Perpignan is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in Southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea and the scrublands of the Corbières massif. It is the centre of the Perpignan Méditerranée Métropole metropolitan area.
The recorded history of the lands of what today is known as Catalonia begins with the development of the Iberian peoples while 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 northern half of 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.
Languedoc-Roussillon is a former administrative region of France. On 1 January 2016, it joined with the region of Midi-Pyrénées to become Occitania. It comprised five departments, and bordered the other French regions of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Rhône-Alpes, Auvergne, Midi-Pyrénées towards the north, and Spain, Andorra and the Mediterranean Sea towards the south. It was the southernmost region of mainland France.
Cerdanya or often La Cerdanya is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it was one of the counties of Catalonia.
Llívia is a town in the comarca of Cerdanya, province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It is a Spanish exclave surrounded by the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales. In 2023, the municipality of Llívia had a total population of 1,511. It is separated from the rest of Spain by a corridor about 1.6 km wide, which includes the French communes of Ur and Bourg-Madame. The Segre river, a tributary of the Spanish Ebro, flows through Llívia.
Roussillon was a historical province of France that largely corresponded to the County of Roussillon and part of the County of Cerdagne of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is part of the region of Northern Catalonia or French Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales in the former region of Languedoc-Roussillon.
Pau Claris i Casademunt was a Catalan lawyer, clergyman and 94th President of the Deputation of the General of Catalonia at the beginning of the Catalan Revolt. On 16 January 1641 he proclaimed the Catalan Republic under the protection of France.
Cerdanya is a comarca in northern Catalonia, in the Pyrenees, on the border of Catalonia with France and Andorra. Within Catalonia, Cerdanya is divided between Catalan provinces of Girona and Lleida. Cerdanya's neighbouring comarques are Alt Urgell, Berguedà, and Ripollès.
The Spanish March or Hispanic March was a military buffer zone established c.795 by Charlemagne in the eastern Pyrenees and nearby areas, to protect the new territories of the Christian Carolingian Empire - the Duchy of Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine, and Septimania - from the Muslim Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in al-Andalus.
French Cerdagne is the northern half of Cerdanya, which came under French control as a result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, while the southern half remained in Spain. Catalans often refer to French Cerdagne as Upper Cerdanya. It is the only French territory on the Iberian Peninsula, as it is located on the south side of the Pyrenees Range between France and Spain. For example, the Segre river, which goes west and then south to meet the Ebro, has its source in the French Cerdagne. An inadvertent result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees is the Spanish exclave of Llívia which is sovereign Spanish territory surrounded by French Cerdagne.
Catalans are a Romance ethnic group native to Catalonia, who speak Catalan. The current official category of "Catalans" is that of the citizens of Catalonia, an autonomous community in Spain and the inhabitants of the Roussillon historical region in southern France, today the Pyrénées Orientales department, also called Northern Catalonia and Pays Catalan in French.
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.
The Reapers' War, also known as the Catalan Revolt, was a conflict that affected the Principality of Catalonia between the years of 1640 and 1659. It had an enduring effect in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), which ceded the County of Roussillon and the northern half of the County of Cerdanya to France, splitting these northern Catalan territories off from the Principality of Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon, and thereby receding the borders of Spain to the Pyrenees.
The Franco-Spanish War was fought from 1635 to 1659 between France and Spain, each supported by various allies at different points. The first phase, beginning in May 1635 and ending with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, is considered a related conflict of the Thirty Years' War. The second phase continued until 1659, when France and Spain agreed to peace terms in the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
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.
Pyrénées-Orientales, also known as Northern Catalonia, are a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France, adjacent to the northern Spanish frontier and the Mediterranean Sea. It borders the departments of Ariège to the northwest and Aude to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east and the Spanish province of Girona in Catalonia to the south and the country of Andorra to the west. It also surrounds the tiny Spanish exclave of Llívia, and thus has two distinct borders with Spain. In 2019, it had a population of 479,979. Some parts of the Pyrénées-Orientales are part of the Iberian Peninsula. It is named after the Pyrenees mountain range.
The siege of Dunkirk in 1658 was a military operation by the allied forces of France and Commonwealth England intended to take the fortified port city of Dunkirk, Spain's greatest privateer base, from the Spanish and their confederates: the English royalists and French Fronduers. Dunkirk was a strategic port on the southern coast of the English Channel in the Spanish Netherlands that had often been a point of contention previously and had changed hands a number of times. Privateers operating out of Dunkirk and other ports had cost England some 1,500 to 2,000 merchant ships in the past year. The French and their English Commonwealth allies were commanded by Marshal of France Turenne. The siege would last a month and featured numerous sorties by the garrison and a determined relief attempt by the Spanish army under the command of Don Juan of Austria and his confederate English royalists under Duke of York and rebels of the French Fronde under the Great Condé that resulted in the battle of the Dunes.
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 Angelets, or “the Angelets of the Land”, were peasants who rose up in peasant revolts from 1667 to 1675 against the French authorities in Roussillon; the group of conflicts of the period is called the Revolt of the Angelets. The cause was the institution of the gabelle, a tax on salt, in 1661—a measure contrary to traditional constitutions of the earldom. The revolt first concerned the county of Vallespir, then it spread to those of Conflent and Roussillon.
