Aragonese Conquest & Foral Self-Governance

Islamic Iberia, Sicily and the Maghreb emirates, and the Reconquista frontier.

1 chapter

711 - 1238

Islamic civilization transformed Valencia into Balansiya, a thriving Taifa kingdom whose engineering, agriculture, and urbanism still shape the region's physical landscape. The Caliphate of Córdoba laid out the Palmeral of Elche with elaborate irrigation in the 10th century; the same groves still produce white palms for Palm Sunday processions today — a rare case where Islamic-era landscape infrastructure feeds directly into Christian liturgical practice. Abd-ar-Rahman III founded the Tribunal de les Aigües around 960 CE to govern the acequia irrigation network; every Thursday at noon, that same tribunal still convenes at the Cathedral's Puerta de los Apóstoles, adjudicating in Valencian using Arabic-origin terminology (acequia, síndic). Climb to Santa Bárbara Castle above Alicante and the 9th-century Islamic walls are still visible beneath later Christian additions. The Islamic-era agricultural calendar — organized around water allocation and seasonal planting — may be the deepest temporal rhythm underlying Valencian festival timing, though this continuity must be read cautiously: the Morisco community that maintained these practices was expelled in 1609, and the surviving terminology is a landscape fossil of an absent community, not evidence of living Islamic ritual tradition.

1707 - 1808

The Bourbon victory in the War of Spanish Succession brought the Nueva Planta decrees of 29 June 1707, signed by Philip V — a foundational trauma in Valencian collective memory. The decrees completely abolished the Furs of Valencia, the Corts Valencianes, and the Generalitat, incorporating the Kingdom of Valencia into the Crown of Castile under Castilian law. Stand before the Palau de la Generalitat in Valencia: after 1707, the building that housed Valencian self-governance was repurposed as the seat of the new Bourbon Audiencia, a visible symbol of institutional erasure. Xàtiva, which had resisted the Bourbons, was burned and its name officially changed to 'San Felipe' — the birthplace of the Borgia popes was literally erased from the map as punishment. Climb to Xàtiva Castle and the scars of that destruction are part of the site's story. The Nueva Planta was not merely administrative modernization: it was a rupture of institutional continuity that directly shapes how Valencian identity relates to the Spanish state to this day. Do not romanticize the pre-1707 Kingdom — the Furs served an elite, and the Morisco population had already been expelled — but do not erase the specificity of what was lost: named, functioning institutions of self-governance that had existed for over four centuries.

-138 - 711

The Roman Empire integrated the eastern Iberian coast into the province of Tarraconensis, founding Valentia Edetanorum as a veteran colony and transforming Saguntum into a monumental city with a forum and 1st-century AD theatre. Roman law, urban planning, and the Christian religion entered together — by the 4th century, Valencia had a bishop. Descend into La Almoina excavations beneath Valencia's Plaça de la Mare de Déu and you walk on Roman paving past an early Christian baptistery: the physical overlap of imperial and liturgical layers under the later cathedral is literal. The Roman agricultural calendar — planting, harvest, seasonal feasts — may be the oldest substrate of the Valencian festival year, though no specific fire-ritual evidence survives from this period. At Sagunto, sit in the restored Roman theatre where performances still happen each summer: two thousand years of continuous public spectacle on the same stone.

1808 - 1936

The Napoleonic invasion, liberal revolution, and industrialization of the 19th century reshaped Valencian society and created the conditions for modern festival formalization. The silk industry that had centered on La Lonja since the 15th century fed directly into the elaborate fallera costumes that emerged as Fallas evolved from neighborhood bonfires into organized spectacle. In 1928, José María Py formalized the Hogueras de San Juan in Alicante, combining pre-existing midsummer solstice bonfire traditions with Fallas-style artistic structures — a documented case of calendar-layering where solstice fire ritual, Fallas satirical sculpture, and Saint John Christian naming all remain visible. The Carlist Wars of the 19th century, fought bitterly in Valencia's interior mountains, left fortified towns like Buñol marked by conflict — a context that later shaped local festival traditions. In Ibi, the toy manufacturing industry that emerged in this period created the economic base for distinctive local celebrations; the Museo Valenciano del Juguete preserves that industrial-era material culture. This era also saw the codification of Valencian as a literary and political language: Lo Rat Penat organized satirical verse contests in Valencian as part of Fallas, a practice that would become crucial during the Franco-era suppression of the language.