Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in Spain on the northeastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, designated as a nationality by its Statute of Autonomy. Catalonia consists of four provinces: Barcelona, Girona and Tarragona; the capital and largest city is Barcelona, the second-most populated municipality in Spain and the core of the sixth most populous urban area in the European Union. It comprises most of the territory of the former Principality of Catalonia, it is bordered by France and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, the Spanish autonomous communities of Aragon to the west and Valencia to the south. The official languages are Catalan and the Aranese dialect of Occitan. In the late 8th century, the counties of the March of Gothia and the Hispanic March were established by the Frankish kingdom as feudal vassals across and near the eastern Pyrenees as a defensive barrier against Muslim invasions; the eastern counties of these marches were united under the rule of the Frankish vassal, the count of Barcelona, were called Catalonia.
In the 10th century the County of Barcelona became independent de facto. In 1137, Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon were united by marriage under the Crown of Aragon; the de jure end of Frankish rule was ratified by French and Aragonese monarchs in the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258. The Principality of Catalonia developed its own institutional system, such as courts, constitutions, becoming the base for the Crown of Aragon's naval power and expansionism in the Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages, Catalan literature flourished. During the last Medieval centuries natural disasters, social turmoils and military conflicts affected the Principality. Between 1469 and 1516, the king of Aragon and the queen of Castile married and ruled their realms together, retaining all of their distinct institutions and legislation. During the Franco-Spanish War, Catalonia revolted against a large and burdensome presence of the royal army in its territory, being proclaimed a republic under French protection. Within a brief period France took full control of Catalonia, until it was reconquered by the Spanish army.
Under the terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, the Spanish Crown ceded the northern parts of Catalonia the County of Roussillon, to France. During the War of the Spanish Succession, the Crown of Aragon sided against the Bourbon Philip V of Spain; this led to the eclipse of Catalan as a language of literature, replaced by Spanish. Along the 18th century, Catalonia experienced economic growth, reinforced in the late quarter of the century when the Castile's trade monopoly with American colonies ended. In the 19th century, Catalonia was affected by the Napoleonic and Carlist Wars. In the second third of the century, Catalonia experienced significant industrialisation; as wealth from the industrial expansion grew, Catalonia saw a cultural renaissance coupled with incipient nationalism while several workers movements appeared. In 1914, the four Catalan provinces formed a commonwealth, with the return of democracy during the Second Spanish Republic, the Generalitat of Catalonia was restored as an autonomous government.
After the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship enacted repressive measures, abolishing Catalan self-government and banning the official use of the Catalan language again. After a first period of autarky, from the late 1950s through to the 1970s Catalonia saw rapid economic growth, drawing many workers from across Spain, making Barcelona one of Europe's largest industrial metropolitan areas and turning Catalonia into a major tourist destination. Since the Spanish transition to democracy, Catalonia has regained considerable autonomy in political, educational and cultural affairs and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain. In the 2010s there has been growing support for Catalan independence. On 27 October 2017, the Catalan Parliament declared independence from Spain following a disputed referendum; the Spanish Senate voted in favour of enforcing direct rule by removing the entire Catalan government and calling a snap regional election for 21 December. On 2 November of the same year, the Spanish Supreme Court imprisoned 7 former ministers of the Catalan government on charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds, while several others—including then-President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont—fled to other European countries.
