Parliament of Catalonia - Barcelona, Spain - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

The Parliament of Catalonia is the unicameral legislature of Catalonia. It is formed by 135 members, who are elected every four years or after extraordinary dissolution, chosen by universal suffrage in lists with four constituencies, the Catalan provinces.

The first representative and legislative bodies in Catalonia were the Peace and Truce of God Assemblies, of which the earliest record dates from 1027. These were originally ad hoc, local meetings convened by the Church but progressively became subsumed into the court of the Counts of Barcelona.

Although the Counts of Barcelona, also Kings of Aragon from 1137, had greatly extended the territory under their control, their financial and military power was quite limited, partly because of their former status as vassals of the Carolingian dynasty. Their personal resources were particularly insufficient in periods of economic crisis or military expansion, of which they were many from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The need to secure troops and revenue led to the steady expansion of the royal court and a formalisation of its procedures. It came to be referred to as the Cort General de Catalunya or Corts catalanes, and was endowed with formal procedures, effectively a written constitution, by King Peter III of Aragon in 1283.

The Corts Catalanes were composed of Three Estates, representing the Church, the feudal nobles and the citizens of Royal towns such as Barcelona or Girona. Inhabitants of feudal towns were not represented, except by their overlords. The main function of the Corts was legislative, either in approving laws proposed by the King (Constitucions) or at their own initiative (capítols de cort). Although the Corts met at irregular intervals, it also formally approved the acts of the King between their sessions and, from 1359, established a permanent delegation to oversee the Crown. The Catalan Courts were abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees in 1715 after Catalonia's defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession.

There were several attempts in the early 20th century to institute an autonomous system of representation for Catalonia. The Commonwealth of Catalonia (1914–25) was an assembly without legislative powers of the provincial delegations of Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona, abolished by the Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1925. After an abortive declaration of a Catalan Republic in April 1931, a separate Parliament of Catalonia was established under the first Statute of Autonomy approved by the new Spanish Republic, and was elected on 20 November 1932. This Parliament developed an advanced social and democratic laws in different areas (civil right, culture, health...), but it was suspended between 1934 and 1936, and abolished by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in 1938. The first legislature of the current Parliament of Catalonia was elected in 1980. The most recent parliamentary elections were held on 27 September 2015.

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