The late mediaeval General Court of Catalonia and early constitutionalism

Abstract

This text analyses the main characteristics of the Cort General de Catalunya (General Court of Catalonia) in the late Middle Ages, an entity which served as the venue where the universitas and the monarchy—the two general  institutions that represented Catalonia politically and  shaped this nation’s unique political dualism—met to  discuss the affairs of the land. This institution became the  core of Catalan pactism, and its constitutional importance is based not only on the approval of general laws and the creation of a new state’s taxation, but also on the creation of dynamics meant to ensure the rule of law, along with the establishment of institutions like the Diputació del General of Catalonia, which played a key political and social role in Catalonia’s institutional system until the Bourbons’ Nueva Planta Decree imposed in the early eighteenth century dictated that it be eliminated.