The original structure of the kingdom of Aragon is clear from the events described above. The kingdom is perhaps better described as the ‘crown of Aragon’, a term already in current use long before Jeronimo Zurita first introduced it into historiography in 1562. By ‘crown of Aragon’ we mean all the kingdoms and lands (regnes e terres, vassals e sotmesos) over which the kings of Aragon ruled. In the language of the chanceries and in the titles on royal diplomas they were normally listed in order of institutional hierarchy after Aragon, whose pre-eminence was historical in origin. The concept of the ‘crown of Aragon’ developed from the original casal d'Arago; the alternative, reial corona d'Arago, was a later logical and historical development connected with the emergence of a stronger concept of regality, to which the solemn coronation in Saragossa cathedral contributed in the second half of the fourteenth century. As royal authority established itself throughout the land, this finally produced the more geo-political term, the ‘crown of Aragon’.
The juridico-institutional aspect of this institution is currently the subject of renewed interest and discussion among historians. Historical writing now defines the entity as a confederation, a term unacceptable to those who consider it a modern concept, and believe that the only tie holding all the parties together was the ruling house, meaning that the crown of Aragon was nothing more than a personal union. It could be objected that the legal concept of such a union suggests a link between the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and the principality of Catalonia which is too weak and inadequate to describe even the strong ties which did, in effect, unite them. What we have here, on the contrary, not originally but certainly from the end of the thirteenth century, is a real union with federal overtones guaranteed not so much by the person of the sovereign — who, given the period’s general conception of the state as a personal estate, could be, and was, a source of weakness — but rather by the will of his subjects as expressed in the representative assemblies which imposed on the king the inalienable rights of his dominions. The co-ordinating factor, in what has been called ‘a form of political co-ordination’, was not the king alone but rather that institution common to all the states of the crown, the royal household in its governing role, where the selection of functionaries from the various member states did not merely depend on the personal choice of the sovereign or on the influence of factions at court, but was, to a certain extent, already institutionalised. This meant that Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia each secured one of the three positions of major-domo, and one of the three vice-chancellorships, each position carrying responsibility for its own ‘state’. As has been pointed out, the corts of the different kingdoms kept close watch on the central household as a governing body so that the king could not alter its function or composition, or in any way damage the delicate balance of power within it. The modern definition of a confederation as the sharing of sovereignty between member states and a central governing body does basically fit the crown of Aragon, even though there was no cession of sovereignty by the member states to the central governing body. Likewise, the sources of sovereignty and authority remained, on the one hand, the king, on the other, the corts.
Each member state in the confederation retained not only its own institutions, laws, customs, privileges and original political identity, it preserved its own language, too: Catalan in the principality, the Balearic Islands and Valencia (although with local variations in the last two), Aragonese, linguistically similar to Castilian, in Aragon.
Each state’s representative assembly was called periodically to discuss, in the first instance, its domestic problems (del bon stat i reforma de la terra). If foreign policy was discussed at all, the horizons adopted tended to be limited. The Aragonese corts seem to have been interested only in frontier problems with Castile, while the Catalans, who had a more open and dynamic approach, were concerned with Mediterranean matters. In 1435, however, all three assemblies of Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia met in a general cort at Monzon to consider the problem of the imprisonment and ransom of the king who had fallen into the hands of the Genoese during the naval battle of Ponza.
The three states had different socio-economic backgrounds. With its agricultural economy and a mainly feudal nobility, Aragon was the least developed. Its corts, for instance, had four rather than the more normal three divisions, the nobility being represented by two groups, the ricos hombres, or magnates, and the caballeros. Valencia and Catalonia, by contrast, were more advanced, maritime societies, with powerful urban aristocracies whose interests lay in commercial speculation, exchange and insurance.
The customs barriers between the states, introduced in the second half of the fourteenth century for fiscal rather than protectionist reasons, did not affect the economically homogeneous or politically defined regions. This was because the crown of Aragon in its turn was part of a much wider economic area: Aragon, along with Valencia and the Balearics, was part of the wool-, rice-and saffron-producing area controlled by Italian business, while Catalonia, with its industrial centres in Barcelona and Perpignan, was the centre of a different economic system extending throughout the Mediterranean and controlled by Catalan merchants.
During the fifteenth century the institutions of all three states underwent the same form of development. First, the ‘deputation’ (diputacio) as an institution came into being. This was the permanent delegation of the corts, first found in Catalonia as the diputacio del general or generalitat, which later emerged in Aragon and Valencia. Operating between one sitting of the cort and the next, it soon became an autonomous institution (Catalonia after 1413, Valencia after 1418 and Aragon after 1436), independent of both corts and sovereign. Supported by a complex bureaucracy, the diputacions had one (as in Catalonia) or two members for each social grouping. Their mandates ran for three years, and they were empowered to co-opt their successors. Originally administrative and financial institutions with the power to impose taxes (the generalitats) and to manage the public deficit which more or less grew up with them, the diputacions eventually developed into full political bodies. As guarantors of the freedoms, customs and privileges of each state, they thus became a focus for national identity. This developed in Valencia and Aragon during the course of the fifteenth century, and followed the birth of a general consciousness of the nacio catalana in Catalonia. The institutional differences and strong national feelings were not, however, sufficient to compromise unity under the crown.
During the course of the century the kings of the new house, Fernando I and Alfonso V, shared a common conception of power with their predecessors of the house of Barcelona, Pere IV and Marti I, both continuing the work of bringing the institutions into line with the political realities of the time. Fernando and Alfonso introduced two policies which, while apparently contradictory, in reality converged to give a better-defined role to both the central and regional organs of government, and to improve co-ordination between them. On the one hand they strengthened the centralised authority of the state, above all by extending the general competence of certain, in particular financial, authorities (the treasurer-general, the auditor-general, the conservator-general of the royal patrimony) to include the entire crown of Aragon. At the same time these same functions submitted to a process of decentralisation. Typical are the changes made to the functions of the auditor, originally the court official responsible for the management of the accounts. In 1419, at the insistence of the population of the city of Valencia, an auditor was appointed with responsibility for that state, and some time later another (first referred to in 1446) was nominated to Aragon, so that the duties of the original court official were reduced to cover Catalonia alone. As a result of these changes, an auditor-general was created, higher in rank than the others, to represent the central authority.
As the royal household and the apparatus of central government became more complex, they tended to be counterbalanced by a strengthening of the individual powers of the three states. Part of this process was the increasingly frequent delegation of authority by the sovereign to viceroys, governors and lieutenants, especially lieutenants-general, usually close friends or relatives, to be the king’s personal representatives at the head of any state which he found himself temporarily unable to govern in person. It was thanks to this remarkably flexible system that the crown of Aragon survived the serious crisis which rocked it during the course of the century, and that these crises had no effect on the recent foreign conquests of Sicily and Naples, territories which, after a period of merely personal union with the crown, became fully fledged members of it.