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Chapter 2
From Catalans and
Aragonese to Valencians:
The Role of Politics in the Making of
the Medieval Valencian Identity

Vicent Baydal Sala

Jaume I University, Spain

ABSTRACT
The medieval Kingdom of Valencia was created in 1238, after the conquest of Islamic lands in the Eastern
part of the Iberian Peninsula by Catalan and Aragonese people. New Christian settlers arrived from
Catalonia and Aragon with distinct identity feelings, but after a century a new identity was formed, whose
first expression was the creation of a gentilic, “Valencian,” for all the inhabitants of the new kingdom,
regardless of their Catalan or Aragonese origins. As this chapter explains, this process was closely linked
to the development of the political and fiscal structures of the kingdom, based primarily on the Valencian
Parliament, where subsides and laws were negotiated between the king and the community of the realm.

INTRODUCTION

Modern-day Spain is composed of four large ethnolinguistic groups—Castilian, Catalan, Basque, and
Galician—and the Spanish state is divided politically and legally into seventeen autonomous commu-
nities, some of which coincide with former historical territories, such as the Kingdom of Navarre, the
Basque Provinces, and the Kingdom of Galicia. The Catalan ethnolinguistic group is divided into three
autonomous communities that correspond to former historical territories: the Principality of Catalonia,
the Kingdom of Majorca, and the Kingdom of Valencia, all of which developed distinct collective iden-
tities during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, which still exist today. To be precise, in the
Principality of Catalonia, a Catalan collective consciousness was formed within the political territory
bounded by Sales, Tortosa, and Lleida (Cingolani 2015; Sabaté 2015); in the Kingdom of Majorca,
composed of the Balearic Islands, feelings of identity emerged that were linked to each of the three main

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-6614-5.ch002

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From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

populated islands of the archipelago (Majorca, Menorca, and Ibiza) (Mas 2005); and in the Kingdom
of Valencia, a collective identity was developed within the political borders formed by the Sénia and
Segura rivers (Rubio, 2012).
Nevertheless, studies on these identity phenomena are fairly recent, and for a long time almost nothing
was known about how they were formed or about the historical causes that gave rise to the emergence
of Catalan, Valencian, Majorcan, Menorcan, or Ibizan collective consciousnesses within the same eth-
nolinguistic group. In this chapter, we will focus on just one of these cases, the Kingdom of Valencia,
in order to demonstrate the phases of the emergence of the Valencian collective identity between the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Our central argument will be that the development of the main politi-
cal structures in the kingdom, such as laws and parliament, were the causes of the gradual construction
of an imagined community of inhabitants united by common interests that were distinct from those of
other territorial communities. The Valencian collective identity thus emerged as a consequence of the
progress and strengthening of the polities of the Kingdom of Valencia during the Late Middle Ages.

BACKGROUND

Balearic and Valencian variants of Catalan are consecutive dialects. In other words, they resulted from
the movement of settlers from the parts of Catalonia where the language had originally been formed
(Ferrando & Nicolás, 2005, pp. 101-107). The movement occurred following the Christian occupation of
the Balearic Islands and the eastern part of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula, which had been Muslim
territory until the 1220s–1240s, when they were conquered and colonized by Catalans and Aragonese
during the reign of James I, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona. Two new Christian political ter-
ritories were founded during that period: the Kingdom of Majorca in 1230 and the Kingdom of Valencia
in 1238. It was generally acknowledged during most of the Late Middle Ages that the majority of the
population in both of these kingdoms came from Catalonia. In 1334, for example, a Majorcan merchant
stated that he had seen another Majorcan merchant in Seville “dressed like a Catalan, behaving like a
Catalan, and residing in the Catalan corn exchange”1 (Mas, 2005, p. 95). Meanwhile, with regard to
Valencia, the theologian Francesc Eiximenis said in 1383 that “Our Lord God has willed that the Valen-
cian people be a special people chosen from amongst those of all Spain, as, although they have come
mainly from Catalonia and live nearby, they are not called the Catalan people, but, by special privilege,
they have their own name and they are called the Valencian people” (Hauf, 1983, p. 201).
This perception has persisted over the years, and when in contemporary times Valencians, like many
other populations in Europe, began to investigate their origins, they found them in the primarily Catalan
settlers who had come to the Kingdom of Valencia in the Middle Ages, along with a smaller number of
Aragonese settlers. For example, the journalist and poet Teodor Llorente (1887, pp. 118-119) asserted at
the end of the nineteenth century that “the industrious Catalans were the nucleus of the population and
it was they who gave their language to the capital [the city of Valencia] and to most of the new kingdom
[the Kingdom of Valencia]. Most of the barons and knights in the conquest, however, were Aragonese.”
Likewise, in the middle of the twentieth century, the journalist and writer Martí Domínguez (1961, pp.
108-109) pointed out that “Aragon arrived in Valencia with James I, in the form of a military and aris-
tocratic power. Catalonia, on the other hand, arrived in Valencia in its fullness as a people, as a ‘nation,’
as a whole.” Similarly, the essayist Joan Fuster (1962, p. 35) asserted during the same period that, “the
majority of the people who resettled both the town and the countryside were Catalan. The Aragonese

