The Peninsular War: Birth of a Nation

Abstract

Catalonia and Spain were deeply involved in the Napoleonic wars. Spain’s war against Napoleon called ‘Peninsular’ by the English is ‘the War of Independence’ for the Spaniards, who, with the help of Lord Wellington’s forces, bravely resisted the vastly superior French army and created one of the earliest modern Parliaments, the ‘Cortes of Cadiz’, which produced a democratic Constitution whose second article stated that ‘The Spanish Nation is free and independent and is not and cannot be the patrimony of any one family or individual’. This is the period when, after a century of closer union under Felipe V and his descendants, the modern Spanish nation was formed while fighting against Napoleon. Catalonia contributed mightily to the war and to the shaping of the modern Spanish nation.