County of Barcelona

(Today part of: region Catalonia in Spain)

After they almost conquered the entire peninsula, Arabs were stopped by Charlemange (the king of Franks) at the end of the 8^th century at the Pyrenees after which he established Spanish March (Marca Hispanica). March was composed of a number of small counties (Barcelona, Cerdanya, Girona, Andorra, etc.) all of which had their own military units. As duchies gained their independence, Spanish March broke up. The Catalan language, which evolved from Vulgar Latin in the 9^th century, was spoken at the eastern part of March. Catalan shared many similarities with the Occitan language which was spoken in the southern parts of the West Francia (and later on in the kingdom of France) thus making a relationship between Gallo-Romance and Iberian-Romance languages. The political history of the area, which in the 70s of the 9^th century became Catalonia, began with the rise of count Wilfred the Hairy. This also marked the beginning of independence of the Wilfred’s successors in comparison to the rulers of the Caroline dynasty in the West Francia.

However, like Wilfred, his successors did not want to take the title of the king. When the count of Barcelona refused to take an oath of loyalty to the new ruling dynasty Capet in 987, vassals stopped existing. Counts of Barcelona were trying to spread their dominance to adjacent areas until the middle of the 12^th century. Such country, united by a count of Barcelona, was renamed Catalonia at the beginning of the 12^th century because the count of Barcelona was referred to as catalanicus heroes, rector catalanicus and dux catalanensis.