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 From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

who initially joined them were soon absorbed by them.” Nevertheless, beyond these repeated assertions,
a detailed study of the nature of this primarily Catalan resettlement during the Late Middle Ages, and of
the simultaneous process of the formation of a Valencian collective consciousness, was not undertaken
until far more recently, beginning in the 1980s.
First, the philologist Antoni Ferrando (1980) analyzed the changes relating to identity in medieval
Valencian society on the basis of the evolution of the name given to the language spoken by the majority
of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Valencia—Catalan—and the general course of its political insti-
tutions. He distinguished three phases: Initially, there was a “constituent period,” from 1238 to 1348,
during which the kingdom developed territorially and administratively, when the language was known as
“romance,” “plain,” “Catalanesc,” “Catalan” or “Catalan language,” consistent with the Catalan origins
of the majority of the colonizers. Then there was a “period of growth” between 1348 and 1412, when the
legal personality of the kingdom was established, during which new linguistic labels very occasionally
emerged, such as “valencianesc” in 1346, “Valencian mother tongue” in 1395, or Valencian vernacular”
in 1408. Lastly, between 1412 and 1522 there was a “peak period,” when a common feeling of a shared
Valencian identity arose among the inhabitants of the kingdom, along with the expansion of the use of
the term “Valencian language” to refer to their tongue.
In relation to this, a later toponomastic study by Enric Guinot (1999) of the names and surnames
of more than 40,000 Christian inhabitants of the Kingdom of Valencia between 1240 and 1425 gave
detailed and numerical proof for the first time that there was indeed a majority of Catalan colonizers
during the Late Middle Ages: as many as 65 percent throughout the territory, compared to 30 percent
of Aragonese origins and 5 percent of other origins. But the fact that there were different proportions in
different places gave rise to diverse linguistic majorities in the different parts of the kingdom: Figure 1
shows that, in certain inland areas or those closest to Aragon, Aragonese or Castilian with an Aragonese
substrate was spoken; in other areas (also inland, where Muslims and Moriscos remained until their final
expulsion in 1609), Arabic was spoken; and, lastly, in the rest of the territory (the majority) Catalan was
spoken, which they called “Valencian” from the end of the fourteenth century, in accordance with the
emergence of a collective identity linked to the territory and the political institutions of the Kingdom of
Valencia, as confirmed by Antoni Ferrando (1980), quoted above.
Nevertheless, the details of the way in which consciousness of Valencian identity was formed re-
mained unknown for a long time, to the point that several years ago the historian Agustín Rubio (2012,
pp. 140-141), in his meticulous analysis of the nature and implications of Valencian identity during the
fifteenth century, asserted that “the process of its genesis and its development—subterranean, opaque,
vague, and not shaped by a clearly identifiable chain of events—is difficult to analyze.” However, we
have recently been able to shed light on the formation of Valencian identity for the period from the
foundation of the Kingdom of Valencia in 1238 through to the 1380s (Baydal, 2016), when, as we have
seen in the quotation of Francesc Eiximenis above, a Valencian collective consciousness was established
that was distinct from the Catalan variation. In this chapter, we wish to draw attention to the fact that,
as in other European territories (Reynolds, 1984; Llobera, 1996; Opsahl, 2017), the development of the
political system of the Kingdom of Valencia was one of the main causes of the development of a distinct
Valencian identity, independent of the ethnolinguistic origins of its inhabitants.

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From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

Figure 1. Linguistic majorities in the Kingdom of Valencia from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries

THE MAKING OF VALENCIAN IDENTITY

The Catalan-Aragonese Conquest and the Founding

of the Kingdom of Valencia (1231–1261)

Following the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 between the various Christian kings on the Iberian
Peninsula and the Muslim troops of the Almohad Caliphate, Islamic power was greatly weakened in
al-Andalus, and major territorial advances were made by the Christians in the subsequent years. The
advances were delayed almost two decades in the Crown of Aragon, as Peter II of Aragon died in 1213
and his son James I was only five years old when he succeeded to the throne. Nevertheless, when the new
monarch reached the age of twenty, he convened the Cortes of Catalonia in 1228 in order to lay plans for
the conquest of the island of Majorca and to raise the necessary financial and military support from his
Catalan subjects. The conquest of the city of Majorca took place at the end of 1229, and the entire island
was occupied by 1231, leading to the expulsion of almost all of the Muslims and initiating a Christian
colonization led predominantly by Catalans, along with some Occitans (Mas, 2007). Shortly thereafter,
following the king’s return to the Iberian Peninsula, an Aragonese nobleman, Blasco de Alagón, launched
the occupation of the lands making up the Muslim taifa of Valencia, to the south of the Kingdom of

