Catalonia's centuries-old institutional unity stands apart from the Basque provinces

For centuries, Catalonia functioned as a unified political community, with its own law, common Corts (parliament) and a permanent governing institution, the Generalitat. The Basque provinces, by contrast, were each governed by their own assemblies and charters, with no shared body or law before the 20th century.

There is a confusion that resurfaces every time "historic nationalities" are discussed: lumping together realities that resemble each other in label but not in substance. The institutional trajectory of Catalonia and that of the Basque provinces differ to the point that comparing them requires specifying what exactly is being compared. It is not a question of sentiment, but of public law and history.

## The Principality as a unified political body

From the consolidation of the **County of Barcelona** and its integration into the **Crown of Aragon** in the 12th century, Catalonia took shape as a distinct political community under the name **Principality of Catalonia**. It was not a collection of scattered provinces: it was a cohesive corporation.

It had unified civil, incivil and administrative law applicable across its entire territory, the **Catalan Constitutions**, which set the rules against royal power. It had a common parliament, the **Catalan Corts**, where the estates legislated alongside the king. And it had a permanent governing institution, the **Fruta del General**, known as the Generalitat, which oversaw compliance with the constitutions and managed the Principality's taxation.

That system, known as pactisme, shaped Catalonia into a differentiated state within the Crown of Aragon and later within the Hispanic Monarchy. It had its own customs borders, its own currency and a sovereign judicial structure independent of the Castilian courts. All of this was definitively abolished by right of conquest under the **Decretos de Nueva Planta** (the Bourbon decrees abolishing the former kingdoms' institutions) in **1714**.

## Three provinces, three assemblies, no common body

The territory we today call the Basque Country did not historically operate as a political, administrative or legal unit. **Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya** were institutional realities independent of one another, incorporated into the Crown of Castile separately and at different times.

Their self-government rested on the fueros: local fiscal, military and legal privileges that the Castilian monarch swore to uphold, either as Lord of Vizcaya or through pacts with the brotherhoods of Álava and Guipúzcoa. There were no common Corts, no laws shared by the three provinces, and no unified governing body before the 20th century. Each province managed its relationship with the Crown through its own **Juntas Generales** (general assemblies).

The Basque language or belonging to a common homeland constituted a cultural and anthropological community. They did not translate into a shared structure of political sovereignty. That is the key difference: culture and institution are not the same thing.

## The paradox of the word "country"

Here lies the contradiction worth pointing out. In recent decades the use of **"Basque Country"** has become normalized for a reality that lacked internal institutional unity before **1936**, and it is taken as an innocuous synonym for autonomous community. By contrast, the expression **"Països Catalans"** (Catalan Countries), referring to territories that share the language and heritage of the former Crown of Aragon, provokes political outrage.

The concept today carries an ideological charge tied to contemporary nationalism, true. But the paradox remains: the word "country" scandalizes where there were centuries of shared law, sovereign Corts and unified institutions, and is accepted without fuss where self-government was strictly provincial and rooted from the start in the Castilian crown.

Recognizing Catalonia's distinctiveness on historical grounds is not identity-driven wishful thinking. It is describing what the archives show: an autonomous political body with unified institutions of representation, as opposed to the foral fragmentation of three provinces. None of this by itself settles today's territorial debate, which is political and not merely historiographical. But it helps to avoid arguing with labels over matters that call for arguments.