The other day there was a huge confusion. Some people thought it was a street name. Others, an expat pastry chef who invented the ensaïmada. Even some argued it was a product of AI. With time, all is revealed. July 27th: 750 years since the death of James I, our king. Because here we had kings, princes, counts, knights, ponies… We know nothing. Normal. James was not meant to exist. It's a mistake.
Yes, James is an unwanted son. But he slipped in. He is the genetic son of the prefabricated melodrama industry that is the Crown of Aragon. A classic genre: dysfunctional family. A script of solitude, tears in the middle of the Wild West of existence. A medieval western. A cowboy riding sorrows with sword and blood. When you are in the placenta, you don't know this, but when you come out, instead of laughing, you cry. The first step is to admit you are the son of a deceived spermatozoon. Then you write self-help: “Our father, King Peter, did not want to see our mother, the queen. And it happened that once the king, our father, was in Llates, and the queen, our mother, was in Miravalls. And that night that both were in Miravalls, it pleased our Lord that we should be conceived”.
Yes, James is the son of Peter the Catholic and Maria of Montpellier. And this text from his chronicle is therapy from a gossip magazine. Peter finds Maria uglier than sin. And he has a problem: he has a standard "heating up". Like his father, Alfonso the Chaste not Chaste. And, the night his future son James recounts, he finds himself having a tryst. A beautiful lady. One of the chroniclers of the Crown's keyhole, Bernat Desclot, explains it: “The king entered a chamber next to the one where he slept, and here he undressed and took off his shoes, and then, covered with his cloak, in his shirt, he entered that chamber where his wife lay. And the king lay down in the bed with her, without any light. And the king thought it was that other woman with whom he had arranged for her to come to him”.
Bang! The woman he is with is not the one he ardently desires, because the woman really is... his wife: Maria. A trap in the dark. A tangle of sheets. A plot to fertilize the future. Everyone is concerned about the lineage of the County of Barcelona. Everyone is worried about the tomorrow of the Crown of Aragon. Miracle! James is a miracle who will perform miracles.
James I. Called the Conqueror. Count of Barcelona. King of Aragon, Mallorca, Valencia. Lord of Montpellier. The man who conquers everything. The father of the Catalan Countries. The captain who captures the blue: the Mediterranean. Initiatory sea of commercial relations with North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Tlemcen, Egypt); the eastern route (Alexandria, Palestine, Byzantium) and the western one (Sardinia, Sicily). The highways of water, money, and power. James I is the driving force behind the blue bible: the Consulate of the Sea. The first code of maritime customs. Commercial globalization. The Mare Nostrum is Catalan. It is Catalonia outside and inside. At home, he organizes the country of counties. From counties to unity. He transforms the administration. He decentralizes. A first network Catalonia. A regional, municipal country...
James I was not supposed to exist and he existed. He did everything he did, and that is why we are here. Catalonia is this: it was not supposed to exist and it exists. Despite everything and everyone. Also among the Catalans who do not know that James I exists. A miracle.