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 From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

Aragon, with the capture of the city of Morella at the end of 1231 (Garcia Edo, 1986). James I decided
to lead this conquest and initiated a long war against the Muslims of the taifas of Valencia, Xàtiva, and
Dénia, which lasted more than twenty-five years and was led by Aragonese and Catalan troops, and,
importantly, by the nobility of the Kingdom of Aragon (Guinot, 2017).
First, James I captured the town of Borriana in 1233, then, several years later, following the 1236
convening of the Cortes of Aragon, he launched the campaign to conquer the city of Valencia, which,
after a long siege, capitulated in 1238. Later, James I secured the successive surrender of the towns to
the south of Valencia and the cities of Dénia and Xàtiva between 1244 and 1246. James I allowed the
Muslims to remain in their homes and on their land in most places, but following widespread rebellion
by the Muslim population against Christian rule in 1247, he announced the expulsion of all Muslims
from the kingdom at the beginning of 1248. He was only partially successful in this, due to the resistance
led by the native-born commander, al-Azraq, who was finally defeated in 1258. From then on, the Mus-
lims were expelled from the main cities and towns, and an increasing number of Christian settlers from
Catalonia and Aragon began to arrive and occupy most of the Valencian territory. By the beginning of
the fourteenth century, they outnumbered the Muslim population, as can be seen in Figure 1 (Guinot,
1999; Torró, 2006; Baydal, 2012–2014).
It should be noted that during the first stages of colonization in the 1230s, the various cities and towns
that were conquered were divided between the king, the nobles, and the Church. Each of them selected
the local legal system they wished to establish in their territories when the Christian population from
Catalonia and Aragon settled. This meant that in some places the Usatges of Barcelona were applied,
in others the Costums of Lleida, in others the Fueros of Zaragoza, in others the Fueros of Teruel, and
so on. These were municipal legal codes imported directly from Catalan and Aragonese cities (Gual,
1947–1948; Guinot, 1991). Nevertheless, upon the conquest of the city of Valencia in 1238, James I
decided to create a new legal code, the Costums of Valencia —later known as the Fueros of Valencia—,
an extensive code composed of more than 1,500 laws, inspired by the principles of common law and the
recovery of Roman law, which gave great power to sovereigns as though they were the Roman emperors
of old. Moreover, the king set out to apply the legal code not only to the city of Valencia that he had just
conquered, but to all the towns and cities in the new Kingdom of Valencia, which was officially created
and defined in the code itself. In fact, that same year, James I convened an assembly of the main repre-
sentatives of the Aragonese and Catalan conquerors to demand adherence to the Costums or Fueros of
Valencia as the new and only law throughout the kingdom (Garcia Edo, 1996; 2008).
Nevertheless, in the midst of the war against the Muslims, apart from the king himself, only a few
lords complied with his intentions and began to apply the Fueros of Valencia in the places they had
conquered from the Muslims (Gual, 1947–1948). By contrast, most of the nobility of Aragonese origin
continued to apply the municipal laws from Aragon, which in 1247 were compiled and relaunched as
the Fueros of Aragon, a new legal code applicable throughout the Kingdom of Aragon (Garcia Edo,
2017). It should be noted that, unlike the Fueros of Valencia, the Fueros of Aragon had scarcely a trace
of common law and were laws of a feudal nature that protected the power of the nobility from the king.
Therefore, the nobles’ preference was to maintain this legal code in their territories. As a result, as one
can see in Figure 2, from then on, the Kingdom of Valencia was divided into areas that applied the Fue-
ros of Valencia, principally the cities and towns belonging to the king, and areas that applied the Fueros
of Aragon, belonging primarily to the nobility of Aragonese origin, with divergent political interests in
the two sectors.

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From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

Therefore, unlike what happened in many other territories conquered from the Muslims of al-Andalus,
for example in Castile, where merely honorary kingdoms were created—the Kingdom of Toledo, the
Kingdom of Jaén, the Kingdom of Seville, etc.—that had no institutions or laws of their own, James I
decided that the Kingdom of Valencia should be a new political territory, with a new legal system that
was clearly different from that of Aragon and Catalonia, established by the Fueros of Valencia. Once
the war against the Muslims was concluded, the king reinforced those structures, convening the first
meeting of the Cortes of Valencia in 1261, which made the Kingdom of Valencia one of the few lands
in Europe with the title of kingdom and a parliament that represented the political community of the
territory by means of the three estates of Church, nobility, and royal cities and towns (Baydal, 2019a).
The king proposed to the estates in the 1261 Cortes that the lords applying the Fueros of Aragon in their
Valencian territories should abandon them and adopt the Fueros of Valencia in order to ensure that the
entire kingdom should be subject to the same general law. This was promulgated in the same session.
Nevertheless, the nobles of Aragonese origin refused outright and left the parliament, as they wished to
preserve the prerogatives guaranteed in the Fueros of Aragon. This started a long conflict that acceler-
ated the alliance of the supporters of the Fueros of Valencia and the gradual formation of a collective
identity around the defense of these laws and the legal and political strengthening of the Kingdom of
Valencia (Baydal, 2016).

