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Catalonia
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Peopled, according to the most probable opinion, by Iberian races, Catalonia was from the earliest ages invaded by foreign settlers, the Greeks in particular founding the colonies of Rhodon (Rosas) and Emperion (Ampurias) on the beautiful Gulf of Rosas. The Carthaginians left no traces of their presence in Catalonia, although Hannibal marched across it; but the Romans, conquerors of Carthage, making themselves masters of the country, founded its civilization and its language. The Catalan language, a neo-Latin dialect, differs from Castilian chiefly in the absence of doubled vowels and in the suppression of the unaccented syllables which follow an accent (e. g. temps, for Castilian tiempo, "time"; foc for fuego, "fire"). Catalonia forms part of the Roman Hispania Tarraconensis and Citerior, and the country is still full of Roman remains. It next formed the first State established by the Goths in Spain, Astolfo having set up his court at Barcelona.
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Catalonia was one of the first of the Roman possessions in Spain, and formed the north-eastern portion of Hispania Tarraconensis. About 470 it was occupied by the Alans and Goths. It was conquered by the Moors in 712, but these invaders were in turn dispossessed by the Spaniards and the troops of Charlemagne in 788. Catalonia was subsequently ruled by French counts, who soon... made themselves independent of France. By the marriage of Count Raymond Berenger IV. of Barcelona with Petronilla of Aragon, Catalonia became annexed to Aragon; but this union was frequently severed.
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The people of Catalonia have autonomy in Spain. This means they have their own local government, their own police and some control over their own country. In September 2005, the Catalan Parliament decided to call Catalonia a 'nation' according to Spanish Constitution which says that Spain is a group of nationalities. Catalonia is richer than many other Spanish regions, because industrialization began there earlier than in other Spanish areas. However, this relative richness is used by the Spanish state to subsidize other Spanish areas. There are a lot of factories and businesses in the cities.
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Catalonia has its own police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, whose origins trace back to the eighteenth century. Since 1980 they are under the commandment of the Generalitat, and since 1994 it is expanding in order to replace the Spain-wide Guardia Civil and Policía Nacional, which report directly to the Homeland Department of Spain. These corps are to retain a limited number of agents within Catalonia to exercise specific functions such as overseeing ports, airports, coasts, international borders, custom offices, identification documents, control of armament amongst others.
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In 2006 about 74 percent of voters in Catalonia approved a referendum on a new autonomy measure that had been passed by the national parliament. The referendum made the new self-government charter binding and final. The charter went into effect on July 1, 2006. Under the measure Catalonia obtained more regional control over the collection of tax revenues, immigration policy, judicial appointments, and infrastructure, such as highways and train service. The measure acknowledges that Catalonia considers itself a nation. It ... requires residents to learn the Catalan language.
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For some time, Catalonia continued to retain its own laws, but these gradually eroded (albeit with occasional periods of regeneration). Over the next few centuries, Catalonia was generally on the losing side of a series of wars that led steadily to more centralization of power in Spain. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (between the Castilian-French axis and the Catalan-English axis) in 1714, Barcelona fell to French troops. Philip V abolished the Crown of Aragon and all Catalan institutions, prohibiting public use of Catalan language for the first time, with the Decret de Nova Planta (New Regime Decree); this decree has never been formally abolished.
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Catalonia