#la franja

Some real estate websites who want to sell houses in our country to rich "expats" saying that the town is full of this colour because of its "Mediterranean essence" and because it's "a fishermen's town" and things relating it to the sea. That is not the case, it's true that cultures in the Mediterranean region use this pigment, but it's not associated to the sea and it does not appear more often in coastal areas. You'll find just as many examples in the inland, if not more. Those claims are just a way to exoticize the coast and sell it with the words that these rich foreign people want to hear for their Mediterranean fantasy, disregarding the truth about the local culture.

That's what foreigners or people selling things to foreigners have to say. Now let's look at another possible mistake repeated in many local websites.

They claim that this colour was invented for the first time in the year 1704 by a Prussian man named Heinrich Diesbach. For this reason, this colour is also known as "Prussian blue". According to these websites, he would have been the first person to start using cobalt to make blue, claiming that before him the colour blue had to be made with the very expensive lapislatzuli, thus blue was extremely expensive before 1704. This is not only false, but shows a tremendous ignorance of Early Modern archaeology, because the vast majority of table pottery in the 1600s and early 1700s Catalan Countries and other parts of Europe was blue made with cobalt oxide. Cobalt blue was a very widespread pigment combination since the 1500s, and already present in this part of Europe since the 1400s!

Exhibition of pottery found in the archaeological site of El Born in Barcelona, Catalonia. The site was demolished and covered up in the year 1717, but most of the pottery is from the 1600s. These are examples of what is called "Catalan blue ceramics".

You might also have heard of Delft blue pottery, made in the Dutch city of Delft in the 1600s and 1700s, often with motifs inspired by Chinese porcelain (though Delftware is not porcelain). That's also blue made with cobalt.

Heinrich Diesbach might have made a synthetic pigment mixing different materials (including cobalt oxide) and industrially produced it to sell. But cobalt oxide had been known and used for centuries. It was pioneered in the Middle Ages in modern-day Iraq. It became very popular because the Persians sold the pigment to the Chinese (in China known as "Muslim blue"), where it was used to make the famous Chinese porcelain (which was very popular throughout Asia and to a lesser extent parts of Africa and Europe, in the Early Modern period it would also become very popular in Europe). Through the Arabs, it reached Southern Europe, where it became very popular, and in Catalonia it ended up becoming the single most popular colour for pottery for a while.

Left: the David Vases, an example of Chinese pottery using cobalt to make blue. Made in Yuan dynasty China in the year 1365. Middle: an example of Iznik (Turkey) pottery from the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul. Made around 1480. Right: vase made in Italy around the year 1520. Sèvres Museum.

I don't know how long it has been used to paint walls, but we can definitely find it in many European tiles since the 1400s reaching a lot of popularity in the 1600s-1700s including among the artisan class (lower class). Blue pigment would by no means have been unknown nor limited to the expensive lapislazzuli in Southern Europe before 1706.

I have found this short documentary by an anthropologist about how this blue colour was used in Vall-de-roures (La Franja) to paint the walls and whiten clothes. The industrially-made pigment that was comercialized to paint walls and wash clothes with until recently was still made of cobalt, as explained by this anthropologist. So, as pointed out in the comments, it can't be Diesbach's invention, because Prussian blue's novelty was the very fact that it doesn't use cobalt.

So, as far as I know, there is no evidence to claim that the use of blauet in whitewashing walls comes from Diesbach's commercialized combination, or that it was not done before Diesbach's invention.

But it's hard to say when it started. I haven't found much research about blauet's historical origins. Searching for it is also made difficult by the fact that the word blauet in Catalan is also the name of one of the most colourful birds of our country: the kingfisher. And there's many people talking about this bird, he's definitely a popular guy!

What your mother is referring to is that for many centuries Catalonia and Aragon were together in a kind of confederation. Neither ruled the other one, as was made very clear since the beginning by their laws, constitution, Parliaments, etc. and in fact it would have caused a huge diplomatic and political problem if either ruled the other, probably even a war.