Figure 2. Division of legal systems in Valencia between 1247 and 1330

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 From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

The Conflict Between the Fueros of Valencia and

the Fueros of Aragon (1261–1291)

The confrontation that began in the 1261 Cortes between those in favor of the Fueros of Valencia and
those in favor of the Fueros of Aragon was, in reality, a dispute for power over men, goods, and land
(Gual, 1947–1948; Romeu, 1972; Cabezuelo, 1998; Baydal, 2014a). Unsurprisingly, the extension of the
Fueros of Valencia entailed expanding the power of the king and the royal cities and towns throughout
the kingdom to the detriment of the other lords. This was principally due to the issue of justice, as the
acceptance of Valencian laws entailed admitting the pre-eminence of the monarch in the exercise of cer-
tain legal functions. By contrast, maintaining the Aragonese fueros allowed the Aragonese lords to avoid
others meddling in these matters. Likewise, the adoption of one or other set of fueros also determined the
opportunity to establish monopolies and taxes: if the Valencian fueros were adopted, it was the king who
had a monopoly over the construction of mills, oil mills, furnaces, taverns, corn exchanges, and the sale
of salt, and he could also demand the payment of tolls for entering cities and crossing bridges, military
service, and other similar levies. By contrast, if the Aragonese fueros were maintained, it was the lords
who had the rights to control all of the above. In the same way, access to natural resources was also at
stake: the king had declared in the Valencian fueros that he had free use of all forests, rivers, pastures,
and quarries in the kingdom, something that the Aragonese lords refused to accept, as they wished to
retain exclusive use of all that lay within their territories.
Thus began a lengthy dispute between those in favor of the Fueros of Valencia—principally the king
and the royal cities—, who wanted this legal code to be observed throughout the Kingdom of Valencia,
and those in favor of the Fueros of Aragon—primarily nobles of Aragonese origin—, who wanted the
king to recognize their right to apply the Aragonese code within Valencian territory. The ensuing con-
flicts became increasingly intense in subsequent years. First, in 1264, the Aragonese nobles withheld
their support when James I had to provide assistance to his son-in-law, Alfonso X of Castile, to help him
quash the Muslim rebellion in Murcia. Later, in 1271, he convened the second Cortes of the Kingdom
of Valencia in order to try once more to substitute the Fueros of Aragon with the Fueros of Valencia
throughout Valencian territory. Once again, however, the nobles of Aragonese origin refused, despite
the king’s decree that Valencian laws must be the only valid laws in the kingdom for Christian settlers.
In fact, while the royal cities and towns reached an agreement with the king during these Cortes to re-
organize the colonization of the land taken from the Muslims, the nobles refused to take any decision
on their own territories within the context of parliament.
Finally, moreover, following the accession to the throne of Peter III, the son of James I, and the
beginning of the occupation of Sicily—which had been concealed from the subjects of the Crown of
Aragon—, a rebellion against the king broke out in 1283 in the Kingdom of Aragon, led by the nobility,
who made the most of the opportunity to demand the application of the Fueros of Aragon within the
Kingdom of Valencia and even to extend them to other places where, until then, the Fueros of Valencia
had been applied (González Antón, 1975). Those in favor of the Valencian fueros—the royal cities and
towns—did not hesitate to respond and met with Peter III at the end of the year to demand that the Fueros
of Valencia should remain in force. They even reached an agreement, the “Privilege of Fraternity,” by
means of which the king authorized them to unite militarily in the event of an attack from the supporters
of the Aragonese laws (Garcia Edo, 1988). It is not surprising, then, that when Alfonso III, the son and
successor of Peter III, convened the Cortes of Valencia in 1286 to ensure allegiance to the Fueros of
Valencia, he had to abandon the sessions following pressure from the nobles of Aragonese origin, who,

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From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

