The lands of what today is known as Catalonia, in Spain, were first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic era. Like the rest of the Mediterranean side of the Iberian Peninsula, the area was occupied by the Iberians and several Greek colonies were established on the coast before the Roman conquest. It was the first area of Hispania conquered by the Romans. It then came under Visigothic rule after the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire. In 718, the area was occupied by the Umayyad Caliphate and became a part of Muslim ruled al-Andalus. The Frankish Empire conquered the area from the Muslims, ending with the conquest of Barcelona in 801, as part of the creation of a larger buffer zone of Christian counties against Islamic rule historiographically known as the Marca Hispanica. In the 10th century the County of Barcelona became progressively independent from Frankish rule.
The Senyera is a vexillological symbol based on the coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon, which consists of four red stripes on a yellow field. This coat of arms, often called bars of Aragon, or simply "the four bars", historically represented the King of the Crown of Aragon.
The House of Barcelona was a medieval dynasty that ruled the County of Barcelona continuously from 878 and the Crown of Aragon from 1137 until 1410. They descend from the Bellonids, the descendants of Wilfred the Hairy. They inherited most of the Catalan counties by the thirteenth century and established a territorial Principality of Catalonia, uniting it with the Kingdom of Aragon through marriage and conquering numerous other lands and kingdoms until the death of the last legitimate male of the main branch, Martin the Humanist, in 1410. Cadet branches of the house continued to rule Urgell and Gandia. Cadet branches of the dynasty had also ruled Ausona intermittently from 878 until 1111, Provence from 1112 to 1245, and Sicily from 1282 to 1409. By the Compromise of Caspe of 1412 the Crown of Aragon passed to a branch of the House of Trastámara, descended from the infanta Eleanor of the house of Barcelona.
Alfonso II was the second son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile. His father transferred the County of Provence from his uncle Sancho to him in 1185. Alfonso II was born in Barcelona.
Ramon Berenguer V was a member of the House of Barcelona who ruled as count of Provence and Forcalquier. He was the first count of Provence to live in the county in more than one hundred years. During the minority of a previous count, the regency was exercised by Ramon Berenguer IV de Barcelona, who is sometimes counted among the counts of Provence.
Almodis de la Marche was a French noble. She was famed for her marriage career, in particularly for her third marriage to Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, with whom she committed double bigamy in 1053, for which the Pope had them excommunicated.
Prades is a subprefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. In 2018, the commune had a population of 6,063. Prades is the capital of the historical Conflent comarca. Its inhabitants are called Pradéens and Pradéennes in French and Pradencs and Pradenques in Catalan. It is also the hometown of Jean Castex, who served as Prime Minister of France from 2020 to 2022.
Northern Catalonia, North Catalonia or French Catalonia is the formerly Catalan-speaking and cultural territory ceded to France by Spain through the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 in exchange of France's effective renunciation on the formal protection that it had given to the recently founded Catalan Republic. The area corresponds roughly to the modern French département of the Pyrénées-Orientales which were historically part of Catalonia since the old County of Barcelona, and lasted during the times of the Crown of Aragon and the Principality of Catalonia until they were given to France by Spain.
The Principality of Catalonia was a medieval and early modern state in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. During most of its history it was in dynastic union with the Kingdom of Aragon, constituting together the Crown of Aragon. Between the 13th and the 18th centuries, it was bordered by the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, the Kingdom of Valencia to the south, the Kingdom of France and the feudal lordship of Andorra to the north and by the Mediterranean Sea to the east. The term Principality of Catalonia was official until the 1830s, when the Spanish government implemented the centralized provincial division, but remained in popular and informal contexts. Today, the term Principat (Principality) is used primarily to refer to the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries, and usually including the historical region of Roussillon in Southern France.
Sunifred was the Count of Urgell and Cerdanya from 834 to 848, and the Count of Barcelona as well as many other Catalan and Septimanian counties, including Ausona, Besalú, Girona, Narbonne, Agde, Béziers, Lodève, Melgueil, Conflent and Nîmes, from 844 to 848.
The County of Barcelona was a polity in northeastern Iberian Peninsula, originally located in the southern frontier region of the Carolingian Empire. In the 10th century, the Counts of Barcelona progressively achieved independence from Frankish rule, becoming hereditary rulers in constant warfare with the Islamic Caliphate of Córdoba and its successor states. The counts, through marriage, alliances and treaties, acquired or vassalized the other Catalan counties and extended their influence over Occitania. In 1164, the County of Barcelona entered a personal union with the Kingdom of Aragon. Thenceforward, the history of the county is subsumed within that of the Crown of Aragon, but the city of Barcelona remained preeminent within it.
Sancho, also spelled Sanç or Sanche, was a Catalano-Aragonese nobleman and statesman, the youngest son of Queen Petronilla of Aragon and Count Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona. He was at different times the count of Cerdanya (c.1175–1188), Provence (1181–1185), Gévaudan, Rodez and Carlat (1183–1185), and Roussillon (1208–1212). He served as the regent of Provence from 1209 until 1218 during the minority of Count Raymond Berengar IV, and as regent of Aragon from 1214 until 1218, during the minority of King James I.
The County of Carcassonne was a medieval fiefdom controlling the city of Carcassonne, France, and its environs. It was often united with the County of Razès.
The County of Cerdanya was one of the Catalan counties formed in the last decades of the 8th century by the Franks in the Marca Hispanica. The original Cerdanya consisted of the valley of the upper Segre. Today Cerdanya is a Catalan comarca.
Ermengol or Armengol III, called el de Barbastro, was the Count of Urgell from 1038 to his death. He was the son of Ermengol II, Count of Urgell and his wife Velasquita "Constança", probably the daughter of Bernard I, Count of Besalú.
The County of Razès was a feudal jurisdiction in Occitania, south of the County of Carcassonne, in what is now Southern France. It was founded in 781, after the creation of the Kingdom of Aquitania, when Septimania was separated from that state.
Wilfred or Wifred, called the Hairy, was Count of Urgell, Cerdanya, Barcelona, Girona, Besalú and Ausona. On his death in 897, his son, Wilfred Borrell, inherited these counties, known by the historiography as the Catalan counties.
Old Catalan, also known as Medieval Catalan, is the modern denomination for Romance varieties that during the Middle Ages were spoken in territories that spanned roughly the territories of the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and the island of Sardinia; all of them then part of the Crown of Aragon. These varieties were part of a dialect continuum with what today is called Old Occitan that reached the Loire Valley in the north and Northern Italy in the east. Consequently, Old Catalan can be considered a dialect group of Old Occitan, or be classified as an Occitano-Romance variety side by side with Old Occitan.
Occitania is the southernmost administrative region of metropolitan France excluding Corsica, created on 1 January 2016 from the former regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées. The Council of State approved Occitania as the new name of the region on 28 September 2016, coming into effect on 30 September 2016.
The Monastery of Saint-André d'Eixalada was a Benedictine Christian monastery active in the 9th century in the eastern Pyrenees. Founded on the banks of the River Têt no later than 840–841, the site suffered flood devastation in 878.