Some people outside of the history field tend to have a very "fairytale" simplified version of what the feudal system and the nobility were like, with the king on top and various layers of marquises, dukes, counts, etc. under him. That isn't necessarily the case, the titles often have to do with their origin. In the Mediterranean, it was typical for that to not be the case (think for example of the Italian states like Venice, who had one supreme ruler whose title was Dux/Duke, same with the states of Florence, Genoa, Pisa...). If they were independent countries, why did their ruler not call himself "king"? Because he couldn't, because that's not how the title originated. When those states were created, they started as (formally, not de facto) vassalls of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, they were the nobles ruling a land that technically according to the law belonged to the emperor, but eventually it became clear that it wasn't the case and they were states. But the title had already been created.

The same happened in Catalonia...and at first with Aragon.

Map of the counties Hispanic March in the early 9th century (translated from Wikimedia Commons). I have painted the counties that will become Aragon in green and the counties that will become Catalonia purple for clarity.

Catalonia has its origins as a part of the Kingdom of the Franks (Carolingian Empire). The king of the Franks established this area as a the "Hispanic March" ("Hispania" is the Latin word for "Iberian peninsula" and a "march" is a borderland area used as a buffer zone) to be a shield between them and the powerful Islamic caliphate in the south. The march was made of various counties, each one led by a count (sometimes, the same man could be appointed as the count of more than one county at the same time). This means that the counts were NOT a dynasty (it wasn't passed from father to son, but each count individually chosen by the king and could be replaced by a different man at any time) but more like a magistrate.

However, at one point Wilfred the Hairy was count of most of the Catalan counties. The king of the Franks broke his part of the deal, and count Wilfred the Hairy made these Catalan counties independent in the year 897. Then, he died in battle and passed down the title to his son, Wilfred Borrell. This was the beginning of Catalonia as an independent country. From then on, the counts became like the popular idea of kings (the rulers of an independent country, passed from father to son). But they couldn't just change their title because that's not how titles work, you don't just make them up! So they stayed with the title of Count and started the House of Barcelona, who eventually brought together all the different counties that formed Catalonia. Catalonia also got its own Diocese (no longer is part of the Narbona diocese which is part of the Frankish Kingdom) meaning that Catalonia is now in every way an independent country. Since he is not only count of the County of Barcelona but has also brought together other counties, his descendants will be Count of Barcelona but also use the title of "princeps" of the Principality of Catalonia.

Meanwhile, in the Western part of the Pyrenees, 3 counties formed Aragon. It was also originally also part of the Carolingian Empire's shield (the Hispanic March) but it evolved in a very different way from Catalonia and was closely related to the Kingdom of Pamplona. At one point, the counts of Aragon marry the kings of Pamplona (Andreota of Aragon and king García II of Pamplona), and this way Aragon and Pamplona are joined (the king's title becomes "X King of Pamplona and ruler/count of Aragon", because Aragon doesn't have the title of king). Because of geographical reasons (a huge mountain range and rivers that created deep valleys), Aragon and Catalonia had very little contact during their formative centuries, until the conquest of what nowadays is the south of Catalonia and the south of Aragon (plain lands), but that will be later, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

If both Aragon and Catalonia had counts and not kings, how did Aragon eventually become a kingdom? It has to do with a split inheritance. Sancho III of Pamplona and II of Aragon (king of Pamplona and count of Aragon) got married to his cousin, a princess from Castilla, and had children with her. But (plot-twist!) he had an illegitimate son with the noblewoman Sancha de Aibar. The son was called Ramiro. With Sancho's death, his territories are divided: the legitimate children will be kings of Castilla, and Ramiro will be king of Pamplona and count of Aragon. Years later, there will be a crisis and Pamplona will separate from Aragon. But because it has been Pamplona who seceded illegitimately, the guy who is "King of Pamplona and Count of Aragon" is the legitimate keeper of the title of "king". But now Pamplona is gone, so he gets to keep the title King but only has Aragon, thus Aragon has become ruled by a king, and thus becomes a Kingdom. As you see, the titles don't necessarily match the land, it can work almost separately from them. What matters is, above all, who is the person/lineage (not country/territory) who has the title.

That is how we get Aragon and Catalonia, both with a similar origin, both equally independent sovereign countries, but the ruler of Aragon legally has the title of "king" and the ruler of Catalonia legally has the title of "count".

Fast forward a couple of centuries. Both Aragon and Catalonia have been invading southwards, expanding both countries in a geographical area that is quite flat, and come into closer contact.

