The Catalans have always been great seafarers, traders and industrialists. Ever since they were united under the Barcelona House, their nationality has been threatened by marriages, alliances and conflicts with Madrid, and the road to their current status as a semi-autonomous region in Spain has been marked by periods of power , wealth and troughs of weakness and despair.
Barcelona was not a natural site for human settlements. Its port was negligible and its heights, Montjuic, had no water. The oldest evidence of man in Catalonia comes from other sites scattered throughout the region, in particular the dolmens of the Alt (high) Emporda and the passage tombs of the Baix (low) Emporda and Alt Urgell.
In the first millennium BC the lands around Barcelona were colonized by the Laeitani agrarian, while other parts of Catalonia were simultaneously colonized by the Iberians. The latter were large stone builders and remains of one of their settlements are still visible in Ullastret on the Costa Brava. Greek merchants arrived on the coast around 550 BC, founding their first commercial headquarters in Empuries near Ullastret. It was the Carthaginians of New Carthage in southern Spain who put Barcelona on the map. They named the city as Hamil Barca, Hannibal's father who led his army of elephants from Catalonia over the Pyrenees and the Alps to attack Rome.
In retaliation, the Romans arrived in Empuries and began the submission of the entire Iberian peninsula. They wiped out the Carthaginians and Laeitans and founded Tarraco in southern Catalonia as the imperial capital of Tarraconensis, one of the three administrative regions of the peninsula.
Roman Barcelona is visible in the city gate next to the cathedral, while the 3rd century walls that once surrounded the city are located near the medieval Royal Palace.
The foundations of the Roman city have been excavated in the basement of the Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat, and columns of the Temple of Augustus can be glimpsed inside the Center Excursionista de Catalunya behind the cathedral.
When the Roman empire collapsed, the Visigoths of Toulouse moved to fill the void. They had been vassals of Rome, practiced Roman law, spoke a similar language and in 587 their Aryan king, reccared, converted to the Christianity of Rome.
