Generalitat de Catalunya

In the General Corts of Barcelona in 1481, King Ferdinand II reaffirmed his respect for the system constructed by means of pacts in the aforementioned Observance constitution, which began with the words: “Of little use will Laws and Constitutions be if we and our Officials do not observe them” Yet in a general sense, from this time on, the complex legislation that he pushed through until the end of his reign in 1516, was designed to reinforce the power of the monarch, with the introduction of new institutions with royal dependence, such as the Inquisition – which immediately created conflict with the Generalitat and the other Catalan guilds – and the Catalan High Court (until then the Royal High Court was itinerant and shared by all the realms of the Crown of Aragon), or by reforming those already existing, such as Barcelona’s Council of One Hundred or the Generalitat itself.

The point that would permit royal intervention in these guilds was poor economic administration and especially lack of punctuality in payments to those purchasing government debt bonds, a problem that interested the upper classes of Catalan society, and where the king could therefore count on a general consensus if he were able to improve these finances. Ferdinand II kept all the posts of the Generalitat sequestered over the period from 1488 to 1493, and introduced the system of balloting (drawing of lots) for the election of the six members of the consistory, with the aim of breaking the monopolising of these posts by an oligarchy that was becoming increasingly restricted and corrupt.

Furthermore, infraction processes, and complaints in general coming from the Generalitat had to be settled by the New Royal High Court, and in fact this meant the annulment of guarantees of justice, since this organism emanating from the king never condemned any royal official, thereby making the “Poc valria” constitution a worthless document.

Throughout the 16th century, the absenteeism of the Spanish monarchs was permanent, and if under Charles I, Corts were held more or less every five years, under Phillip I (II of Castille) they were called more and more rarely. In this context, the Assemblies of Arms came to be held with increasing frequency, meeting in the same Generalitat House, and entailed an important if disordered expansion of social representation. This new role of the classes in the reinforcement and control of the Generalitat, which neutralised to a certain extent the ballot system, was consolidated at the Cort of 1585 with the formalisation of the Eighteenths or commissions emanating from the Assembly of Arms with the aim of carrying out the political decisions arrived at regarding the affair that had caused the assembly to be called.

Towards the end of the 16th century, the organic structure of the Generalitat was headed by three members of parliament and three account auditors (one per Braç), with a purely ceremonial presidency always favouring the ecclesiastic member. The central administration, established in the Generalitat House in Barcelona- extended and enlarged by the new St Jaume Square frontage – consisted of a head clerk, an accounts administrator and an officer, who had various clerks working under them. Tax collection was entrusted to the landlords and the collectors of the different taxes. With regard to fiscal operation, a stable network of local representatives of the Generalitat was gradually built up, which coincided approximately with the royal regions known as vegueries and covered two hundred and thirty four towns and villages, with around five hundred agents and another five hundred ‘warblers’ or informer spies. This institutional deployment was a clear indication of what the main function of the Generalitat continued to be, while at the same time it reflected directly the profitability of the tax system itself, and indirectly the substantial increase in income from the reconstruction of social wealth in Catalonia once the crisis of the end of the 15th century had been overcome.