The King of Aragon Ramiro II is in crisis and immediately needs allies because his political rivals are casting doubts about him being the legitimate successor of the previous king, who hadn't had children. He tries making an alliance with the two Christian countries that surround Aragon -Castilla and Catalonia- since both of these countries are more powerful and stable than Aragon. But Castilla and Catalonia are VERY different when it comes to politics, and this will be the reason why Aragon ends up deciding to ask Catalonia, and not Castilla, for this alliance. As it was usual at the time, the deal is sealed with a marriage and a contract. The marriage: princess Petronilla of Aragon (the only heir to the Aragonese throne) will marry the Count of Barcelona (as we saw before, the House of Barcelona has brought together many different counties so this really means all of Catalonia, but the title is still technically Count of Barcelona, even though it's not only the County of Barcelona) Ramon Berenguer IV. The contract: I'll explain it in a moment.

I said that Aragon chose Catalonia and not Castilla because they are different. What's the difference? Castilla was an autocratic regime, centralist, where the king has pretty much all the power. Catalonia has never had that, all the opposite, Catalonia had a system called feudalisme pactista ("agreement-based feudalism") where the Count doesn't have power to take decisions by himself, he always has to be negotiating with the representatives of the different parts of society, and had a series of very strict rules about the Count respecting sovereignty. For this reason, they see that if Aragon makes a deal with Castilla, Castilla will "eat" Aragon and, in the end, Aragon will disappear and simply become a part of Castilla. But, on the other hand, if they make the deal with Catalonia, they can join the monarchy dynasty but keep Aragon as an independent sovereign country. This is called a dynastic union, in contrast to a real union.

And that's how it goes. They make the contract according to which princess Petronilla and Aragon are "given" to Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Catalonia but with the condition that he must respect the sovereignty, laws, privileges and traditions of Aragon. From then on, the children of Ramon Berenguer and Petronilla and their descendents will have both titles: King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona. But Aragon and Catalonia remain separate kingdoms, each one with their own laws and their own governments formed by the local elites and representatives of the local population.

Neither Aragon rules Catalonia nor Catalonia rules Aragon. However, it's true that Aragon was a rural place with less population, and Catalonia was one of the main powers in the Mediterranean. On top of this, Catalonia's capital city (Barcelona) is on the coast and one of the most important commercial cities in the Mediterranean. For this reason, the kings spend a lot of time in Barcelona, so Barcelona becomes the de facto general capital but they still travel to Zaragoza (Aragon) and other parts of the countries often. Among other reasons, because the king must be present at the government meetings and lords' meetings which take place in each territory. (I think maybe that's the reason why some Aragonese people had often felt the need to call attention to Aragon's importance and to fight against a certain inferiority complex, which has developed into wanting to prove by any means possible that Aragon actually ruled Catalonia, which it didn't.) Aragon also adopted Catalonia's flag, which was originally the emblem of the House of Barcelona:

With time, the Islamic kingdoms in the south become weaker and the Christian kingdoms become stronger, and they invade southwards. That's how Castilla invades most of what now is central and southern Spain, absorbing it into the Kingdom of Castilla. Here's a map of the expansion (look until the year 1500 at most, what happens after is a different story).

Castilla absorbs, but do you remember how we said Catalonia works differently? Because of Catalonia and Aragon's way of working as a confederation, when they invade an Islamic kingdom, they keep it as its own kingdom (same as Aragon) with its own laws and government. But now instead of being an Islamic kingdom as it had been for so long, it's a kingdom that works in the way that Catalonia and Aragon do. That's how you get this:

The duchies in Greece didn't last for long, in the end Sardinia and Provence neither. Though Naples and Sicily were part of this confederation for a long time, they had a strong culture and less population movement, that's why nowadays the Neapolitan and Sicilian languages have a bit of Catalan influence but haven't been replaced by Catalan at all. But it was different in the nearest and earliest (excluding Provence) kingdoms conquered: València and Mallorca. Mallorca was repopulated by people from Catalonia, and València's coast was also repopulated by people from Catalonia while València's inland (right at the south of Aragon) was repopulated by Aragonese people. In the end, Catalan ends up becoming the language of all these places they have repopulated, and continues until nowadays. (Aragonese also became the language of the inland València, but centuries later got replaced by Spanish). Here's a map of the Catalan and Aragonese territories in the 1300s (left) and a map of the Catalan Countries nowadays (right):

And here comes a problem. We have all the individual kingdoms (+Principality of Catalonia which is not legally a kingdom but it has really no other important distinction than the name), each kingdom has its name. But what do we call the confederation formed by all of them together? Back when it still existed, they never gave it one official name. This is how they referred to it back then:

Usually, they referred to each kingdom individually.