The name Catalonia—Catalunya in Catalan, spelled Cathalonia, or Cathalaunia in Medieval Latin—began to be used for the homeland of the Catalans in the late 11th century and was used before as a territorial reference to the group of counties that comprised part of the March of Gothia and March of Hispania under the control of the Count of Barcelona and his relatives. The origin of the name Catalunya is subject to diverse interpretations because of a lack of evidence. One theory suggests that Catalunya derives from the name Gothia Launia, since the origins of the Catalan counts and people were found in the March of Gothia, known as Gothia, whence Gothlan
Generalitat de Catalunya
The Government of Catalonia or the Generalitat de Catalunya is the institution under which the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia is politically organised. It consists of the Parliament of Catalonia, the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Executive Council of Catalonia; the Generalitat has a budget of €34 billion euros. The Parliament of Catalonia unilaterally declared independence from Spain on 27 October 2017 as the'Catalan Republic'. In response Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy decided to dissolve the Parliament of Catalonia and to call a snap regional election for 21 December 2017, after which a new Parliament and a new Catalan government was elected; the independence declaration was turned down by the central Spanish government, members of the Catalan government, including Carles Puigdemont, fled to Belgium claiming to be the legitimate government of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Catalonia’s political past as a territorially differentiated community having its own representative and separated institutions, with respect to the sovereign power of the combined Catalan counties, the Crown of Aragon, the Monarchy of Spain and of the Spanish constitutional state, can be divided into four stages, separated by three great ruptures in the legal/public order.
Pau i Treva de Déu was a social movement promoted in the eleventh century as the response of the Church and the peasants to the violences perpetrated by feudal nobles. The hometowns delimited a protected space of feudal violence. However, to ensure a coexistence climate, it was necessary to go further, establishing an authority that prohibited the practice of any type of violent act anywhere in the territory; this was the objective of the assemblies of Peace and Truce of God, the first of which, in the Catalan counties, took place in Toluges, in 1027, under the presidency of Abbot Oliba, on behalf of Bishop Berenguer d'Elna, absent from the diocese because he was on a pilgrimage. The origin of the Catalan Courts can be considered from the Peace of Truce of God; the Generalitat of Catalonia stems from the medieval institution which ruled, in the name of the King of the Crown of Aragon, some aspects of the administration of the Principality of Catalonia. The Catalan Courts were the main institution of the Principality during its existence as a political entity, approved the Catalan constitutions.
The first constitutions were that of the Courts of 1283. The medieval precedent of the Generalitat, the Diputació del General de Catalunya was a permanent council of deputies established by the Courts in order to recapt the new "tax of the General" in 1359, gained an important political power during the next centuries, assuming tasks of prosecutor, it was chosen by the legislators in 1931 because they felt it was appropriate for invoking as a legitimising base for contemporary self-government. Catalan institutions which depended on the Generalitat were abolished in what is known in Catalonia as Northern Catalonia, one year after the signature of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in the 17th century, which transferred the territory from Spanish to French sovereignty. By the early 18th century, as the Nueva Planta decrees were passed in Spain after the Catalan defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession, the institution was abolished in the Spanish territory as well; the Generalitat was restored in the Catalonia under Spanish administration in 1931 during the events of the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic when Francesc Macià, leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia, declared the Catalan Republic on 14 April but reached an agreement with the Spanish ministers, in which the Catalan Republic was renamed Generalitat of Catalonia and given its modern political and representative function as the autonomous government of Catalonia within the Spanish Republic.
The restored Generalitat was ruled by a statute of autonomy approved by the Spanish Cortes and included a parliament, a presidency, a government and a court of appeal. It was presided by Lluís Companys. After the right wing coalition won the Spanish elections in 1934, the leftist leaders of the Generalitat of Catalonia rebelled in October of that year against the Spanish authorities, it was temporarily suspended from 1934 to 1936. In 1939, as the Spanish Civil War finished with the defeat of the Republican side, the Generalitat of Catalonia as an institution was abolished and remained so during all the Francoist dictatorship until 1975; the president of the Generalitat at the time, Lluís Companys, was tortured and executed in October 1940 for the crime of'military rebellion'. Nonetheless, the Generalitat remained its official existence in exile, leaded by presidents Josep Irla and Josep Tarradellas; the succession of presidents of the Generalitat was maintained in exile from 1939 to 1977, when Josep Tarradellas returned to Catalonia and was recognized as the legitimate president by the Spanish government.
