OCTOBER, 9 1238: JAUME I & THE KINGDOM OF VALÈNCIA

Jaume I conquers Valencia, 1238

Today, The Grandma is in València. She has gone to participate in the events of the Valencian National Day, October 9 a commemoration of the day when Jaume I conquered the city and founded the Valencian Kingdom.  

She is in the city with Miquel and Lluïsa, her Valencian friends and they are ready to enjoy Valencian culture, especially something that The Grandma loves, the Muixerangues.

During the travel by train, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her First Certificate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 6).

 More information: Vehicles and transport I & II

James I the Conqueror, in Catalan Jaume el Conqueridor, in Aragonese Chaime lo Conqueridor, and in Occitan Jacme lo Conquistaire (2 February 1208-27 July 1276) was King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona, and Lord of Montpellier from 1213 to 1276; King of Majorca from 1231 to 1276; and Valencia from 1238 to 1276. His long reign, the longest of any Iberian monarch, saw the expansion of the House of Aragon and House of Barcelona in three directions: Languedoc to the north, the Balearic Islands to the southeast, and Valencia to the south.

By a treaty with Louis IX of France, he wrested the county of Barcelona from nominal French suzerainty and integrated it into his crown. He renounced northward expansion and taking back the once Catalan territories in Occitania and vassal counties loyal to the County of Barcelona, lands that were lost by his father Peter II of Aragon in the Battle of Muret during the Albigensian Crusade and annexed by the Kingdom of France, and then decided to turn south. 

Jaume I accepts to conquer Valencia

One of the main reasons for this formal renunciation of most of the once Catalan territories in Languedoc and Occitania and any expansion into them is the fact that he was raised by the Knights Templar crusaders, who had defeated his father fighting for the Pope alongside the French, so it was effectively forbidden for him to try to maintain the traditional influence of the Count of Barcelona that previously existed in Occitania and Languedoc.

As a legislator and organiser, he occupies a high place among the European kings. Jaume compiled the Llibre del Consolat de Mar, which governed maritime trade and helped establish Catalan-Aragonese supremacy in the western Mediterranean. He was an important figure in the development of the Catalan language, sponsoring Catalan literature and writing a quasi-autobiographical chronicle of his reign: the Llibre dels Fets. 

Jaume was born at Montpellier as the only son of Peter II of Aragon and Marie of Montpellier. As a child, Jaume was made a pawn in the power politics of Provence, where his father was engaged in struggles helping the Cathar heretics of Albi against the Albigensian Crusaders led by Simon IV de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who were trying to exterminate them.

More information: Cathar

Peter endeavoured to placate the northern crusaders by arranging a marriage between his son James and Simon's daughter, when the former was only two years old. He entrusted the boy to be educated in Montfort's care in 1211, but was soon forced to take up arms against him, dying at the Battle of Muret on 12 September 1213.

Montfort would willingly have used Jaume as a means of extending his own power had not the Catalan-Aragonese appealed to Pope Innocent III, who insisted that Montfort surrender him. Jaume was handed over to the papal legate Peter of Benevento at Carcassonne in May or June 1214.

Castle of Montso, Aragon

Jaume was then sent to Montsó, where he was entrusted to the care of Guillem de Montredó, the head of the Knights Templar in Provence. 

The kingdom was given over to confusion until, in 1217, the Templars and some of the more loyal nobles brought the young king to Zaragoza.

Jaume built and consecrated the Cathedral of Lleida, which was constructed in a style transitional between Romanesque and Gothic with little influence from Moorish styles.

Jaume was a patron of the University of Montpellier, which owed much of its development to his impetus. He also founded a studium at Valencia in 1245 and received privileges for it from Pope Innocent IV, but it did not develop as splendidly. In 1263, Jaume presided over a debate in Barcelona between the Jewish rabbi Nahmanides and Pablo Christiani, a prominent converso.

More information: Turó Seu Vella

Jaume was the first great sponsor and patron of vernacular Catalan literature. Indeed, he may himself be called the first of the Catalan prose writers.

Jaume wrote or dictated at various stages a chronicle of his own life in Catalan, Llibre dels Fets, the first autobiography by a Christian king. As well as being a fine example of autobiography, the Book of Deeds expresses concepts of the power and purpose of monarchy, examples of loyalty and treachery in the feudal order, and medieval military tactics. More controversially, some historians have looked at these writings as a source of Catalan identity, separate from that of Occitania and Rome.

Llibre dels Fets, the autobiography of Jaume I

Jaume also wrote the Libre de la Saviesa or Book of Wisdom. The book contains proverbs from various authors, reaching from the time of King Solomon to nearly his own time with Albertus Magnus.

It even contains maxims from the medieval Arab philosophers and from the Apophthegmata Philosophorum of Honein ben Ishak, which was probably translated at Barcelona during his reign. A Hebrew translator by the name of Jehuda was employed at Jaume's court during this period.

Though Jaume was himself a prose writer and sponsored mostly prose works, he had an appreciation of verse. In consequence of the Albigensian Crusade, many troubadours were forced to flee southern France and many found refuge in Catalonia and Aragon. 