When they talked about the king-count or the whole ensemble of territories, they would list all the titles. For example, Alphonse king of Aragon, of València, of Mallorca, Count of Barcelona, king of Sardinia, of Sicily and of Naples.

It was also not uncommon to sum up. Since the 12th century, we find often the expression "Aragonum et Catalonie" (Aragon and Catalonia, with the meaning of all the territories). Since the 13th century, "regno, dominio et corona Aragonum et Catalonie" (kingdom, dominion and crown of Aragon and Catalonia). Since the 14th century, we also find the term "corona regni Aragonum" (crown of the kingdoms of Aragon), "corona reial d'Aragó" (royal crown of Aragon) and "corona d'Aragó" (Crown of Aragon).

When Late Medieval people referred to its population as a whole, they used the term "Catalans", which included all the Catalan population (Catalonia, Mallorca, València) but also Aragonese people. It was normal at the time for Aragonese people to be included in the term "Catalan", which we wouldn't do nowadays. Mediterranean peoples pretty much always used the term "Catalans" to refer to all inhabitants of the Confederacy.

As you can see, many names were used, which can be confusing. And here historians had to decide what we in the present want to call that confederacy. You can hear these three options, all equally correct and all used by historians from all around the world:

Crown of Catalonia-Aragon. This term shows the dual nature of the territories, who always kept both Catalonia (and the other repopulated Catalan territories) and Aragon (and the Aragonese-repopulated part of València) as equals. It's also based on the oldest and more lasting way in which the people who lived at the time called it, as we explained two paragraphs ago.

Catalan-Aragonese Confederation. The term "confederation" wasn't used at the time but it allows us to be precise about what we are talking about.

Crown of Aragon. It's the latest term that was used. It has the advantage of being short.

All three terms are equally correct. In my blog, I use the term Crown of Catalonia-Aragon because of clarity. I think it's more representative of what this dual Crown was like, and also it allows me to explain things in a way that will be easier to understand for a foreign audience who might not know what the Crown of (Catalonia-)Aragon is. By having both country's names in the name, it's easily understood that Catalonia was there. But you will see I have also posted maps with the term "Crown of Aragon" and I have written in Catalan and used the term "Crown of Aragon", I have nothing against it. They're all correct, it's a matter of personal preference.

But the Aragon regional government has used this to spread Catalanophobia and to create a legislation for censorship. Catalanophobic people in Aragon and other parts of Spain have for a long time said that only "Crown of Aragon" should be used because Aragon was the leader and above the others. To anyone who has studied Medieval and Early Modern history (like me :p that's the ambit I work in), that statement is absolutely ridiculous. It shows ignorance, but above all it shows the will to invisibilize and play down Catalonia's historical importance. When historians, museums, or random people who are interested in history say "Crown of Catalonia-Aragon", "Catalan-Aragonese territories" or "Catalan-Aragonese Confederacy", it's met with a lot of hate from some Aragonese and Spanish people who accuse us of stealing Aragon's history, lying and manipulating history. As an example, in 2018 the regional government of Aragon pulled out school books simply because they used the term "Crown of Catalonia-Aragon" and created a government committee to overlook what is taught in schools to make sure it doesn't "take Catalonia's side". It's poltically-motivated censorship, hate-motivated censorship, ahistorical, ridiculous to anyone who knows history, and creating problems where there shouldn't be any. I would understand they would be angry if we started removing Aragon from the name (like they do with Catalonia...), but nobody is doing that. Their objective is erasing Catalonia and not showing it as an equal.

