Catalan Republic República Catalana (Catalan)
1640–1641
Coat of arms[1]
Location of the Catalan Republic. The territory temporary occupied by Spanish armies isn't depicted
Status	Republic under French protection
Capital	Barcelona
Common languages	Catalan
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Demonym(s)	Catalan
Government	Parliamentary republic
President of the Generalitat
• 1640-1641	Pau Claris
• 1641	Josep Soler
Legislature	Junta de Braços
Historical era	Thirty Years' War
• Junta de Braços summoned	10 September 1640
• Republic established	17 January 1641
• Louis XIII of France appointed Count of Barcelona	23 January 1641
• Louis XIII swears the Catalan constitutions	30 December 1641
Currency	Croat and others
Preceded by Succeeded by Principality of Catalonia Principality of Catalonia
Today part of	Andorra France Spain  ∟ Catalonia

The Catalan Republic (Catalan: República Catalana, IPA: [rəˈpubːlikə kətəˈlanə]) was a short-lived independent state under French protection established in 1641 by the Junta de Braços (assembly of Estates) of the Principality of Catalonia led by the President of the Generalitat, Pau Claris, during the Reapers' War (1640–1652).^[2]

As the conflict with the Spanish Monarchy escalated, the Junta de Braços of Catalonia, headed by the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Pau Claris, assumed the sovereignty and the effective rule of the Principality after September 1640 and ultimately, while the royal armies approached to Barcelona, accepted the establishment of the Catalan Republic on 17 January 1641. On 23 January 1641, due to the desperate military situation and French pressure, the Junta de Braços proclaimed Louis XIII of France as Count of Barcelona, putting the Principality of Catalonia under personal union with the Kingdom of France after December 1641. Louis XIII was succeeded upon his death in 1643 by Louis XIV, who remained Count of Barcelona until 1652, when Catalonia was reincorporated into the Spanish Monarchy.

At the beginning of the Reapers' War which started in 1640 (part of the wider Franco-Spanish War of 1635–1659) the President of the Generalitat, Pau Claris, summoned the 10 September the Junta de Braços or Braços Generals (assembly of Estates or States-General) of Catalonia, an extraordinary body made up of the representatives of the three Estates of the realm in the Catalan Courts (the parliament), presided by the Generalitat. The Junta was a response to the power void created by the Corpus de Sang events in Barcelona (7 June), in which the viceroy of Catalonia, Dalmau de Queralt, and the royal officers were assassinated by a multitude of peasants. The reaction of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the king's minister, was to prepare the military occupation of the Principality, punish those allegedly responsible of the revolt (both peasants and Catalan politicians) and then summit the Catalan Courts, in order to obtain his project of Union of Arms and various centralizing mesures under military pressure as it already happened in the Kingdom of Aragon in 1592.

The summit of the Junta de Braços was a success and an important improvement of representation by standards of the time, as it was also attended by representatives of cities which usually weren't invited to the Courts, as well as members of various feudal towns and, in addition, it mostly worked under the basis of individual vote instead of the traditional single vote per Estate. The new assembly began to assume the sovereignty, enacting a series of revolutionary mesures. Those included the establishment of its own Council of Justice in replacement of the Royal Audience of Catalonia (the royal judges were also assassinated during the Corpus de Sang), the Council of Defense of the Principality in order to raise an army to respond the expected Royal counter-attack, as well as the Council of Treasury which began to issue debt and a special tax to the nobility, while sought support in France.^[3] Bernard du Plessis-Besançon [fr] was appointed plenipotentiary of the King of France to Catalonia on 29 August 1640. On 27 October an agreement was finally reached with du Plessis-Besançon to obtain supplies against the army of the King of Spain directed by Pedro Fajardo, Marquis of los Vélez. At the same time, the Consell de Cent (local government of Barcelona) led by the prestigious jurist Joan Pere Fontanella, gave support to the Junta's decicions and approved its own expansion of representation, incorporating a sixth councelor as representative of the artisans, reivindicated for a long time.

With the victory of the army of the Marquis of Los Vélez in Tarragona on 23 December it continued its advance towards Barcelona, while the French army of d'Espenan proceeded to leave Catalonia to France at the beginning of January 1641. Negotiations with the French intensified, on 3 January a delegation of three Catalans met with Cardinal Richelieu who assured them protection if they were an independent republic like Genoa. On 14 January du Plessis-Besançon went at the residence of the President of the Generalitat, Pau Claris, to still conferring.^[4] The massacre perpetrated by the Spanish armies in Cambrils on 16 December, a method similar to those carried out in the fight against the Dutch Republic, convinced Catalan leadership that they could not expect any pardon or negotiated solution from the Spanish king.