Tarradellas, when he returned to Catalonia, made his quoted remark "Ciutadans de Catalunya: ja sóc aquí", reassuming the autonomous powers of Catalonia, one of the historic nationalities of present-day Spain. After this, the powers given to the autonomous Catalan government according to the Spanish Constitution of 1978 were transferred and the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia was passed after being approved both by referendum in Catalonia and by the Sp
Crown of Aragon
The Crown of Aragon was a composite monarchy nowadays referred to as a confederation of individual polities or kingdoms ruled by one king, with a personal and dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, a Mediterranean "empire" which included the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Malta, Southern Italy and parts of Greece; the component realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of the king, who ruled over each autonomous polity according to its own laws, raising funds under each tax structure, dealing separately with each Corts or Cortes. Put in contemporary terms, it has sometimes been considered that the different lands of the Crown of Aragon functioned more as a confederation than as a single kingdom. In this sense, the larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name.
In 1469, a new dynastic familial union of the Crown of Aragon with the Crown of Castile by the Catholic Monarchs, joining what contemporaries referred to as "the Spains" led to what would become the Kingdom of Spain under King Philip II. The Crown existed until it was abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in 1716 as a consequence of the defeat of Archduke Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession. Formally, the political center of the Crown of Aragon was Zaragoza, where kings were crowned at La Seo Cathedral. The'de facto' capital and leading cultural and economic centre of the Crown of Aragon was Barcelona, followed by Valencia. Palma was an additional important city and seaport; the Crown of Aragon included the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sardinia. For brief periods the Crown of Aragon controlled Montpellier, Provence and the twin Duchy of Athens and Neopatras in Latin Greece.
The countries that are today known as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the Reconquista. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic taifa petty kingdoms of the South and against each other. In the Late Middle Ages, the expansion of the Aragonese Crown southwards met with the Castilian advance eastward in the region of Murcia. Afterward, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, acting as far as Greece and Barbary, whereas Portugal, which completed its Reconquista in 1249, would focus on the Atlantic Ocean. Mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, known as almogàvers participated in the creation of this Mediterranean "empire", found employment in countries all across southern Europe; the Crown of Aragon has been considered an empire which ruled in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, with the power to set rules over the entire sea. It was indeed, at its height, one of the major powers in Europe.
However, its different territories were only connected through the person of the monarch, an aspect of empire seen as early as Achaemenid Persia. A modern historian, Juan de Contreras y Lopez de Ayala, Marqués de Lozoya described the Crown of Aragon as being more like a confederacy than a centralised kingdom, let alone an empire. Nor did official documents refer to it as an empire; the Crown of Aragon originated in 1137, when the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona merged by dynastic union upon the marriage of Petronilla of Aragon and Raymond Berenguer IV of Barcelona. This union respected the existing parliaments of both territories; the combined state was known as Regno, Dominio et Corona Aragonum et Catalonie, as Corona Regum Aragoniae, Corona Aragonum or Aragon. This was due to the reduction of Catalan influence, the renunciation of the family rights of the counts of Barcelona in Occitania, the extinction of the House of Barcelona in 1410; the monarchs denominated themselves de Aragon, Aragon became prominent as an Iberian kingdom linked to the House of Jiménez which ruled over Navarre, Castile and Galicia and Aragon.
Petronilla's father King Ramiro, "The Monk", raised in the Saint Pons de Thomières Monastery, Viscounty of Béziers as a Benedictine monk was the youngest of three brothers. His brothers Peter I and Alfonso I El Batallador had bravely fought against Castile for hegemony in the Iberian peninsula. After the death of Alfonso I, the Aragonese nobility that campaigned close him feared being overwhelmed by the influence of Castile, and so, Ramiro was forced to proclaim himself King of Aragon. He married Agnes, sister of the Duke of Aquitaine and betrothed his only daughter to Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona, member of o
Phylloxera
Grape phylloxera. These microscopic, pale yellow sap-sucking insects, related to aphids, feed on the roots and leaves of grapevines. On Vitis vinifera, the resulting deformations on roots and secondary fungal infections can girdle roots cutting off the flow of nutrients and water to the vine. Nymphs form protective galls on the undersides of grapevine leaves of some Vitis species and overwinter under the bark or on the vine roots. American vine species have evolved to have several natural defenses against phylloxera; the roots of the American vines exude a sticky sap that repels the nymph form when it tries to feed from the vine by clogging its mouth. If the nymph is successful in creating a feeding wound on the root, American vines respond by forming a protective layer of tissue to cover the wound and protect it from secondary bacterial or fungal infections. There is no cure for phylloxera and unlike other grape diseases such as powdery or downy mildew, there is no chemical control or response.
