Catalonia

Catalonia — Catalan-speaking and autonomist. It began as the County of Barcelona and grew into the Crown of Aragon, a Mediterranean trading power with its own language, law and parliament (the Corts) — a fully formed medieval nation that joined Spain as a partner rather than a conquest, and lost its institutions only after backing the losing side in the 1714 War of the Spanish Succession. Industrialised early around Barcelona, it is one of Spain's wealthiest regions and its cultural counterweight to Madrid, with its own literature, the Renaixença and Gaudí's architecture. Suppressed under Franco and revived after 1975, it sees itself as a nation; the 2017 independence referendum and crackdown were modern Spain's sharpest constitutional crisis.

• Existed: 1137 CE – present
• Type: Entity