Catalan people in the context of "Alghero"

Niccolò Gattilusio (died 1462) was the sixth and last Gattilusio lord of Lesbos, from 1458 to 1462. He was a younger son of Dorino I Gattilusio and Orietta Doria.

He deposed his elder brother Domenico Gattilusio, threw him in prison, and had him strangled. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II used this crime as his pretext to invade Lesbos. According to Franz Babinger, Mehmed's true motivation was that Niccolò had sheltered Catalan pirates in return for a considerable share of their loot; these pirates were preying on the nearby Anatolian coast, kidnapping their inhabitants and selling them as slaves.

The Principality of Catalonia was a medieval and early modern state in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. During most of its history it was in dynastic union with the Kingdom of Aragon, constituting together the Crown of Aragon. Between the 13th and the 18th centuries, it was bordered by the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, the Kingdom of Valencia to the south, the Kingdom of France to the north and by the Mediterranean Sea to the east. Its sovereign or prince had the title of Count of Barcelona. The term Principality of Catalonia was official until the 1830s, when the Spanish government implemented the centralized provincial division, but remained in popular and informal contexts. Today, the term Principat ("Principality") is used primarily to refer to the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries, and often including the historical region of Roussillon in Southern France.

The first reference to Catalonia and the Catalans appears in the Liber maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus, a Pisan chronicle (written between 1117 and 1125) of the conquest of Majorca by a joint force of Northern Italians, Catalans, and Occitans. At the time, Catalonia did not yet exist as a political entity, though the use of this term seems to acknowledge Catalonia as a cultural or geographical entity. The counties that eventually made up the Principality of Catalonia were gradually unified under the rule of the count of Barcelona. In 1137, the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon were unified under a single dynasty, creating what modern historians call the Crown of Aragon; however, Aragon and Catalonia retained their own political structure and legal systems, developing separate political communities along the next centuries. Under Alfons I the Troubador (1164–1196), Catalonia was regarded as a legal entity for the first time in 1173. Still, the term Principality of Catalonia was not used legally until the 14th century, when it was applied to the territories ruled by the Courts of Catalonia.

Catalan nationalism promotes the idea that the Catalan people form a distinct nation and national identity. A related term is Catalanism (Catalan: catalanisme, Spanish: catalanismo), which is more related to regionalism and tends to have a wider meaning; most people who define themselves as Catalanist do not necessarily identify as Catalan nationalists.

Intellectually, modern Catalan nationalism can be said to have commenced as a political philosophy in the unsuccessful attempts to establish a federal state in Spain in the context of the First Republic (1873-1874). Valentí Almirall i Llozer and other intellectuals that participated in this process set up a new political ideology in the 19th century, to restore self-government, as well as to obtain recognition for the Catalan language. These demands were summarized in the so-called Bases de Manresa in 1892.

The Baussenque Wars (from French Guerres Baussenques, meaning "wars of Baux") were a series of armed conflicts (1144–1162) between the House of Barcelona, then ruling in Provence, and the House of Baux. They are held up in Provence as the idealistic resistance by one of her native families against Catalan "occupation." In reality, they were the first of many successful expansions of Catalan power and influence in the Mediterranean world.

Modernisme (Catalan pronunciation: [muðərˈnizmə], Catalan for "modernism"), also known as Catalan modernism and Catalan art nouveau, is the historiographic denomination given to an art and literature movement associated with the search of a new entitlement of Catalan culture, one of the most predominant cultures within Spain. Nowadays, it is considered a movement based on the cultural revindication of a Catalan identity. Its main form of expression was Modernista architecture, but it also encompassed many other arts, such as painting and sculpture, and especially the design and the decorative arts (cabinetmaking, carpentry, forged iron, ceramic tiles, ceramics, glass-making, silver and goldsmith work, etc.), which were particularly important, especially in their role as support to architecture. Modernisme was also a literary movement (poetry, fiction, drama).

Although Modernisme was part of a general trend that emerged in Europe around the turn of the 20th century, in Catalonia the trend acquired its own unique personality. Modernisme's distinct name comes from its special relationship, primarily with Catalonia and Barcelona, which were intensifying their local characteristics for socio-ideological reasons after the revival of Catalan culture and in the context of spectacular urban and industrial development. It is equivalent to a number of other fin de siècle art movements going by the names of Art Nouveau in France and Belgium, Jugendstil in Germany, Vienna Secession in Austria-Hungary, Liberty style in Italy, and Modern or Glasgow Style in Scotland.