Naixement de Catalunya (segles VIII-XII)

Michel Zimmermann has devoted most of his historiographical work to medieval Catalonia, in particular to the first centuries of its existence. In this book he studies the birth, the "creation" of Catalonia, the formation of what we could call the Catalan identity; the emergence and consolidation of a human community characterized by a common language and customs, with political institutions and original forms of expression and a space of its own. Catalonia, therefore, exists as a human, territorial, cultural and political reality. Its genesis, clearly a medieval phenomenon, occurs in a chronological sequence (8th-12th centuries) that includes from the first historical manifestations of individuation of the space that would become Catalonia until the moment when the diffusion of the name demonstrates the recognition of its existence, a process that culminates in collective awareness and identification as a sovereign political entity. This work points out the stages of the consolidation of Catalonia in the European landscape as a collectivity aware of its own identity and recognized abroad, a historical phenomenon that we could describe as "national" or "identity" and which is being reconstructed based on documentation, which provides the point of view of contemporaries on their everyday world.