Acceso usuarios
Joan Lluís Palos
The revolution of 1640 represented the last chapter of an extended period of confrontation between the Catalan authorities and the central administration of the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy. To Catalan nationalist historians the origin of those difficulties was nothing other than the disregard of the king and his ministers for the constitutions of the Principality. Spanish centralist‐inspired historians, on the other hand, have stressed the defective working of Catalonia's self‐governing institutions as well as the corruption of her rulers who tried to escape royal authority for their own personal advantage. Taking its starting point in the study of the failed Corts (Estates) of 1626–32, the purpose of this article is to show how, although both interpretations convey a part of the truth, the problem had more general causes. In common with all the new political entities born at the beginning of the early modern period, the Habsburg Monarchy consisted of an ensemble of heterogeneous and poorly interconnected territories. As long as the central government was able to moderate its demands, the union was maintained without too many difficulties; but when military imperatives brought an intensification of fiscal pressure, that unity began to crack.
