Marca Hispanica - Structure

Structure

The local population of the Marches was diverse including Hispano-Romans, Iberians, Basques, Jews and Goths who had been conquered or subjugated by the Muslim or Frankish Empires to the north and south. The area changed with the fortunes of the Empires and the feudal ambitions of the Counts or Walis appointed to administrate the Counties. As Frankish imperial power waned, the rulers of the March became independent fiefs. The region would later become part of the principalities of Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia.

Charlemagne's son Louis took Barcelona from its Moorish ruler in 801, thus securing Frankish power in the borderland between the Franks and the Moors. The Counts of Barcelona then became the principal representatives of Frankish authority in the Spanish March. The March included various outlying smaller territories, each ruled by a lesser Miles with his armed retainers and who theoretically owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor. The rulers were called Counts; when they governed several Counties they often took the name Duke. When the County formed the border with the Muslim Kingdom, the Frankish title Marquis was chosen.

Counties formed in the 9th century at the eastern end of the Pyrenees as an appanages of the Counts of Barcelona included Cerdanya, Girona and Urgell.

In the early 9th century, Charlemagne began issuing a new kind of land grant, the Aprisio, which reallocated land previously held by the imperial crown fisc in deserted or abandoned areas. This included special rights and immunities that allowed considerable independence from the imperial control. Historians have interpreted the aprisio both as an early form of feudalism and in economic and military terms as a mechanism to entice settlers to a depopulated border region. Such self-sufficient landholders would aid the Counts in providing armed men to defend the Frankish frontier. Aprisio grants (the first ones were in Septimania) were given personally by the Carolingian king, so that they reinforced loyalty to central power, to counterbalance the local power exercised by the Marcher Counts.

However poor communications and a distant central power allowed basic feudal entities to develop often self-sufficient and heavily agrarian. Each was ruled by a small hereditary military elite. These developments in Catalonia follow similar patterns in other borderlands and Marches. For example the first Count of Barcelona Bera was appointed by the King in 801), however subsequently strong heirs of Counts were able to inherit the title such as Sunifred, fl. 844–848. This gradually became custom until Countship became hereditary (for Wifred the Hairy in 897). The County became de facto independent under count Borrell II, when he ceased to request royal charters after the Frankish kings Lothair and Hugh Capet failed to assist him in the defense of the County against Muslim leader al-Mansur, although the change of dynasty may have played a part in that decision.

Certain Counts aspired to the Frankish (Germanic) title "Prince of Gothia". A "Margrave" is a Graf ("Count") of the March. The early History of Andorra in the Pyrenees provides a fairly typical example of a lordship of the region, and is the only modern survivor of the Spanish March that has not been incorporated into either France or Spain.