The only successful means of controlling phylloxera has been the grafting of phylloxera-resistant American rootstock to more susceptible European vinifera vines. The phylloxera aphid has a complex life-cycle of up to 18 stages, that can be divided into four principal forms: sexual form, leaf form, root form, winged form; the sexual form begins with male and female eggs laid on the underside of young grape leaves. The male and female at this stage lack a digestive system, once hatched, they mate and die. Before the female dies, she lays one winter egg in the bark of the vine's trunk; this egg develops into the leaf form. This nymph, the fundatrix, climbs onto a leaf and lays eggs parthenogenetically in a leaf gall that she creates by injecting saliva into the leaf; the nymphs that hatch from these eggs may move to other leaves, or move to the roots where they begin new infections in the root form. In this form they perforate the root to find nourishment, infecting the root with a poisonous secretion that stops it from healing.
This poison kills the vine. This nymph reproduces by laying eggs for up to seven more generations each summer; these offspring spread to other roots of the vine, or to the roots of other vines through cracks in the soil. The generation of nymphs that hatch in the autumn hibernate in the roots and emerge next spring when the sap begins to rise. In humid areas, the nymphs develop into the winged form, else they perform the same role without wings; these nymphs start the cycle again by either staying on the vine to lay male and female eggs on the bottom side of young grape leaves, or flying to an uninfected vine to do the same. Many attempts have been made to interrupt this life cycle to eradicate phylloxera, but the aphid has proven to be adaptable, as no one stage of the life cycle is dependent upon another for the propagation of the species. In the late 19th century the phylloxera epidemic destroyed most of the vineyards for wine grapes in Europe, most notably in France. Phylloxera was introduced to Europe when avid botanists in Victorian England collected specimens of American vines in the 1850s.
Because phylloxera is native to North America, the native grape species are at least resistant. By contrast, the European wine grape Vitis vinifera is susceptible to the insect; the epidemic devastated vineyards in Britain and moved to the European mainland, destroying most of the European grape growing industry. In 1863, the first vines began to deteriorate inexplicably in the southern Rhône region of France; the problem spread across the continent. In France alone, total wine production fell from 84.5 million hectolitres in 1875 to only 23.4 million hectolitres in 1889. Some estimates hold that between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards were destroyed. In France, one of the desperate measures of grape growers was to bury a live toad under each vine to draw out the "poison". Areas with soils composed principally of sand or schist were spared, the spread was slowed in dry climates, but the aphid spread across the continent. A significant amount of research was devoted to finding a solution to the phylloxera problem, two major solutions emerged: grafting cuttings onto resistant rootstocks and hybridization.
By the end of the 19th century, hybridization became a popular avenue of research for stopping the phylloxera louse. Hybridization is the breeding of Vitis vinifera with resistant species. Most native American grapes are phylloxera resistant but have aromas that are off-putting to palates accustomed to European grapes; the intent of the cross was to generate a hybrid vine, resistant to phylloxera but produced wine that did not taste like the American grape. The hybrids tend not to be resistant to phylloxera, although they are much more hardy with respect to climate and other vine diseases; the new hybrid varieties have never gained
Castile (historical region)
Castile is a historical region of Spain divided between Old Castile and New Castile. The area covers the following modern autonomous communities: the eastern part of Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, Community of Madrid as well as Cantabria and La Rioja. Castile's name derives from the Spanish for "land of castles" in reference to the castles built in the area to consolidate the Christian Reconquest from the Moors. An eastern county of the kingdom of León, in the 11th century Castile became an independent realm with its capital at Burgos; the County of Castile, which included most of Burgos and parts of Vizcaya, Álava, Cantabria and La Rioja. became the leading force in the northern Christian states' 800-year Reconquista of central and southern Spain from the Moorish rulers who had dominated most of the peninsula since the early 8th century. The capture of Toledo in 1085 added New Castile to the crown's territories, the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa heralded the Moors' loss of most of southern Spain.
