A Pyrenean county grew into Spain’s Mediterranean crown
Aragon began as a Carolingian county around Jaca, slid under Navarrese vassalage, then became a kingdom that named the wider Crown of Aragon. When John II died in 1479, Aragonese and Castilian crowns fused into Spain’s nucleus, though Corts liberties lingered until the Nueva Planta decrees.
Aragon started as a Carolingian county centred on Jaca, sharing its name with the river that runs past the town. The name might come from Basque words meaning good upper valley, or might descend from the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis. In the first half of the ninth century the county fell under the kingdom of Pamplona, later Navarre, and its own line of counts died out without a male heir in 922.
Independence came through a family division. When Sancho III of Navarre died in 1035, his lands were split three ways. His son Gonzalo got Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, and his illegitimate son Ramiro got Aragon; Gonzalo was soon killed, Ramiro absorbed his share, and after beating his brother García Sánchez III of Navarre he ruled as king in practice, though he never took the title. His son Sancho Ramírez, who also inherited Navarre, was first to style himself king of the Aragonese and Pamplonese. Conquests from al-Andalus moved the capital from Jaca to Huesca in 1096 and Zaragoza in 1118. When Alfonso the Battler died childless in 1134, Aragon and Navarre chose separate rulers, and by 1285 the southern edge of modern Aragon had been taken from the Moors.
The marriage of Queen Petronilla to Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, in 1150 created the Crown of Aragon, and their son Alfonso II inherited both inheritances. The kingdom lent its name to the larger union, which came to include Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia, while each part kept its own administration. The king's titles shifted as lands were won and lost, including Count of Provence, Lord of Montpellier and Duke of Athens and Neopatria. In the fourteenth century the noble league called the Union of Aragon sharply curbed royal power.
On John II's death in 1479 the Aragonese and Castilian crowns merged, forming the core of modern Spain, yet the Aragonese lands kept their own parliaments, the Corts, and institutions. Philip V ended that autonomy with the Nueva Planta decrees of 1707 to 1715 after the War of the Spanish Succession, though Spanish monarchs kept using the title King of Aragon.
Source: Kingdom of Aragon