in 1287, with the support of some of the cities of the Kingdom of Aragon, went on to launch military
attacks on the royal cities and towns of the Kingdom of Valencia.
When hostilities ended in 1289 and the king convened the General Cortes of the Crown of Aragon,
in which the Cortes of Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia were due to be held simultaneously, there were
“magnas altercationes” (major disputes) between the two sides “ratione fori Aragonum” (over the
Aragonese fueros), which meant that the Aragonese and Valencian assemblies were delayed until the
following year. Finally, in 1290, Alfonso III brought together the Valencian estates and obliged all the
officers of justice, rulers, and notaries of the royal cities and towns of the Kingdom of Valencia to swear
to apply the Fueros of Aragon to all those who chose them or who belonged to places governed by these
laws. The king affirmed that, in theory, the Fueros of Valencia continued to be the only general laws in
the kingdom, but with the very important exception that recognized that a large number of inhabitants
in the territory could be governed by the Aragonese laws. Therefore, to all intents and purposes, the
Aragonese nobility had won the dispute that began in 1261. The issue still smoldered on, however, and
was not entirely extinguished, flaring up repeatedly in subsequent decades.
The intense dispute of those years prompted considerable solidarity among the members of both sides:
the nobles of Aragonese origin on the one hand, and the royal cities and towns on the other. The latter
rallied to defend the Fueros of Valencia and to attempt to resolve political problems in the Kingdom of
Valencia through its own Cortes, despite the constant attacks and sabotage against its legal and political
structures by those in favor of the Fueros of Aragon. Agustín Rubio (2012, p. 142), when speaking of
the collective identities of the time, asserted, “in the Middle Ages, wars, which create memories and
feelings that persist for generations, often raised moral barriers between people or regions within the
same monarchy, established identities, and created emotional bonds with the territory, uniting members
of the same territory against those from others.” As a result of that conflict, the royal cities and towns
developed a Valencian collective identity that was linked to the Fueros of Valencia, the Cortes of Valencia,
and the political development of the Kingdom of Valencia, which, following the end of the confrontation
between the supporters of the different sets of laws, made significant progress, as we will see below.

The Blocking of the Legal and Political Development

of the Kingdom of Valencia (1291–1330)

Soon after the 1290 meeting, Alfonso III died and was succeeded the following year by his brother,
James II, who immediately gave his blessing to the arrangement decreed by his brother with regard to
the dispute between the two opposing sides. In his first Cortes of Valencia, in 1292, the new king “swore
to uphold the Fueros of Valencia granted to the royal cities and towns in the Kingdom of Valencia, but
recognized the oath sworn to the nobles on the matter of the Fueros of Aragon, that is, that they could
use those laws within the kingdom” (Baydal, 2016, p. 70). Therefore, the situation stabilized over the
following years. This meant that the legal division shown in Figure 2 was retained, leading to tacit con-
frontation, which, although it no longer meant a return to civil war, significantly hindered the legal and
political development of the Kingdom of Valencia. It is no surprise that the Fueros of Valencia were
not applied throughout the territory or that the Cortes failed to function as a true legislative or execu-
tive institution, since those in favor of the Fueros of Aragon refused to reach any agreements within the
institutional context of the Cortes.
In fact, while the Aragonese and Catalan Cortes met frequently during the reign of James II—as many
as eight times in Aragon (in 1291, 1300, 1301, 1307, 1311, 1311, 1320, and 1325) and seven times in

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 From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

Catalonia (in 1292, 1300, 1301, 1307, 1311, 1321, and 1325)—, the Cortes of Valencia, by contrast,
met more sporadically (in 1292, 1302, 1314, and 1325) and with constant problems due to the ongoing
rift between the nobles and the royal cities and towns. During the 1302 Cortes, for example, the nobles
refused to approve any general laws for the Kingdom of Valencia, as they had done in all previous parlia-
mentary assemblies, so the laws approved were only applicable to the royal cities and towns. Likewise,
while during the 1300 and 1301 Aragonese and Catalan Cortes subsidies were granted to the king to
help finance the recent wars in Murcia and Sicily, and this money was collected and administered by
committees composed of nobles and representatives from the royal cities, in the 1302 Cortes of Valen-
cia, by contrast, the confrontation between the two estates was so great that although the subsidies were
granted, they were collected and administered separately, with nobles and royal towns and cities using
their own administrators (Baydal, 2012–2014).
The division persisted in 1314, when, in the following meeting of the Cortes of Valencia, the rep-
resentatives of the royal cities and towns were the only estate to negotiate laws with the king—unsuc-
cessfully in the end—, while both the nobles and the Church remained on the sidelines (Baydal, 2014a,
pp. 468-476). In the following year—1315—there was another conflict that, once again, demonstrated
the confrontation between the estates. The royal cities and towns negotiated a subsidy with the mon-
arch to build a fleet to protect the seas of the Kingdom of Valencia from Muslim pirates, but the nobles
refused to pay the taxes to finance this fleet. According to them, they would be affected by the taxes
that would be collected in the urban markets, without having given their consent. In light of the refusal
of the nobles, the representatives of the royal cities and towns claimed that they had had to decide for
themselves, since the nobles refused to enter into discussions and to accept the legal and political unity
of the kingdom: “They had to do it without the will and consent of the nobles primarily because the
majority of them did not wish to join the cities and towns through a single set of laws, the Fueros of
Valencia” (Baydal, 2016, p. 81).
Given the difficulties of managing the Kingdom of Valencia’s power relations through legal and
institutional means, in 1320 and 1321 James II attempted once again to make the nobles of Aragonese
origin adopt the Fueros of Valencia in their territories. However, after three months of meetings and
negotiations, no agreement was reached. In fact, the following Cortes of Valencia, held in 1325, ended
without any political results due to the confrontation between the supporters of the Aragonese and Va-
lencian laws (Baydal, 2016, p. 90). Finally, however, in 1326, as a result of a jurisdictional conflict over
who should judge a legal case—a noble or a royal town—, James II unilaterally decreed the abolition
of the Fueros of Aragon in Valencian territory, ordering that “the nobles and knights, and their vassals,
should be judged by the judges of the royal cities and towns, as stipulated in the Fueros of Valencia”
(Baydal, 2016, p. 91). This caused an immediate reaction from the nobility, and there was a series of
meetings mediated by the Church between supporters of the two legal codes, the result of which was an
agreement in principle that was due to be approved by James II. However, he died shortly after, in 1327,
and the deadlock was not broken until the reign of his son, Alfonso IV, as we shall see in the following
section (Baydal, 2016, pp. 91-93).
But first we should note that the confrontation we have observed caused two simultaneous phenomena
related to the collective consciousness of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Valencia. On the one hand, it
caused a clear division between the nobles and urban leaders, which, in contrast with what was happening
at the same time in Catalonia and Aragon, meant that no common term emerged to designate those who
lived in the Kingdom of Valencia. It is easy to find terms for Catalans and Aragonese in the documenta-
tion of the thirteenth century, and, for example, in the letters convening the Cortes at the beginning of

