October 3, 2012

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

AROUND THE EXHIBITION OCCIDENS. DISCOVER THE ORIGINS

The Navarrese plot: from the context of an Empire to the birth and development of a Kingdom.

Ms. Mercedes Galán Lorda
University of Navarra

Navarre, simply because of its geographic status , has always been part of western culture. This culture, a synthesis of the contributions of different peoples, from the primitive settlers of Europe, to which were added the Celts and the colonizing peoples of the Mediterranean, was greatly enriched thanks to Rome, Christianity and also to the Germanic spirit.

The Navarrese plot can be taken as sample of the cultural fusion that has taken place over time. In the Roman world, Navarre began as part of the province of Citerior, conquered by Rome from 218 B.C. The foundation of Pamplona by Pompey in 74 B.C. can be considered a relevant date. Initially it was a stipendiary city, transformed into a municipality when Vespasian granted Latinity to the Hispanics in 73-74 A.D. Pamplona, like the rest of Navarre, assimilated the Roman culture, a period from which abundant and valuable remains have been preserved. The population went through the different juridical statuses characteristic of the Roman world: initially barbari, they acquired, individually and later generally, the conditions of pilgrims, Latins and, finally, citizens, which meant enjoying the full benefit of the main contribution of the Roman world: the Roman Law. It was also in the context of the Empire in which Navarre knew and practiced Christianity, with full freedom from the Edict of Milan (year 313). The Christian spirit brought substantial changes and humanized the Roman Law.

The fall of the Western Empire (year 476) was an important turning point as it gave way to a new political structure: that of the Germanic kingdoms. Thus arose Visigothic Spain, of which a new form of government that lasted for a long time is worth mentioning: the monarchy. In addition, the Germanic spirit brought a strong sense of community that was reflected in forms of joint ownership, in greater popular participation, or in the importance of family ties, elements present in medieval Navarre and, very particularly, in Navarrese law.

Navarre emerged as an independent political entity in the Age average, precisely because of the disintegration of Visigothic Spain and the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Initially it was called, until the middle of the 12th century, the Kingdom of Pamplona, with its own monarchy, its own institutions and its own law. This law was built on the basis of three pillars: the vulgar Roman Law , the Germanic common law and the Canon Law, and it grew and developed as the kingdom grew and developed.

The conquest of Navarre by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1512 initially meant a dynastic change, although Navarre remained an independent kingdom. Three years later, in 1515, the incorporation into the crown of Castile entailed the integration into a superior political entity, that of a crown, in which Navarre nevertheless remained special. This specialization program lay in the fact that it was the only territory that, within Castile, was allowed to maintain the status of a separate kingdom, which meant retaining its autonomy of government, maintaining its own Cortes with its own Diputación, its own courts of justice, its own financial system, and the control of its administrative bodies at local and territorial level, institutions all governed by Navarrese law.

The radical alteration of this status took place after 1812, with the new constitutional regime, of a uniform and centralizing character. The first third of the 19th century in Navarre was characterized by the survival of its own institutions to the extent that the Old Regime was maintained. In fact, from 1836, at the end of the first Carlist war, the new constitutional regime was gradually imposed and the institutions of Navarre were suppressed. Officially, in 1841, Navarre lost its status as a kingdom and became a province. However, its Provincial Council retained special powers with respect to the rest of the provincial councils in subject fiscal and management assistant, which determined the birth of a foral regime.

From 1841 to the present day, the Navarrese foral regime has endured as a specific legal status of Navarre, determining that, within the democratic system, in the current State of Autonomies, Navarre constitutes a foral Community, a denomination that reflects the survival over time of an autonomy of a historical nature.
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Joaquín de Elizondo: Novíssima Recopilación de las Leyes del Reino de Navarra, 1735. Engraving by Juan de la Cruz