Crown of Aragon

A Mediterranean empire run as a federation of kingdoms that never merged. The crown was formed in 1137 when Petronilla of Aragon married Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona, joining an inland kingdom to a maritime county, and the pattern held afterwards: each acquisition - Valencia, Mallorca, Sicily, Sardinia, Naples - kept its own laws, courts and parliament under a shared monarch, so the ruler was separately king of each. The Corts of Catalonia and the Aragonese Justicia constrained royal power more than any comparable institution in Castile, and the oath allegedly sworn to Aragonese kings, that subjects obey only if the king respects their liberties, is probably legend but reflects a real constitutional temper. Its expansion went east rather than south: Peter III took Sicily in 1282 after the Sicilian Vespers, and Catalan mercenary companies fought as far as Greece, briefly holding Athens. Barcelona's maritime code and consulates shaped Mediterranean commercial law. Ferdinand's marriage to Isabella of Castile in 1469 joined the two crowns dynastically without merging them, and Aragon kept separate institutions until Philip V abolished them by the Nueva Planta decrees after 1707, punishing Catalonia for backing the losing side in the War of the Spanish Succession. That abolition is still cited in Catalan politics. Its language was Catalan and its records are exceptional. Barcelona, Zaragoza and Valencia were its principal cities. The Archive of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona holds one of Europe's most complete medieval royal record series. The Consolat de Mar codified maritime custom and was copied around the Mediterranean. Its four-bar red and yellow arms are still the flags of Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and the Balearics.

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