Nueva Planta decrees

The Nueva Planta decrees (Spanish:Decretos de Nueva Planta, Catalan: Decrets de Nova Planta) were a number of decrees signed between 1707 and 1716 by Philip V—the first Bourbon king of Spain—shortly after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Taking France as a model of a centralized state, Philip V took advantage of his military victories to suppress the institutions, privileges, and the ancient fueros of almost all the areas that were formerly part of the Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands). The decrees ruled that all the territories in the Crown of Aragon excepting the Val d'Aran were to be ruled by the laws of Castile, making these regions part of a nearly uniformly administered, centralized Spain. Navarre, the Basque Country and the Val d'Aran continued with their own fueros.

The acts were promulgated in 1707 in Valencia and Aragon, in 1715 in Majorca and the other Balearic Islands (with the exception of Menorca, a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain at the time), and finally in Catalonia on January 16, 1716.

These acts constituted the first realization of Spain as a centralized state and were a harsh punishment on the territories that had fought against Philip V in the War of Succession. With these decrees, the court of the Kingdom of Castile became the court of Spain. The Aragonese, Valencian and Catalan languages were completely banned from the legal system. Civil servants were appointed directly from Madrid, the king's court city. Institutions of self-government in these territories were abolished.

References

• This article draws on material from the corresponding article in the Spanish Wikipedia, accessed January 2006.