This article is about the traditional Catalan domain. For the Spanish autonomous community, see Autonomous Community of Catalonia.

See History of Catalonia, Catalan Countries

The territory that is now Catalonia was colonized by Ancient Greeks and Carthaginians. Like the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, it participated in the pre-Roman Iberian culture and was part of the Roman Empire, followed by Visigothic rule. In the eighth century it was part of Moorish (Muslim-ruled) al-Andalus, but was conquered within a century by the expanding Carolingian Empire.

Identifiably Catalan culture begins in the Middle Ages under the rule of the Counts of Barcelona. As part of the Aragonese crown the Catalonia became a great maritime power, expanding by trade and conquest into Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and even Sardinia and Sicily.

The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon (1469) unified Christian Spain; in 1492, the last of al-Andalus was conquered and the Spanish conquest of the Americas began. Political power began to shift away from Catalonia towards Castile.

In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees ceded the comarques of Rosselló, Conflent, Vallespir and the northern half of Cerdanya to France. In recent times, this area has come to be known as Northern Catalonia.

Northern Catalonia lost all recognition as it became part of the "une et indivisible" (one and undividable) French nation.

For some time, Spanish Catalonia continued to retain its own laws, but these gradually eroded (albeit with occasional periods of regeneration). Over the next few centuries, it was generally on the losing side of a series of wars that led steadily to more centralization of power in Spain. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (between the Castilian-French axis and the Catalan-English axis) in 1714, Barcelona fell to French troops. Philip V abolished the Crown of Aragon and all Catalan institutions, prohibiting public use of Catalan language for the first time, with the Decreto de Nueva Planta (New Regime Decree); this decree has never been formally abolished.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Spanish Catalonia became a center of Spain's industrialization; to this day it remains one of the most industrialized parts of Spain, along with Madrid and the Basque Country. On several occasions during the first third of the 20th century, Spanish Catalonia gained and lost varying degrees of autonomy, but as in most regions of Spain, Catalan autonomy and culture were crushed to an unprecedented degree after the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic (founded 1931) in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) brought Francisco Franco to power. Even public use of the Catalan language was banned.

Spanish Catalonia recovered political and cultural autonomy following Franco's death in 1975. It became one of the Autonomous Communities of Spain. There is a seperate article about the Autonomous Community of Catalonia.