Decadència

The early modern period (late 15th or 16th-18th centuries) in Catalan literature and historiography, while extremely productive for Castilian writers of the Siglo de Oro, has been termed La Decadència (Catalan pronunciation: [ɫə ðəkəˈðɛnsiə], Western Catalan: [la ðekaˈðɛnsia]; "The Decadence"), an era of decadence in Catalan literature and history, generally thought to be caused by a general falling into disuse of the vernacular language in cultural contexts and lack of patronage among the nobility, even in lands of the Crown of Aragon. This decadence is thought to accompany the general Castilianization of Spain and overall neglect for the Crown of Aragon's institutions after the dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon that resulted from the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, a union finalized in 1474.

This is, however, a Romantic view made popular by writers and thinkers of the national awakening period known as Renaixença, in the 19th century. This presumed state of decadence is being contested with the appearance of recent cultural and literary studies showing there were indeed works of note in the period.

Historically, the decadent period refers to the decline of the thriving commercial Mediterranean empire that was the Crown of Aragon’s exclusive provenance, which was absorbed into the Trastámara and later the Habsburg dynasties. What this signified was that the thriving bourgeoisie and commerce of the Crown of Aragon became subject to the increasingly inward-looking and absolutist policies that characterized Castile (Elliott 34). The Catalan-Aragonese empire declined for several reasons: the outbreaks of the black plague in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that decimated the population; banking failures led to increased Italian involvement and loss of Mediterranean market share; the textile trade foundered; and, most importantly, the civil war of 1462-72 left the Crown of Aragon “a war-torn country, shorn of two of its richest provinces [Cerdanya and Roussillon], and its problems all unsolved” (Elliott 37-41). In other words, the decadence of the Crown of Aragon led directly to the ascendance of Castile and the Habsburg empire. During the time of the literary production of the Catalan baroque (approx. 1600-1740), it is important to note the growing opposition to the Habsburg monarchy and its absolutist policies, especially under the Conde-Duque de Olivares’ regime. Catalonia was a separate kingdom of the monarchy with its own institutions (the Diputació, Generalitat, Consell de Cent, etc.), liberties, exemptions, laws, and, of course, language. It was governed much like a colony, albeit a privileged one, yet one whose institutions and importance were being ignored if not openly attacked. Since the Habsburg monarchy was more of a federation of separate kingdoms than an absolutely centralized system of power, Olivares ran into serious problems of troop recruitment and financing his frequent military endeavors, as evidenced by his “Unión de armas” project begun in 1624, which never came to fruition. The year 1640—which Olivares described as “el más infeliz que esta Monarquía ha alcanzado” [the worst that this Monarchy has suffered] in a memorial—saw revolts both in Catalonia and Portugal. While the direct cause of the war was the billeting of Castilian troops in Catalonia for the war with France, it is clear that years of neglect for Catalan institutions and privileges also led to the conflict. Pau Claris declared Catalonia a republic under the protection of France in 1641. With further conflict looming on the horizon with the War of Succession that finally led to the abolition of all Catalan rights, privileges, and attempted to abolish the language itself with the Nueva Planta Decrees in 1714, these were dire times for Catalans; yet they were also times in which a new identity was being forged under the aegis of a new literary, linguistic, and national consciousness in which the writers of the baroque participated heavily. Writers such as Francesc Vicenç Garcia and Josep Romaguera wished to revitalize Catalan literary language by importing forms taken from the Castilian Baroque.

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