2. Aragonese Catalanophobia

In Aragon, there is sadly quite a strong feeling of Catalanophobia that is not only the general Catalanophobia present around Spain but takes a specific Aragonese form (afaik, generally from those with an understanding of Aragonese culture simply as a folklore manifestation of Spain, but it seems very widespread and this rhetoric wins elections). This is a view that takes all the usual stereotypes about Catalan people (greedy, untrustworthy, will try to steal from you, morally bad people, etc), the usual belief that Catalonia must belong to Spain forever (and very often with this word —belong—, not "be a part of" but "belong to") but it adds something new: the idea that Catalonia is somehow interested in stealing everything belonging to Aragon (similar to blaverism). This is related to the point we explained above about the Crown's name, but applied to other elements of history.

Thus, this regionalist (at best) ideology believes that Catalan people must be kept under control (with the police, the laws, the courts, the army if needed as was seen in 2017) because otherwise we will be an imperialist force that will take over others for its benefit. It's again the same contradiction we've talked about before, one of the characteristics of fascist thought according to Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism: we are at the same time a useless culture and a useless language, a waste of space, something that only a handful of rural uneducated elderly farmers speak, something that is dying and weak and doesn't have a future, but also we are used to scare-monger and gain votes in elections because we are scary, powerful, a serious threat, even imperial.

Catalonia and Aragon share a lot of history, for many centuries. It's a shame that there is hate from Aragon towards Catalonia. But the irony about all of that is that Catalan people barely ever think of Aragon. It doesn't have a lot of population and it's just not a place we hear about that often outside of history class. Spanish media doesn't often talk about Aragon either, so it's not in our radar.

But, the worst thing? A part of Aragon is also Catalan. They do this to their own population.

3. The Catalan part of Aragon

Here's a map of Aragon with the language areas:

As you can see, the whole strip at the East of Aragon, bordering Catalonia, is a Catalan-speaking area. In fact, some of its counties are among the places in the whole Catalan-speaking countries where Catalan is more used by a higher number of people in everyday life. This area is called "Francha de Levant" in Aragonese (Eastern Strip, since it's the East of Aragon) and "Franja de Ponent" in Catalan (Western Strip, since for us it's in the West) or "Franja d'Aragó" (Aragon's Strip), or simply "la Franja" (the Strip). Here you can see its location in context:

Why is the Strip part of the Catalan culture area but also part of Aragon? Because it has been like this since the Middle Ages, when both our cultures were being formed. Back then, there were two kinds of power administration: the king/nobles and the Church. The population of the Strip were Catalan in language and in close relation to the people from Western Catalonia, but the land was part of the Kingdom of Aragon. At the same time, in Church territorial administration it was part of the Lleida diocese (Western Catalonia). This means that they've always been politically in Aragon but more in contact with Lleida's area (people who went to study in Church schools would go to Lleida, their priests came from there so they gave mass in their common language, etc). This stayed like this for many centuries, Franco's fascist dictatorship tried to segregate the Strip from the rest of the diocese and give it to Aragon completely but failed and in the end they slowly introduced the change between 1955 and the late 1990s. For all of this, Catalan is part of Aragon's cultural-historical heritage in the Strip area.

This isn't directly related to what you asked, but I think it's important to keep in mind the people from the Strip in all the conversations about Aragon's Catalanophobia, because they're the ones who will suffer the most direct consequences.

Aragon's regional government pays a lot of attention to keeping Catalonia at a distance and not allowing what right-wingers call the "Catalanization" (whatever that means) to happen. For this reason, they try to separate the Strip from the rest of the Catalan Countries as much as they can. For example, in 2013 the Aragonese government passed a new Languages Law that didn't recognize Catalan's existence in Aragon. Instead, it recognized something else in the Strip, which they named LAPAO (stands for "Lengua Aragonesa Propia del Área Oriental" = "Aragonese Language Found In The Eastern Area"), in contrast to actual Aragonese language which got renamed LAPAPYP ("Lengua aragonesa propia de las áreas pirenaica y prepirenaica" = "Aragonese Language Found In The Pyrenean and Pre-Pyrenean Areas"). The people from the Strip protested and finally, in 2016, the law was repealed.

But this same logic of wanting to keep the Strip separated from the rest of the Catalan-speaking areas still stays, and people from the Strip don't have many language rights because they don't have much official protection.