León was reunited with Castile in 1230, the following decades saw the capture of Córdoba and Seville. By the Treaty of Alcaçovas with Portugal on March 6, 1460, the ownership of the Canary Islands was transferred to Castile; the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon in 1469, when Ferdinand II of Aragon wed Isabella I of Castile, would lead to the formal creation of Spain as a single entity in 1516 when their grandson Charles V assumed both thrones. See List of Spanish monarchs and Kings of Spain family tree; the Muslim Kingdom of Granada was conquered in 1492, formally passing to the Crown of Castile in that year. Since it lacks modern day official recognition, Castile no longer has defined borders; the area consisted of the Kingdom of Castile. After the kingdom merged with its neighbours to become the Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Spain, when it united with the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre, the definition of what constituted Castile began to change, its historical capital was Burgos.
In modern Spain, it is considered to comprise Castile and León and Castile–La Mancha, with Madrid as its centre. West Castile and León, Cantabria and La Rioja are sometimes included in the definition. Since 1982 there have been two nominally Castilian autonomous communities in Spain, incorporating the toponym in their own official names: Castile and Leon and Castile-La Mancha. A third, the Community of Madrid is regarded as part of Castile, by dint of its geographic enclosure within the entity and, above all, by the statements of its Statute of Autonomy, since its autonomic process originated in national interest and not in popular disaffection with Castile. Other territories in the former Crown of Castile are left out for different reasons. In fact, the territory of the Castilian Crown comprised all other autonomous communities within Spain with the exception of Aragon, Balearic Islands and Catalonia, all belonging to the former Crown of Aragon, Navarre, offshoot of the older Kingdom of the same name.
Castile was divided between Old Castile in the north, so called because it was where the Kingdom of Castile was founded, New Castile, called the Kingdom of Toledo in the Middle Ages. The Leonese region, part of the Crown of Castile from 1230, was from medieval times considered a region in its own right on a par with the two Castiles, appeared on maps alongside Old Castile until the two joined as one region - Castile and Leon - in the 1980s. In 1833, Spain was further subdivided into administrative provinces. Two non-administrative, nominally Castilian regions existed from 1833 to 1982: Old Castile, including Santander, Logroño, Valladolid, Segovia and Ávila, New Castile consisting of Madrid, Cuenca and Ciudad Real; the language of Castile emerged as the primary language of Spain—known to many of its speakers as castellano and in English sometimes as Castilian, but as Spanish. See Names given to the Spanish language; the Castilian Kingdom and people were considered to be the main architects of the Spanish State by a process of expansion to the South against the Moors and of marriages, wars and annexation of their smaller Eastern and Western neighbours.
From the advent of the Bourbon Monarchy following the War of the Spanish Succession until the arrival of parliamentary democracy in 1977, the Castilian language was the only one with official status in the Spanish state. Castilian people Old Castile New Castile Crown of Castile Early history of the Kingdom of León Economic history of Spain Later history of Spain List of Castile Kings Castile soap Heraldry of Castile Music of Castile and Leon Castella, a food whose name originates from Castile. Two places in the United States have been named after this kingdom: Village of Castile and Town of Castile. Both are located in the state of New York
Lleida
Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida. Geographically, it is located in the Catalan Central Depression, it is the capital city of the Segrià comarca, as well as the largest city in the province. It had 137,387 inhabitants as of 2010, including the contiguous municipalities of Sucs. Lleida is one of the oldest towns in Catalonia, with recorded settlements dating back to the Bronze Age period; until the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the area served as a settlement for an Iberian people, the Ilergetes. The town became a municipality, named Ilerda, under the reign of Augustus, it was reconquered in 1149, after being ruled by the Moors for many centuries, who had conquered the town in the 8th century. In 1297, the University of Lleida was founded. During the following centuries, the town was damaged by several wars such as the Reapers' War in the 17th century and the Spanish Civil War in the 20th century. Since the city has been in a constant urban and demographic growth.