Download A window on the Valencia of Jaume the Conqueror-R.I.Burns

On 5 September 1229, the troops from Aragon, consisting of 155 ships, 1,500 horsemen and 15,000 soldiers, set sail from Tarragona, Salou, and Cambrils to conquer Majorca from Abú Yahya, the semi-independent Almohad governor of the island. Although a group of Aragonese knights took part in the campaign because of their obligations to the king, the conquest of Majorca was mainly a Catalan undertaking, and Catalans would later make up the majority of Majorca's settlers.

Jaume conquered Majorca on 31 December 1229, and Menorca (1232) and Ibiza (1235) were later acquired during the reconquest.

Valencia capitulated to Catalan-Aragonese rule on 28 September 1238, following an extensive campaign that included the Siege of Burriana and the decisive Battle of the Puig, where the Aragonese commander, Bernardo Guillermo de Entenza, who was also the king's cousin, died from wounds received in action. Chroniclers say he used gunpowder in the siege of Museros castle. Finally, in October 9, Jaume entered in the city of Valencia and founded the Valencian Kingdom.

More information: UNESCO

The air is moving for freedom
and the west wind will turn to the east.

The Song of the Muixeranga

VICENT ANDRÉS ESTELLÉS: BORN FOR STAYING AWAKE

Vicent Andrés Esteller

Today, The Grandma wants to talk about one of her favourite poets: Vicent Andrés Estellés.

Vicent Andrés Estellés (4 September 1924-27 March 1993) was a Valencian poet and journalist. 

He was born in Burjassot, València and is considered one of the main renovators of modern Catalan poetry, with a similar role to that of Ausiàs March or Joan Roís de Corella in earlier periods.

Vicent Andrés Estellés was twelve years old when the Spanish Civil War broke out. During its course, he trained to become both a baker and a goldsmith, and learned to write on a typewriter. The war had a profound impact on his work, in which death is a recurring theme.

More information: UOC

Estellés spent his teenage years in Valencia, where he developed an interest in literature. During that period, he was most influenced by Charles Baudelaire, Pablo Neruda, Paul Éluard, Cesare Pavese, and Walt Whitman, Catalan poets such as Màrius Torres, Jacint Verdaguer, Josep Carner, Carles Riba, Santiago Rusiñol and Joan Salvat-Papasseit, as well as the Valencian poet Ausiàs March and the Balearic poet Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel.

In 1942, at the age of 18, Estellés moved to Madrid to study for a degree in Journalism. Three years later, he left to do his military service in Navarre. At the age of 24, he moved back to Valencia and became a journalist for the newspaper Las Provincias. He befriended Joan Fuster, Xavier Casp and Manuel Sanchis i Guarner, all three of them well-known Valencian writers, and met Isabel, who would later influence his writings as well.

The Grandma meeting Estellés in Burjassot

In 1955 Estellés married Isabel. The couple had a daughter, who died when she was four months old. After the death, which Estellés recalled in Coral romput, death became a recurring theme in his works.

In 1958 he became editor-in-chief of Las Provincias, only to be dismissed for political reasons in 1978, thus being forced into early retirement at the age of 54. This allowed him to devote himself entirely to writing and engaging in a variety of cultural activities, such as art exhibitions. That same year, Estellés was awarded the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. In 1984 he was awarded the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Valencianes.

Estellés spent a few years in Benimodo, a municipality in the comarca of Ribera Alta, in the Valencian Country. During this period, he combined poetry with prose in his works. He received several awards in the 1990s, including the Premis Octubre.

More information: Visat
 

The works of Vicent Andrés Estellés, one of the most important Catalan-language poets of the 20th century, are diverse and extensive. 

Vicent Andrés Estellés

Estellés also wrote novels, plays, screenplays, as well as his memoirs. It is difficult to categorize his entire work because some works were reworked from books or private notes such as Manuscrits de Burjassot, Cançoner or Mural del País Valencià, from which he only published extracts or the poems he considered most appropriate. 

The three levels of oppression that are evident in his works are the reason why Estellés's aesthetics have been described as irate.

-Personal oppression: He describes a vital situation in which persecution and humiliation are constant. This situation unavoidably requires being assertive and acting consequently. It shows love as a possibility of salvation and redemption.

-Collective oppression: He describes a collective life characterized by economic misery, fear of being socially criticized, and a situation of ignorance devastating the people which he feels he belongs to.

-National oppression: He describes a sense of despair, a particular sensitivity caused by cultural, linguistic, and national abduction. He is sensitive to the Valencian people's fight to dignify their own culture.

 More information: Ajuntament de Godella

Some of his most frequently recurring topics are death, love and eroticism, hunger and political oppression, as well as daily life. Put together, these themes provide a considerable formal and tonal variety.

You will assume the voice of a people
and it will be the voice of your people,
and you will be, forever, people,
and you will suffer, and you will wait,
and you will go through the dust,
and a dust cloud will follow you.

Vicent Andrés Estellés