The Catalans have always been great sailors, merchants and industrialists. Since they were united under the House of Barcelona, their nationality has been threatened by marriages, alliances and conflicts with Madrid, and the path to their current status as a semi-autonomous region within Spain has been marked by eras of power and wealth. and valleys of weakness and despair.
Barcelona was not a natural place for human settlement. Its port was insignificant and its heights, Montjuic, had no water. The oldest testimonies of man in Catalonia come rather from other sites scattered around the region, among which the dolmens of Alt (upper) Empordà and the passage tombs of Baix (lower) Empordà and Alt Urgell stand out.
In the first millennium a. C. the lands around Barcelona were colonized by the agrarian Laeitani, while other parts of Catalonia were simultaneously colonized by the Iberians. The latter were great stone builders and remains of one of their settlements in Ullastret on the Costa Brava are still visible. Greek traders arrived on the coast around 550 BC. C. and found their first trading post in Empuries, near Ullastret. It was the Carthaginians of Nueva Cartago, in southern Spain, who put Barcelona on the map. They named the city after Hamil Barca, father of Hannibal, who led his army of elephants from Catalonia over the Pyrenees and Alps to attack Rome.
In retaliation, the Romans arrived in Empuries and began the subjugation of the entire Iberian Peninsula. They exterminated both the Carthaginians and the Laeitans and established Tarraco, in southern Catalonia, as the imperial capital of Tarraconense, one of the three administrative regions of the peninsula.
Roman Barcelona can be seen at the city gate next to the cathedral, while the 3rd century walls that once surrounded the city stand next to the medieval Royal Palace.
The foundations of the Roman city have been excavated in the basement of the Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat, and the pillars of the Temple of Augustus can be glimpsed inside the Center Excursionista de Catalunya behind the cathedral.
When the Roman empire collapsed, the Toulouse-based Visigoths moved in to fill the void. They had been vassals of Rome, practiced Roman law, spoke a similar language, and in 587 their Aryan king, Reccared, converted to Roman Christianity.