Are you ready to travel to Barcelona's Gothic Quarter?
We have prepared a video in which we show you the Gothic Quarter and its most emblematic places, while commenting, as we introduced in our written work, the connection between its construction and the legal project regarding Catalan foral law that the elites were promoting, at a time when the state was seeking a codification process.
We thought it was a good idea that the audio of the video was in Catalan and Spanish, but we have also added some subtitles in English, as well as we include here a transcription of what is stated in the video:
Spain is in the middle of Restoration, and in 1888 the Spanish Civil Code was approved. This is an important fact for Catalonia, because Catalan jurists, of conservative ideology, had specific demands regarding the content of the Code, and refused to abandon some of the traditional Catalan private institutions. Codification was a challenge for legislators, as the Church and the Foral elites (especially the Catalan bourgeoisie) opposed any Code that did not meet their requirements. In fact, the code of 1888 does not unify civil law in Spain: in Catalonia, a foral law of medieval origin will remain in force that recognizes institutions beneficial to the elites.
As Prof. Alfons Aragoneses emphasizes in his text, this need for self-defense of Catalan historical law is framed in the Renaissance: cultural and political movement that claims a regional identity based on historicist speeches. The barcelonine elites, the same as defending Catalan historical law, projected and promoted the invention of the Gothic neighborhood: the restoration of the cathedral quarter with historicist and medievalist criteria.
The parallel between the project, the legal and the urban development, is expressed very well by the figure Duran and Bas, a lawyer and the maximum representative of the Catalan Legal School, who defends the history of law and also promotes the restoration of Ripoll and the historicist speeches.
During this time of recovery from traditional Catalan law, the Gothic Quarter is rebuilt, re-invented, and the greatest exponent of this process is the Cathedral, the Bishop's Bridge and the facade of the House of Canons.
Aragoneses also highlights an important fact within the context studied: the approval in Madrid by Royal Decree of commissions charged with dictating the appendages of foral law in various regions, including Catalonia. According to the author, this decree is related to the organization of Catalanism and the later architectural manifestation of the movement in the Gothic neighborhood of Barcelona.
We pay particular attention to the Barcelona Cathedral. The current facade is in the Neo-Gothic style, being the predominant style of the neighborhood, and alludes to the past and traditional Catalan institutions."Thus, the neo-Gothic façade of the Cathedral or the bridge of Carrer del Bisbe are 20th century creations that seek to give a medieval appearance by inventing a tradition that did not exist and connecting the Catalan bourgeoisie of the 20th century with their supposed ancestors of the Middle Ages". Something similar happened with Catalan law, which was considered part of the story to protect its maintenance.
The Catalan bourgeoisie reflects its project in the defense of historical law and also in the construction (or invention) of a Gothic neighborhood that evokes the glorious past of Catalonia. One of the most important bourgeois families in Barcelona funded the Neo-Gothic Restoration. The traditional project of Duran and Bas is legitimized by the medieval architectural transformation, which makes the legitimacy of the project visible and tangible to the population.
It is important to emphasise that this has not always been the case. In the early 19th century, Catalan elites were strong advocates of Spanish nationalism, and historicist discourse did not include Catalan history. During the Renaissance, which is what is called this political and cultural movement of the late 19th century, the Catalan elites advocated the construction of a historicist discourse that connected the Catalan bourgeoisie with the historical institutions of the Middle Ages. That way, they redefined speeches legitimizing a different project of transition to modernity based on differentiation from the rest of Spain. The defense of Catalan foral law and the invention of the Gothic neighborhood are understood within this framework.
Of these facts we can conclude that, by reinvention of Catalan historical law and defending its maintenance and application, the Catalan bourgeoisie took a stand against the imposition of a Spanish civil code that considered only the Castilian tradition. Basically, they advocated legal institutions of medieval origin that benefited their interests (the institutions that remained, based on private property and the traditional family model, preserved the interests of the bourgeoisie). Hence the use of historicist speeches to reject Spanish code and defend the maintenance of Catalan historical law.
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