From late antiquity to feudalism

Visigothic and Muslim rule

The Crisis of the Third Century affected the whole Roman Empire, and gravely affected the Catalan territory, where there is evidence of significant levels of destruction and abandonment of Roman villas. This is also the period of the first documentary evidence of the arrival of Christianity. While archaeological evidence shows the recovery of some urban nuclei, such as Barcino (later Barcelona), Tarraco (later Tarragona), and Gerunda (later Girona), the previous situation was not restored: the cities became smaller, and constructed defensive walls.

In the 5th century, as part of the invasion of the Roman Empire by Germanic tribes, the Visigoths led by Athaulf, installed themselves in Tarraconensis (410) and when in 475 the Visigothic king Euric formed the kingdom of Tolosa (modern Toulouse), he incorporated the territory equivalent to present-day Catalonia. Later, the Visigothic kingdom lost most of its territory north of the Pyrenees and shifted its capital to Toledo. The Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania lasted until the beginning of the 8th century. In 718, the Muslim conquest of Spain reached the northeastern part of the peninsula, where there were few significant battles, the most notable being at Tarragona. In 719, the last unconquered territory of the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania, Septimania, surrendered without battle to the Muslims.

Carolingian conquest

By the second half of the ninth century, three political subdivisions (marches) existed in the eastern Pyrenees: Toulouse (green), Gothia (blue), and Hispania (pink).

After repelling Muslim incursions as far north as Tours in 732, the expanding Frankish Empire set about creating a buffer zone of Christian counties in the south that became known at the Marca Hispanica or the Spanish March. The first county to be conquered from the Moors lied in the former area of Septimania that became Roussillon (with Vallespir), following the conquest of Narbonne (759). In 785 the county of Girona (with Besalú) on the south side of the Pyrenees was taken. Ribagorza and Pallars were linked to Toulouse and were added to this county around 790. Urgell and Cerdanya were added in 798. The first records of the county of Empúries (with Perelada) are from 812 but the county was probably under Frankish control before 800. After a series of struggles, Charlemagne's son Louis took Barcelona from the Moorish emir in 801 and set up the County of Barcelona.

The counts of the Marca Hispanica had small outlying territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with armed retainers, who owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor, or to his Carolingian and Ottonian successors.

At the end of the 9th century, the Carolingian monarch Charles the Bald designated Wilfred the Hairy — a noble descendant of a family from Conflent and son of the earlier Count of Barcelona Sunifred I — as Count of Cerdanya and Urgell (870); after Charles's death (877), Wilfred became the Count of Barcelona and Girona (878) as well, which brought together the greater part of what was later to become the Catalan territory, and although on his death the counties were divided again among his sons, except for one brief period Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona continued to be unified under one count.

The rise and fall of the aloers[edit]

During the 10th century the Catalan counts became increasingly independent of the Carolingian rulers. Fealty broke down entirely when the count Borrell II made official in 987 when he failed to swear fealty to Hugh Capet, the first Capetian monarch of the emerging French kingdom. In those years, the population of the Catalan counties began to increase for the first time since the Muslim invasion. During the 9th and 10th centuries, the Catalan counties increasingly became a society of aloers, peasant proprietors of small, family-based farms, who lived by subsistence agriculture and owed no formal feudal allegiance.

The 11th century was characterized by the development of feudal society, as the miles formed links of vassalage over this previously independent peasantry. The middle years of the century were characterized by virulent class warfare. Seigniorial violence was unleashed against the peasants, utilizing new military tactics, based on contracting well armed mercenary soldiers mounted on horses. By the end of the century, most of the aloers had been converted into vassals.

This coincided with a weakening of the power of the counts and the division of the Spanish Marches into more numerous counties, which gradually became a feudal state based on complex fealties and dependencies. From the time of the triumph of Ramon Berenguer I over the other Catalan counts, the counts of Barcelona stood firmly as the link in a web of fealty between the Catalan counts and the Crown.