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From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

the fourteenth century James invited the “cathalani” and the “aragonenses” to attend. However, there
is no term to define all those settled in the Kingdom of Valencia. Instead, reference is made to “those
of the kingdom,” the “regnicolis Regni Valentie,” or, in the summons to the Cortes during those years,
the “inhabitants of the kingdom” (González Antón, 1981; Salrach, 1988; Baydal, 2016, pp. 74-75).2
Thus, the political division must have hindered the development of a united Valencian consciousness.
However, this did not prevent one from emerging among the members of the estate of the royal cities
and towns, who throughout this era fought for the legal and political force of the Fueros of Valencia and
the Kingdom of Valencia, and for the defense of the interests of all of its inhabitants.
Thus, for example, in the 1341 Cortes of Valencia, the royal cities and towns reminded James II that
“the Kingdom of Valencia must not observe the Fueros of Aragon, as it is a kingdom in its own right and
has laws and privileges of its own.” They did so again in the meetings of 1321, when they asserted that
“the Kingdom of Valencia is a kingdom in its own right and is not bound or restricted by the Usatges
of Barcelona or the Fueros of Aragon.” Likewise, when in 1323 there was a conflict between the cities
of Valencia and Teruel, the governors of Valencia appealed to the king not to leave the resolution of the
case to a judge “who is from Aragon,” insisting that he should commission one “who is from the King-
dom of Valencia,” suggesting that territorial origins would imply the protection of particular interests.
Likewise, in the meetings that took place during 1326 between those in favor of the Fueros of Valencia
and those in favor of the Fueros of Aragon, the representatives of the royal cities and towns constantly
insisted that “the conservation, fortification, and extension of the Fueros of Valencia” would bring peace
and justice throughout the Valencian territory (Baydal, 2016, pp. 79-93). Thus, the fight for one legal
and political body in the Kingdom of Valencia generated unity around a truly Valencian identity among
the royal towns and cities, which, when the deadlock was broken, was extended to all the estates, giving
rise to a common collective consciousness throughout the territory.

One Law, One Parliament, One Tax System, and Common Political
Interests: Consensus on Valencian Identity (1330–1380)

The agreement in principle reached in 1326 between supporters of the Fueros of Valencia and support-
ers of the Fueros of Aragon could not be realized until the first Cortes of Valencia held by Alfonso IV
between 1329 and 1330. During further, tough negotiations it was decided that the Fueros of Aragon
would be eradicated within the Kingdom of Valencia and that the Fueros of Valencia would be extended
throughout the territory, albeit with certain additions and modifications that would guarantee a series of
jurisdictional powers for the lords. The key nobles were granted full jurisdiction in their territories, while
the rest of the lords were granted fewer judicial powers, which were nevertheless recognized by all: by
the king and by all of the estates gathered in the parliament. In fact, the 1329–1330 Cortes were the first
in Valencian history in which a body of law was agreed upon by all, officially promulgating the Fueros
of Valencia from the era of James I with the new modifications and additions. As a consequence, during
the years that followed, the various lords who applied the Fueros of Aragon in their territories gradually
gave them up and adopted the Fueros of Valencia approved during that assembly, and so legislative unity
throughout the Kingdom of Valencia was attained (Romeu, 1972).3
Moreover, this major agreement put an end to the persistent confrontation between the main rulers in
the kingdom and paved the way for the development of a series of joint actions to protect the integrity of
the Valencian territory, Valencian laws, and the interests of the inhabitants of the kingdom, accelerating
the emergence of a collective consciousness. In the 1329–1330 Cortes, for example, the first general

