It might seem strange to discuss rural communities in Catalonia and Valencia in a single paper. In the first place, the documentation is different in the two regions; whilst charters from the ninth and tenth, and even more for the eleventh and twelfth, centuries, abound in the Catalan archives, the history of Valencia at this period is dependent on brief references in chronicles and the meagre information provided by toponymy and archaeology. Further, the two societies themselves appear dissimilar: one Christian, the other Muslim. Even after the conquest of Valencia, the problems were by no means the same in the two countries; that of the future of the subject Muslim communities, for example, crucial in Valencia, was only marginal in Catalonia. It seems, nevertheless, that a link exists between these two histories. One major problem, in fact, was common to both; that of the consequences of the establishment of an order of the feudal – or, if one prefers, the ‘seigneurial’ – type on the life of the communities which predated it. This system appeared earlier in Catalonia, by the eleventh century, consequent upon a period of internal evolution – or rather revolution; in Valencia, it was imported in the thirteenth century by the Christian conquest.

Catalan village communities

BEFORE FEUDALISM (NINTH, TENTH AND EARLY ELEVENTH CENTURIES

The mountain communities

To reach as far back as possible into the past of the Catalan rural communities, we have to look to the mountains, to those high Pyrenean valleys which, from time immemorial, seem – I say ‘seem’ advisedly – to have experienced a stable history.