In ancient times the city, named Iltrida and Ilerda, was the chief city of the Ilergetes, an Iberian tribe. Indíbil, king of the Ilergetes, Mandoni, king of the Ausetanes, defended it against the Carthaginian and Roman invasions. Under the Romans, the city was incorporated into the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis, was a place of considerable importance as well as geographically, it stood upon an eminence, on the right bank of the river Sicoris, the principal tributary of the Ebre, some distance above its confluence with the Cinga. Its situation induced the legates of Pompey in Spain to make it the key of their defense against Caesar, in the first year of the Civil War. Afranius and Marcus Petreius threw themselves into the place with five legions; the resources exhibited by the great general, in a contest where the formation of the district and the elements of nature seemed in league with his enemies, have been extolled. It ended by the capitulation of Afranius and Petreius, who were conquered as much by Caesar's generosity as by his strategy.
In consequence of the battle, the Latin phrase Ilerdam videas is said to have been used by people who wanted to cast bad luck on someone else. Under the Roman empire, Ilerda was a flourishing city, a municipium, it minted its own coins. It had a fine stone bridge over the Sicoris. In the time of Ausonius the city had fallen into decay, it was part of Visigothic and Muslim Hispania until it was conquered from the Moors by Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona in 1149. It used to be the seat of a major university, the oldest in the Crown of Aragon, until 1717, when it was moved by Philip V to the nearby town of Cervera; the University of Lleida is nowadays active again since 1991. During the Reapers' War, Lleida was occupied by the rebel forces. In 1644 the city was conquered by the Spanish under D. Felipe da Silva. Lleida served as a key defense point for Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, fell to the Insurgents, whose air forces bombed it extensively, in 1937 and 1938; the November 2, 1937 Legion Condor attacks against Lleida became infamous since they were aimed to the school known as Liceu Escolar de Lleida.
48 children and several teachers died in it that day, 300 people were killed on the November 2 bombings altogether, the town would be bombed and sieged again in 1938, when it was conquered by Franco's forces. After some decades without any kind of population growth, it met a massive migration of Andalusians who helped the town undergo a relative demographic growth. Nowadays it is home to immigrants of 146 different nationalities. During 2007 Lleida was the year's Capital of Catalan Culture. Lleida has a temperate semi-arid climate. Winters are foggy though cooler than places on the coast while summers are hot and dry. Frosts are common during winter although snowfall can fall, averaging 1 or 2 days. Precipitation is low, with an annual average of 369 millimetres with a peak in April and May and another peak in September and October. Lleida is divided in the following districts by the Observatori Socioeconòmic de Lleida: Lleida is served by the RENFE, Spanish state railway's Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail line, serving Barcelona, Calatayud and Madrid.
Lleida has a new airport opened in January 2010, a minor airfield located in Alfès. The town is the western terminus of the Eix Transversal Lleida-Girona, a railway covering the same distance is under planning. Lleida's only passenger railway station is Lleida Pirineus, it is served by both Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya train lines. In the future a Rodalies Lleida commuter network will connect the town with its adjacent area and the main towns of its province, improving the existing network with more train frequency and newly built infrastructure. A second railway station is Pla de la Vilanoveta in an industrial area, only used by freight trains. A future railway museum will be located in its facilities. Since 2008 the bulk of public transpo
Marc Márquez
Marc Márquez Alentà is a Spanish Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and one of the most successful motorcycle racers of all time with seven Grand Prix world championships to his name - five of which are in the premier MotoGP class. Márquez races for Honda's factory team since his MotoGP debut in 2013, he is nicknamed the'Ant of Cervera' worldwide and'el tro de Cervera' locally in his hometown, meaning the'Thunder of Cervera'. He is one of four riders to have won world championship titles in three different categories, after Mike Hailwood, Phil Read and Valentino Rossi. Marquez is considered one of the greatest innovators of modern MotoGP racing, due to his comparatively exaggerated cornering technique of leaning so far over the bike he seems to be “in constant danger of sliding out”. Born in Cervera, Catalonia, Márquez became the second Catalan rider after Àlex Crivillé and the third Spaniard after Crivillé and Jorge Lorenzo to win the premier class title, is to date the most successful Catalan and Spanish rider in the top category.
