Importance of the Treaty of the Pyrenees

Alsina González
Specialist journalist and researcher

As "good" neighbors, France and Spain have "come to blows" (that is, war) on different occasions. Since the late sixteenth century, the monarchy Hispana was fighting a war of attrition in the United Provinces, the territory roughly occupied by the Netherlands today. France was not comfortable with the dominance of Habsburg Spain in the region, since it threatened the country from the north, with all the border Pyrenees to the south.

That is why, together with England, France gave aid to the Dutch insurgents, although the situation The military deteriorated in the provinces before the Tercios, the best infantry of the time and one of the best of the history, at the service of the Hispanic monarchy.

In 1634 the First Battle of Nördlingen took place, which gave the Spanish victory over the Swedes. France decides to intervene directly in the war instead of doing it only with financing.

In 1640 the Spanish monarchy had two more fronts, in Catalonia and Portugal, with separate uprisings. While he will manage to keep the first based on a huge military effort, he will end up losing the second forever.

Bleeding to death on multiple fronts, taking away the benefits that come from the American colonies, in addition to those obtained by the English and French corsairs, the Spaniards decide to sit down to negotiate with the French, who had directly supported the Catalans in their independence adventure, one more of several throughout their history.

At that time, France was not what it is today, and neither was Catalonia.

The Perpignan region was part of the latter (it was its second city), while the Gallic crown it protected some territories in present-day Germany, and did not possess others that are currently found low sovereignty French, although in general terms, the country could be recognized in what is today's France.

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, which ended the Thirty Years' War, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Netherlands.

In this treaty, a capitular act is given to end the dominance of Spain in Europe: the so-called "Camino Spanish, which linked by land the Spanish monarchy's possessions in northern Italy with southern Belgium, was broken when the territory of Lorraine was handed over to France.

From that moment, the tercios will no longer be able to travel by land to keep the possessions in northern Europe of the house of the Habsburgs at bay.

Obviously, this did not please Spain, which went to war with France, which was supported by England.

After a decade of fighting, the Spanish defeat in the Battle of the Dunes led both countries to sit down at the negotiating table.

The final result of those peace talks, carried out by Cardinal Mazarin on behalf of the French king, and by Luis de Haro in the name of the Spanish, was the Treaty of the Pyrenees, so called because it established the homonymous mountain range as the physical border between the two kingdoms. This treaty was signed on the Isla de los Faisanes, a fluvial islet located in the Basque Country, on the border between the two kingdoms.

By the Treaty of the Pyrenees, a series of strongholds located in what is now northern France and southern Belgium passed into French hands.

But who suffered the worst part was Catalonia: until then, the territory under the sovereignty of the Hispanic monarchy that had rebelled in 1640, was split in two.

All the territories that were to the north of the Pyrenees, with capital in Perpignan, were under French sovereignty, while those to the south remained under the tutelage of the monarch of the Austrias.

Although the French monarchy had promised to respect Catalan laws and institutions, not even a year had passed since they had broken their promise.

Thus, the Generalitat was prohibited in the so-called Northern Catalonia (Catalunya Nord in Catalan), and the language too, French becoming mandatory. In the southern part, the Castilian pressure would still take a few decades to provoke a new confrontation with the Catalans, the abolition of their institutions and the prohibition of their language.

The borders of Western Europe were established almost definitively with the Peace of Westphalia and the Treaty of the Pyrenees.

Fotolia image. alfonsodetomas