History

AN OCCITAN COUNTRY

The history of Val d’Aran is closely related to the Occitan culture from the south of France. Its bonds with France have already been stronger than the ones with the Iberian Peninsula due to the complex orography that has acted as a natural frontier during centuries, while the Garona River and its flow towards the north has always kept an opened door with the neighbouring country. It must be remembered that 30% of the territoty of the Valley is over 2000m of altitude and its Atlantic climate maintains a thick snow blanket on the mountain passes for several months a year, which was a great factor of isolation until the tunnel of Vielha was inaugurated in 1948.

The first signs of life in Val d’Aran date back to the Bronze Age and were found in archaeological sites in Upper Aran, mainly in the Plan of Beret area aside from other nearby archaeological sites which are currently being researched in the Aigüestortes i Sant Maurici National Park surroundings and are mainly remains of funeral monuments. Other remains that were found in several locations of the Valley, among them Les, Arties and Tredós, date back to the Roman Age, from the IV and V centuries BC. They were discovered in the surroundings of the thermal waters located in these three towns and they correspond with the first ones of Polibio, in writings where he cited a native ancient town which he named arenosi (past inhabitans of Val d’Aran).

The christening of Val d’Aran took place very intensely as it is also shown by the remains from the Paleochristian Age found in Garós whose archaeological site is still the subject of research today and from which a fragment, well documented and marked, can be seen in the Camín Reiau in its entrance behind the parochial church of the town. The Romanesque churches, many of them with phases added later, during the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods are also a testimony of the christening that the Valley experimented after the fall of the empire of Charlemagne.

WITHOUT FEUDALISM AND WITH AUTONOMY

But from the XI and XII centuries on, the attempts of invasion on the part of foreign towns were many and the fights and disputes between the Franks and the Spaniards (noblemen who tried to rule the Valley with feudal formulas backed by kings and Sirs) were intense, especially from the XIV century on. Nonetheless, the Aranes people maintain their system of self government with a territorial division interçons (political divisions),their corresponding conselhers (counselors) representatives and the Sindic(trade union) in a system of communal lands where the house and the family were the base of the social and economic organization.

The Aranes people voluntarily decided to stay under the Catalonian-Aragonese crown in spite of the many cultural bonds with France because their kings were the ones to honour and respect their administrative organization by means of different treaties and documents especially with the Querimonia of James II at the end of the XIV century. Thus feudalism was never established in Val d’Aran and neither was any other language asidet from the Gascon branch of the language of Oc or Occcitan language. This language is spoken today and evolved directly from Latin in a parallel way but separated from the language of Oil which would develop into today’s French language.

HISTORY DOES NOT FORGET

During centuries, the Aranes house was the base of the economy and the administrative organization was always in hands of the Aranes people even during the Absolutism period of Philip V who, in 1717, did not include it in the Nueva Planta decrees. The Aranes people had to pay a high price to maintain their privileges with the taxation of the Galín Reiau that had to be paid by every single household without exception. One hundred years later, Napoleon would invade the Valley in 1810 and the French king Louis XVIII would give it back to the Spanish Crown in 1815 so that the wife of the regent would abolish the privileges (which the Aranes people had been able to keep with great effort for centuries) and include Val d’Aran in the new province of Lleida.

The following years were also turbulent, with two republics and two dictatorships (the so called Dictablanda of Primo de Rivera and, after the Second Republic, the dictatorship of General Franco). During these years all the privileges conquered during centuries were lost in the ups and downs of history … although the Aranes people would not forget their fight and historic rights.

The prohoms of the Valley did not hesitate to demand their privileges again when Democracy arrived and, in 1979, the hecho diferencial (distinguishing fact) of Val d’Aran was acknowledged. But it would not be until 1990 that the same Aranes administrative system was recovered with the six conselhers (one per each terçon) and the Sindic democratically elected this time by means of voting and universal suffrage. On June 17th 2009, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the restoration of the Conselh Gererau d’Aran and its administrative organization, the proposal of the New Act of Aran was presented to the “Conselleria de Governació de la Generalitat de Catalunya”. This proposal goes more deeply into the current competences of the Aranes autonomous government (Conselh Generau d’Aran).