As a result of the negotiation, on 16 January, Pau Claris presented a proposal before the Junta de Braços by which the King of France agreed to put the Principality under his protection if Catalonia changed its government to a republic. On 17 January 1641, the Junta de Braços accepted the establishment of the Catalan Republic under French protection.^[5] However, a week later, following the defeat of the Catalan army in the Battle of Martorell, close to Barcelona, du Plessis-Besançon managed to convince the Catalan authorities that the help they needed could only be obtained from France if they recognized Louis XIII of France as sovereign. Pau Claris appealed on 23 January to Louis XIII, recognizing him as Count of Barcelona (as Louis I) and thus beginning the process to place the Principality of Catalonia in a personal union with the Kingdom of France.

However, before the French king agreed to swear to the Catalan constitutions, almost a whole year passed, during which Catalonia was still governed without depending on any monarch, thus maintaining the republic in which the Junta de Braços and the Generalitat retained the real power. On 26 January 1641, as a result the Franco-Catalan victory in the Battle of Montjuïc, at the gates of Barcelona, the army of Philip IV had to withdraw. Pau Claris died a month later, probably poisoned by Spanish agents.^[6] His successor, Josep Soler, prepared the formal agreement of personal union between Catalonia and France, which was ratified by the Treaty of Peronne on 19 September 1641, and the Marquis of Brézé, Marshal of France, sworn the Catalan constitutions in the name of the French monarch on 30 December 1641,^[7] being appointed as the first French viceroy of Catalonia.

Louis XIV was titled as Count of Barcelona (as Louis II) in succession to his father in 1643. Finally, the dismissal of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the ravages caused by the famine and the plague, the commitment made by Philip IV to respect the Catalan constitutions and institutions in 1644, and the outbreak of the Fronde conflict in France allowed Philip's army to take Barcelona, thus reincoporating the Principality of Catalonia into the Monarchy of Spain. Then, the French armies and officers, as well as Catalans loyal to them, retreated to the northern side of the Pyrenees, retaining control of the Roussillon while maintaining the claim over the entirety of Catalonia until the division of the Principality between Spain and France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees, in 1659.^[8]

Part of a series on the
History of Catalonia
Ancient Prehistory   Iberians c. 6th BC – c. 1st BC Greek colonies c. 6th BC – c. 1st BC Roman conquest of Hispania 218 BC – 19 BC Tarraconensis 27 BC – 476 AD
Medieval Visigoths 5th century – c.720 Al-Andalus 713–1154 Catalan counties c.760 – 12th century County of Barcelona 801–1162 Crown of Aragon 1162–1715 Principality of Catalonia c. 12th century – 1714 Compromise of Caspe 1412 War of the Remences 1462–1486 Catalan Civil War 1462–1472
Early modern Catholic Monarchs 1469–1516 Habsburg Spain 1516–1700 Reapers' War / Catalan Republic 1640–1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees 1659 Revolt of the Barretines 1687–1689 War of the Spanish Succession 1700–1715 War of the Catalans 1713–1714 Nueva Planta decrees 1716
Modern Peninsular War 1808–1814 Liberals and Carlists 1833–1876 Renaixença 1833–1892 Catalanism 1870s– Tragic Week 1909 Commonwealth 1914–1925 La Canadenca strike 1919 Catalan Republic 1931 Republican Generalitat / Statute of Autonomy 1932–1939 Events of 6 October 1934 Spanish Civil War / Revolution 1936–1939
Contemporary Francoism 1939–1975 Transition to democracy 1975–1982 Statute of Autonomy 1979–2006 Barcelona '92 1992 Statute of Autonomy 2006–present Independence movement 2010–present
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• List of republics
• Classical republicanism
• War of Restoration (Portugal)
• War of the Catalans
• Catalan Republic (1931)

• Simon, Antoni (2019). 1640. Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau, Editor. ISBN 978-84-232-0851-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Serra, Eva (1991). 1640: una revolució política. La implicació de les institucions. Barcelona: Crítica.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

• First Catalan Republic