“Having found the Llibre dels Vuit Senyals (LVS) four hundred years after its last reference, and having consequently analysed its content, it has answered several unanswered questions such as what was the vision in the Middle Ages on the founding regulations of the Generalitat”, explains Pere Ripoll.

Doctor ‘cum laude’ in Law from UPF for his thesis “Llibre dels Vuit Senyals (15^th century): an Edition, Legal and Comparative Study” presented on 26 June in the Albert Calsamiglia i Blancafort hall on the Ciutadella campus, he is rather pleased to have found this manuscript: “It was known to exist but due to restoration and cataloguing carried out in the nineteenth century, it was left without covers and was miscatalogued”, he says.

The document, which has been found in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, contains the legal regime of the origins of the Deputació del General, or Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalonia), dating from the 14^th century, and contains the regulations and jurisdiction approved in les Corts Catalanes, which gave power to the institution in areas such as jurisdictional and administrative self-organization, finance and taxation, and granted it financial protection.

The document, which has been found in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, contains the legal regime of the Deputació del General, or Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalonia)

This finding comes within the project of the call of the 2014 Industrial Doctorate of the Catalan Government “Legal culture and the Deputation of the General of Catalonia in light of other European examples”, to which Pere Ripoll has been linked, through his collaboration with UPF, through the History of Catalan Law Research Group of the Department of Law, and Editorial Barcino publishers.

The thesis supervisors were Tomàs Montagut, full professor of History of Law and Institutions at UPF and coordinator of the History of Catalan Law Research Group; Rafael Ramis, former lecturer and currently a professor at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), and Joan Santanach, professor of Literature with the Department of Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona and coordinator of Editorial Barcino.

A document that provides a wealth of information about the origins of the Generalitat and its evolution

According to Pere Ripoll, locating the Llibre dels Vuit Senyals has enabled us to study the embryonic jurisdiction of the Generalitat with one single manuscript, which until now had to be done by means of the dispersed regulations generated over the centuries by the Corts. It also confirms the hypothesis (proposed a hundred years ago by Antonio de la Torre) about the approximate time of the birth of the Deputació del General, in 1359, although the manuscript relates the early symptoms of autonomy in 1289 and 1291”.

The UPF doctor in Law explains that “research that has led us to its location have enabled finding out who drew it up, and that its drafting was ordered by the establishment at the beginning of the 15^th century, during the first process of compiling Catalan law, in response to the incomprehension that the institution of the Deputació del General caused to the Trastàmara dynasty, newly arrived in Catalonia”.

The LVS provides new information regarding the evolution of the powers of the institution and the legal mechanisms that were to draw up the jurisdiction of the Generalitat

The LVS provides new information regarding the evolution of the powers of the institution and the legal mechanisms that were to draw up the jurisdiction of the Generalitat. At the same time, it shows that the regulatory regime of the institution was also a reason for its compilation prior to the appearance of the Llibre dels Vuit Senyals, first printed in 1634, which manuscript set out the regulations of the Generalitat of the modern era at a time of consolidation and institutional plenitude. 

Tomàs de Montagut, thesis co-supervisor, agrees as to the importance of having located the manuscript: “The document proves that the Principality of Catalonia was a dualistic monarchy, in which the monarch had to negotiate with the Corts. The rules that protected this legal pact are found in the book, which was carried out coinciding with the change of dynasty”. Professor Montagut points out that the LVS documents the Saint George’s Cross in the signal or symbolic representation of General de Catalunya, which also appears on the coat of arms of the city of Barcelona.

The Diputació del General in the European context and the publication of the manuscript by Barcino

One of the main goals of the Industrial Doctorate project between UPF and Barcino has been the research and study of the institutions that emerged throughout Europe with similar aims to those of the Deputació del General, in order to build a set of comparative, characteristic parameters that allowed establishing the Generalitat in the European context.

“By studying the content of the LVS we have managed to detect several families of institutions in Europe that emerged from a process of emancipation from the establishment, that place the Generalitat within one of these families and its evolution compared to others. This reaffirms some of its most extraordinary traits as an institution separate from royal power”, says Pere Ripoll.

In addition, Editorial Barcino, specializing in the publication of classical texts, is soon (probably in 2019) to publish an editio princeps of the manuscript, which is considered of great importance from the point of view of the political and legal history of an institution such as the Generalitat.

The volume will include an introductory study on the process of researching and locating the manuscript; an analysis of the regulations of the sources and all aspects concerning the discovery of the LVS, as well as its transcription.

“Within the framework of the Industrial Doctorate project, both the History of Catalan Law Research Group at UPF and Editorial Barcino have established a true multidisciplinary exchange that has led to the location, careful editing and analysis of the Book of the Eight Signs”, Pere Ripoll concludes.