Generalitat de Catalunya

The crisis of the Bourbon monarchy and Napoleon’s occupation in 1808 created a power vacuum at the state level that prompted the self-organisation of the different provinces of Spain. The Principality of Catalonia did so by establishing a Superior Assembly as a temporary seat of power aimed at leading the emerging resistance. In 1810, the Congress of Tarragona, chaired by the captain general, brought together the Superior Assembly and representatives of all of the magistracies and the church. The participants swore to uphold “the laws, exemptions, privileges, good practices and customs of the Principality”. Meanwhile, the French occupiers—especially Marshal Augereau, who was governor-general of Catalonia from January to May 1810—were using political and economic promises to try to attract the Catalans, but ultimately the Principality was directly annexed to the French Empire in 1812 and became a department.

In Spain, the Central Assembly, made up of resistance elements, held sessions in the city of Cádiz. These meetings were characterised by the marked historicist influence of the medieval Courts—especially those of the Crown of Aragon—and signalled an attempt to compensate for the centralising trends caused by the inertia of the absolute monarchy and new Jacobin and Napoleonic ideas. Because of this historicism, manifested in the Constitution of 1812, the new liberal regime renamed the interim regional Assemblies using the traditional name for the political institutions of representation and government of the historical kingdoms (“Diputació”, or Council). Under the authority of Captain General Lacy, the Superior Assembly was replaced by the Provincial Council of Catalonia, which was formed on 30 November 1812. One year later, the Council demanded that the Spanish Courts return its symbolic Council House. Ferdinand VII returned in 1814 and absolutism was restored. He dissolved all of the institutions created by the Constitution of Cádiz, including the Provincial Council of Catalonia (although it was restored in 1820 at the beginning of the Three Constitutional Years).

An internal debate ensued between the historicist and Jacobin schools of thought within the Courts of Cádiz, with the latter coming out ahead. In 1813, a project was implemented to divide the country into provinces in such a way that the new districts were dissociated from the memory of the former kingdoms. The project produced around forty provinces, three of which corresponded with the territory of the Principality: Barcelona, Tarragona and Urgell. Another project in 1821 produced 47 provinces, including the new province of Girona, and changed the name of the province of Barcelona to Catalonia. During a parliamentary debate in 1822, the number of provinces was increased to 52, and Catalonia was divided into the four provinces we know today. However, with the return to absolutism in 1823, the definitive quartering of the Principality was postponed until the decree of 30 November 1833, which divided the country into 49 provinces and, broadly speaking, validated the previous division of Catalonia into four provinces.