Catalan Courts

General Court of Catalonia Cort General de Catalunya (Catalan)
Principality of Catalonia
Type
Type	Tricameral
Houses	Braços: Ecclesiastical estate Military estate Royal estate
History
Established	1214/1218
Disbanded	1714
Preceded by	Comital Court Peace and Truce Assemblies
Succeeded by	Courts of Castile
Leadership
Count of Barcelona	James I (first, 1214) Charles III (last, 1705)
Seats	5501
Elections
Military estate voting system	Ennoblement or inheritance
Royal estate voting system	Indirect election by local assemblies
Meeting place
Itinerant, different places of Catalonia. The Palau de la Generalitat was the place where the last Courts (1705–1706) met
Footnotes
1Reflecting composition of the Courts of 1705–1706 See also: Parliament of Catalonia

The Catalan Courts or General Court of Catalonia (Catalan: Corts Catalanes or Cort General de Catalunya)^[1] were the policymaking and parliamentary body of the Principality of Catalonia from the 13th to the 18th century.

Composed by the king and the three estates of the realm, the Catalan Courts were the result of the territorial and institutional evolution of the Cort Comtal de Barcelona (County Court of Barcelona), and took its definitive institutional form in 1283, according to historian Thomas Bisson, and it has been considered by several historians as a model of medieval parliament. Scholar Charles Howard McIlwain wrote that the General Court of Catalonia had a better defined organization than the parliaments of England or France.^[2] Unlike the Courts of Castile, which at the time functioned mainly as an advisory body to which the king granted privileges and exemptions, the Catalan Courts was a regulatory body, as their decisions had the force of law, in the sense that the king could not unilaterally revoke them, being the first parliament of Europe that officially obtained the power to pass legislation, alongside the monarch.^[3] It is comparable to similar institutions across Europe, such as the Parliament of England and the Diets (German: Landtage) of the German "lands".

The General Courts of the Crown of Aragon were the simultaneous meeting of the Courts of Aragon, the Courts of Valencia and the Courts of Catalonia. The Kingdom of Majorca did not convene Courts and thus sent their representatives to the Courts of the Principality. As the courts could not be held outside of Aragon nor the Principality, they were frequently held in Monzón or in Fraga, Aragonese towns which lay equidistant between Zaragoza and Barcelona.

The Catalan Courts met for almost five centuries, until they were abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees of 1716. Thereafter the Courts of Castile operate as the unified Courts of Spain, except in Navarra. Despite some attempts to reestablish the Courts, Catalonia only recovered a legislative assembly in 1932, in the form of the current Parliament of Catalonia.