Generalitat de Catalunya

In 1833, Spain was divided definitively into provinces. A government representative (later called civil governor) was designated as the political leader of each province. Provincial Councils were not organised, however, as they were not envisaged in the Royal Statute of 1834. Revolution broke out in the summer of 1835—in keeping with a habit of self-organisation that was born and legitimised during the struggle against the French invaders, lasted until the end of the revolutionary cycle in 1842 and would also reappear later—and a revolutionary assembly formed in Barcelona began operating throughout Catalonia and sought to coordinate with similar assemblies in Zaragoza and Valencia. On 25 September 1835, Mendizábal’s government established the Provincial Councils by decree. They would be elected indirectly by those who paid the most taxes and chaired by the political leaders. They were definitively added to the design of the constitutional regime in 1836.

However, the outbreak of the First Carlist War set in motion another mechanism that was equally characteristic and recurrent in 19th-century Catalonia. Under the authority of the captains general—of which there was still just one for the entire former Principality (Espoz y Mina, in this case)—citizen assemblies were created. These organisations spanned Catalonia, operated better than the Provincial Councils, and were capable of imposing extraordinary taxes and issuing currency. Constitutional logic led toward unification and centralisation, much like it did under the New Political Order regime. However, the pragmatism of the captains general led in the opposite direction, toward a practical understanding with Catalan civil society and a brand of authoritarianism that was detached from the directives of Madrid and often arbitrary, yet more permeable than the ordinary channels for dealing with those in power. Shortly after the law of 9 January 1845 (a defining law of the moderate regime) reduced the Provincial Councils to the status of advisory committees to the civil governors, Captain General Manuel Pavía joined the four Catalan Provincial Councils to form the Assembly of Highways of Catalonia. The Assembly imposed extraordinary taxes to fund these public works and was quite effective for twenty years, until the revolution in 1868.

The Two Progressive Years (1854-1856) fleetingly restored the political model that had been abandoned in 1843, which theoretically gave greater prominence to provincial and municipal bodies. It was during the Six Democratic Years (1868-1874), however, that the shift toward decentralisation became more pronounced. Although the law of 20 August 1870 maintained the civil governors’ blockading powers, it also expanded and guaranteed the jurisdictions of certain Provincial Councils. The members of these Councils were to be elected by universal suffrage and select a president from among their ranks. The accumulated problems and instability made normal political operations impossible, but the Provincial Council of Barcelona became a strategic political scene: On 9 March 1873, diehard federalists incited the Council to declare a Catalan state. The fleeting Republic included these concerns in a thwarted constitutional draft that would have given regional states the power to maintain or alter the provincial division of 1833.

In fact, in 1876 the first legislation of the restoration returned to the moderate model. However, the amendment to the provincial law of 1882 partially reverted to that of 1870, calling for formulas to make sure all judicial districts were represented in the provincial body and guaranteeing internal presidential elections and extended suffrage. Universal male suffrage was restored in 1890. However, the establishment of dynastic succession, fraudulent elections and perpetually centralist government practices created an environment favourable to the emergence of Catalan nationalism. Nationalists not only demanded changes to the operation of existing institutions but also built specific alternatives for political self-organisation in Catalonia, from the federal constitutional draft of 1883 to the Manresa Bases of 1892. In a message dated 11 November 1898 addressed to the queen regent, the presidents of five Catalan institutions demanded a general council for Catalonia with a financial arrangement akin to that of the Basque councils. The Provincial Council of Barcelona made the same request the following year to the new Silvela government.