The Roman world and pre-Catalan Hispania Tarraconensis

Abstract

An article like this can always omit things, contain bias and highly personal traits. Necessarily so. However, we have attempted to provide as clear an outline as possible of the evolution of a specific region over a very long period of almost one thousand years that has ended up having a tangible effect on what we have later become.

Leaving the conquest stage to one side, which is always personal in each of the regions that would end up becoming Roman provinces, for most of the events the similarities are so evident, so familiar, so alike that they undoubtedly belong to the same whole. If we ignore the details, the facts are uniform.

And it should be noted that the history of this long period must be reconstructed archaeologically - now and in the future. Documentary data are often limited and very frequently inexistent but that doesn’t matter. Such circumstances ensure nuances and new focuses based on new discoveries (also epigraphical) and new interpretations. And that’s good. «History» never ends.

Keywords: Roman Empire, Tarraconensis, Hispania Citerior, Via Augusta.