39
 From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

subsidy was granted to a king by the three estates of the Kingdom of Valencia, which was to be collected
for six years and managed by a mixed committee composed of representatives of the Church, the nobility,
and the royal cities and towns (Sánchez Martínez, 1981). Thus, not only was legislative unity introduced,
but a process began that would lead to fiscal unity too. Likewise, a series of joint military undertakings
were launched involving both the nobility and the royal cities and towns, such as the persecution in 1336
of one of the leading nobles in the kingdom, Pedro de Jérica, who had quarreled with the new King of
Aragon, Peter IV. Further military undertakings included the organization of the defense of the kingdom
against a possible attack from the North African Marinids in 1338; the sending of a powerful fleet to the
Strait of Gibraltar, funded by a subsidy approved in the Cortes of Valencia in 1340; and even the Union
of Aragon’s rebellion against Peter IV, which, despite being a Valencian civil war between the rebels
and those supporting the king, was not divided according to the estates as before, but involved nobles
and royal cities and towns on both sides (Rodrigo, 1975; Baydal, 2016).
In fact, starting with the 1329–1330 Cortes, parliament was also unblocked and frequent Cortes were
held—in 1336, 1340, 1342, 1349, 1354, 1357–1358, 1360, 1362–1363, 1364, 1365, 1367, 1369–1370,
1371, 1373–1374 and 1376—, with the attendance of all three estates and the approval of new laws
for the whole kingdom. So there was little surprise when, in the 1336 Cortes, those that followed the
1329–1330 Cortes, the representatives of the royal towns explained clearly that the institution now
spoke in the name of the whole political community of the kingdom: “These Cortes represent the whole
Kingdom of Valencia, as it incorporates the prelates, monks, and clergy making up the first estate, the
nobles, knights, and squires forming the second estate, and the citizens and men of the towns of the
kingdom, who constitute the third estate; and it cannot be claimed, nor believed, that all these estates of
the Cortes, which include so many wise, worthy, and noble persons, may agree or permit that anybody
should be harmed or damaged” (Romeu, 1985, p. 27). In the 1330s, a political concept linked to the
new state of affairs began to be used in documentation: “the General of the Kingdom of Valencia.” It
was first used by the royal cities and towns to refer to the common issues and interests affecting all the
estates in the Valencian territory, but the desire to act together ended up being adopted by all the estates
(Baydal, 2016, p. 124). Unity among the estates was also achieved with regard to tax issues, as noted
earlier. The first general subsidy was approved for six years during the 1329–1330 Cortes, followed by
a three-year subsidy approved in 1340. A series of subsidies followed the Cortes of 1358, until, in 1363,
a new institution emerged, the Council of the General of the Kingdom of Valencia, composed of repre-
sentatives of the Church, the nobility, and the royal cities and towns, which collected and administered
the subsidies granted to the king by the Valencian Cortes (Muñoz, 1987).
As a result, the confluence of the estates’ legal, political, and fiscal interests also generated a com-
mon consciousness linked to the term “Valencian,” as all the estates now jointly supported the Fueros
of Valencia, the Cortes of Valencia, and the Council of the General of the Kingdom of Valencia. Thus,
from the 1330s onwards, shortly after the end of the dispute over the Valencian and Aragonese laws
and the initial consolidation of the Cortes as a forum of negotiation for all sociopolitical agents, we
can detect the use of the term “Valencian” to refer to those born in the Kingdom of Valencia. In 1336,
during the conflict between Peter IV and Pedro de Jérica—who refused to attend the Cortes of Valen-
cia as one of the few lords who had not yet adopted the Fueros of Valencia—, the king wrote to the
noble to inform him that he must attend and that he must “perform all the same acts as the nobles and
Valencians.” Likewise, four years later, in 1340, the king spoke in a letter of the “proxima Curia quam
celebravimus valentinis” (the next Cortes we celebrate as Valencians). Especially from the 1350s, in
addition to expressions used previously, such as “inhabitants of the kingdom” or “regnicolis” to refer

40
From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

to all those living in the territory, the term “Valencians” began to be frequently and habitually used in
documents (Baydal, 2016, pp. 151-152).
For example, between 1354 and 1380, the “Cortes generales a los valencianos” were held; “help and
succor” was requested from “Valencians”; orders were given to “Valencian knights”; and there was a
clear distinction between “Aragonese, Catalans, and Valencians.” A plethora of similar expressions were
also employed that show that the legal, political, and fiscal unity of the kingdom had given rise to the
formation of an imagined community of “Valencians,” who had the same general laws, who managed
their common problems via the Cortes and their own political institutions, and who paid and collected
the same taxes through the Council of the General (Baydal, 2016, pp. 152-154). This also coincides with
the first references to the language spoken by the majority of Valencians as “Valencianesc” in 1346 or,
from the 1390s, as the “Valencian language,” which shows that this collective consciousness, of a politi-
cal origin, also entailed changes in cultural perceptions. All of this indicates that the sense of a common
identity around the defense of the Fueros of Valencia and the polity of the Kingdom of Valencia that
had developed first among the royal cities and towns, as a result of the lengthy and intense confrontation
with the nobles supporting the Fueros of Aragon, began to be extended to all the estates following the
legislative union agreed in 1330. Thus, after only one generation, the collective term “Valencian” was
being used without any problems, and Valencian identity continued to consolidate itself further over
subsequent decades, as both Antoni Ferrando (1980) and Agustín Rubio (2012) have demonstrated in
their work on the fifteenth century.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