Márquez won the 2010 125cc World Championship, the 2012 Moto2 World Championship, the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 MotoGP World Championships. Márquez became the first rider since Kenny Roberts in 1978 to accomplish the premier class title in his first season, the youngest to win the title overall. In 2014 he defended his title, winning the championship with three rounds to spare, during which he won ten races in a row, he is the older brother of 2014 Moto3 world champion Álex Márquez. Márquez equalled the all-time Grand Prix record for pole positions at the age of 23 in 2016. Márquez secured the 2016 title with three rounds to spare at Motegi, before sealing the title at Valencia in the final round of 2017, he went on to win the 2018 title with three races to spare and became the third highest all time Grand Prix winner. Born in Cervera, Spain, Márquez made his championship debut on 13 April 2008 at the 125cc 2008 Portuguese Grand Prix at the age of 15 years and 56 days, he is the youngest Spanish rider to take a pole position or a podium in a motorcycle racing world championship.
Márquez achieved his first podium on 22 June 2008 at the British Grand Prix. For 2009, as a factory KTM rider, at the French Grand Prix achieved his first pole position at the age of 16 years and 89 days, he took pole for the 2010 Spanish Grand Prix but the exhaust pipe fell off on the opening lap and went under the rear wheel, causing Márquez to crash and injure his shoulder. His first win was on 6 June 2010 at Mugello. Further victories at Silverstone and Catalonia in the next three races made Márquez the youngest rider to win four successive races, his fifth win in succession at the Sachsenring was Derbi's 100th victory in Grand Prix racing, Márquez became the first rider since Valentino Rossi in 1997 to win five successive races in 125cc racing. He was less successful in the following races, dropping to third in the standings at one point behind Nicolás Terol and Pol Espargaró after being involved in an accident with Randy Krummenacher at the first corner at the Aragon Grand Prix. Four successive wins from Motegi onwards had moved Márquez into a 17-point lead over Terol with only one round to go.
At Estoril, the race was red-flagged due to rain with Márquez running second to Terol. When returning to the grid for the second race, Márquez fell on the sighting lap and had to return to the pits. With repairs, Márquez started at the back of the field having not made it out of the pit lane before it closed five minutes prior to the start. Despite this, Márquez recovered to win the race and thus extend his lead before the Valencia finale, his tenth victory of the season moved him to within one of tying the record set by Rossi in 1997. He would fall short of tying it as he was fourth at the final race in Valencia to become the second-youngest World Champion after Loris Capirossi. Márquez moved into the Moto2 class for 2011 – the first of an expected two-year deal – as the sole rider of the new team Monlau Competición, run by his manager Emilio Alzamora, he finished 21st before taking his first victory in the class at the French Grand Prix. At his home race in Catalonia, Márquez finished second behind championship leader Stefan Bradl, before another fall at the Silverstone, having started from his first Moto2 pole position.
With Bradl taking his fourth victory in the first six races, Márquez trailed him by 82 points at the end of the weekend. Márquez made a mid-season surge up the championship standings, winning six of the next seven races to move within six points of Bradl in the championship standings. In the Japanese Grand Prix, Márquez took his seventh pole position of the season but finished second to Andrea Iannone, but that finish combined with a fourth place for Bradl, allowed Márquez to take the championship lead by a point. At the Australian Grand Prix, Márquez was involved in an incident with Ratthapark Wilairot during free practice; the penalty ensured Márquez would start the race from last on the grid, but he made his way through the field and finished the race in third place. Prior to the Malaysian Grand Prix, Márquez confirmed that he would remain in Moto2 for the 2012 season, after rumours of a move into the MotoGP class. Márquez's race weekend was hampered in the opening minutes of the first free practice session, as he crashed on a damp patch of asphalt.
After sitting out two further practice sessions, Márquez completed two laps in the qualifying session, but his times were only good enough for 36th on the grid. He did not start the race, as he failed a medical examination prior to the w
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Spain
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Cervera
