Moors, who had ruled over most of the peninsula since crossing from North Africa some two centuries earlier. That gaggle of Christian lordships, large and small, had been created when Frankish power spilled over the Pyrenees to confront Islam as it advanced. Charlemagne’s campaign of 778 against the Moors was recorded in the opening lines of the Old French epic poem, the
Chanson de Roland
:

Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes,

Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne.

Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne,

N’i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne,

Mur ne citet n’i est remés a fraindre,

Fors Sarraguce, ki est en une muntaigne.

Li reis Marsilie la tient, ki Deu nen aimet,

Mahumet sert e Apollin recleimet:

Nes poet guarder que mals ne l’i ateignet.

Charles the King, our great Emperor,

Advanced that year in full array into Spain.

He conquered the high lands as far as the sea,

No castle which stood before him,

Nor any fortified wall was unbroken,

Except for Zaragoza, which lies in a mountain range.

[Zaragoza] was held by a King, Marsilie, whom God did not love.

He served Mahomet, and worshipped Apollo:

Poets record only the ills which he performed.
¹²

Charlemagne’s retreat from Zaragoza culminated in the heroic fight at the Pass of Roncevalles, where Roland and Oliver were immortalized.

Charlemagne’s response to the threat from Muslim Iberia was to organize four militarized buffer zones: the March of Gascony, the March of Toulouse (to which Andorra was attached), the March of Gothia along the Mediterranean coast from Narbonne to Nîmes, and the
Marca Hispanica
from the central to the eastern Pyrenees. This fourth March consisted of no fewer than sixteen counties, each controlled by a military commissioner or
comitatus.
The first to be formed, in 760, was Roussillon; the last, in 801, Barcelona. Others on the March’s eastern flank included Pallars, Urgell, Conflent, Vallespir, Cerdagne, Besalú, Perelada, Ausona, Girona and Empúries.
¹³
The population of these counties contained a strong admixture of Visigoths (see
Chapter 1
), and it is from the mingling of Frankish, Iberian and Gothic cultures that Catalonia was to assume its inimitable language and character.

In the period which followed, the overextended Franks pulled back; the power of the Moors also began to ebb and the Christian lords of the Pyrenees asserted their freedom. One of the more important lordships in the former
Marca Hispanica
centred on the County of Barcelona, which lost all semblance of subordination to the Frankish Empire once the Carolingians gave way to the Capetians. Another was the domain of Sancho El Mayor of Navarre (d. 1035), known as ‘the Great’, who ruled extensive lands on either side of the Pyrenees. His capital at Pamplona lay in the heart of the Basque country, which had never submitted to foreign domination. It was flanked on the west by Christian Castile and León, and to the east by the mountainous counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, all of which he came to control. For a time, he even extracted recognition of his suzerainty from the count of Barcelona, Berenguer Ramón I El Corbat, ‘the Crooked’ (r. 1022–35).
*

Sancho El Mayor was blessed with five sons, and he conceived a plan to perpetuate his family’s fortunes. Taking the title of ‘King of all the Spains’ for himself, he designed a future whereby his Christian ‘empire’ would be supported by an array of tributary sub-kings. He set up his eldest legitimate son as king of Navarre; gave Castile and León to his second son; and in his will, bequeathed Sobrarbe and Ribagorza to his two youngest sons. Sancho’s bastard son, Ramiro, was passed over in the will, but was left undisturbed as the
baiulus
or ‘steward’ of Aragon.