We have seen how the first collective Valencian identity emerged, an identity that included all the inhab-
itants of the Valencian territory and that was prompted by the gradual unification and development of
legal, political, and fiscal structures in the Kingdom of Valencia. Agustín Rubio (2012) has studied this
Valencian consciousness in the fifteenth century in a wide range of areas: Valencian historical awareness;
the defense of the Fueros of Valencia; the rivalry with Catalans and Aragonese in the common institutions
of the Crown of Aragon or in economic matters; the promotion of individuals born in the Kingdom of
Valencia to political or ecclesiastical positions; and the development of even more exclusively Valen-
cian institutions. The studies of James Casey (1999) have also shown how, in the seventeenth century,
there was still a level of patriotism among Valencian rulers, which was closely linked to Valencia’s own
laws and political institutions, and which goes some way to explaining the support of most Valencians
for Archduke Charles of Austria against Philip V in the War of the Spanish Succession (Baydal, 2005;
2014b; Pérez Aparicio, 2008). Nevertheless, there are still many areas to be explored in the nature and
historical development of Valencian collective identity.
For example, most of the references and accounts that we have of this identity come from govern-
mental elites who lived in the city of Valencia, but we do not know how it emerged over time among the
poorer social groups and in areas of the kingdom farther away from the capital. It would be particularly
interesting to study how this identity was experienced by the inhabitants of border cities such as Morella,
close to Aragon and Catalonia, or Orihuela, near the border with Castile. Likewise, we know little about
how the Valencian collective identity was affected by integration within the Spanish Monarchy during the
sixteenth century, or the effect of the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 and the widespread economic
collapse of the territory in the subsequent decades. Everything would seem to indicate that the economic

41
 From Catalans and Aragonese to Valencians

and political frailty caused by the decision taken by Philip III also entailed a decline of the Valencian
collective consciousness, leading to a process of linguistic Castilianization among the elites that came
much earlier and that was much more intense than in Catalonia (Baydal, 2019b). Therefore, it would
be particularly interesting to compare the various historical territories of the Catalan ethnolinguistic
group, as any comparative analysis between Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca in the Middle Ages, the
early modern period, or the contemporary era would reveal much about the characteristics and evolu-
tion of their respective societies. In particular, a comparative study of the development of Catalan and
Valencian collective identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which gave rise to completely
different realities—in Catalonia, the emergence of a hegemonic Catalan nationalism, and in Valencia, a
hegemonic Castilian-Spanish nationalism—, would appear to offer particularly interesting conclusions.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have reconstructed the formation of an imagined community among the Christian
settlers who arrived in the Kingdom of Valencia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in a way that
was independent of and parallel to their territorial and ethnic origins. As we have seen, in a popula-
tion made up of approximately two thirds of inhabitants of Catalan origin and one third of Aragonese
origin, a unity of interests was built around the defense of the Fueros of Valencia against the Fueros of
Aragon, and around the promotion of the political and fiscal institutions of the Kingdom of Valencia,
such as the Cortes of Valencia and the Council of the General of the Kingdom of Valencia. A collective
consciousness thus arose first among the royal towns and cities and later among all the estates. From
the middle of the fourteenth century, this collective consciousness clearly distinguished those born on
Valencian territory from Catalans and Aragonese. This also led to the emergence of the collective term
“Valencian,” which not only began to be applied to the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Valencia, but
also, and particularly at the end of the fourteenth century and throughout the fifteenth century, to the
language spoken by the majority, in spite of its Catalan origins. It is for this reason that, despite their
mainly Catalan ancestors, the inhabitants of the Valencian territory began to see themselves as Valen-
cian and developed a collective Valencian identity, which, despite ongoing historical transformations,
still exists to this day and provides a foundation for one of the autonomous communities that makes up
the Spanish state, taking its place alongside other communities such as Navarre, Galicia, Aragon, the
Balearic Islands, and Catalonia.

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ENDNOTES
1
Unless otherwise stated, all translations of cited foreign-language material in this article are our
own.
2
The term “Valencian” is used in documentation from the thirteenth century and the beginning of
the fourteenth century, but it only referred to inhabitants of the city of Valencia or members of the
diocese of Valencia, not to all settlers in the Kingdom of Valencia.
3
Only a few important lords refused to give up the Fueros of Aragon and maintained them until 1626,
but they constituted a tiny percentage within the Kingdom of Valencia (Baydal, 2016, p. 111).

45