Spain under Pere (Peter IV of Aragon) / Pedro III of Catalonia – Count: 1336-1387 1336-1387 Silver Dinero 17mm (1.22 grams) Reference: Cru-463 Certification: NGC AU DETAILS 5846611-004 ARA-GON, Peter facing left. PETRUS DEI GRA REX. Double cross.
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Peter IV (Catalan: Pere IV; 5 September 1319 – 6 January 1387), called the Ceremonious (Catalan: el Cerimoniós), was from 1336 until his death the King of Aragon and also King of Sardinia and Corsica (as Peter I), King of Valencia (as Peter II), and Count of Barcelona (and the rest of the Principality of Catalonia as Peter III). In 1344, he deposed James III of Majorca and made himself King of Majorca.
His reign was occupied with attempts to strengthen the crown against the Union of Aragon and other such devices of the nobility, with their near constant revolts, and with foreign wars, in Sardinia, Sicily, the Mezzogiorno, Greece, and the Balearics. His wars in Greece made him Duke of Athens and Neopatria in 1381.
Peter was born at Balaguer, the eldest son and heir of Alfons IV, then Count of Urgell, and his first wife, Teresa d’Entença. Peter was designated to inherit all of his father’s title save that of Urgell, which went to his younger brother James.
Upon succeeding his father he called a corts in Zaragoza for his coronation. He crowned himself, disappointing the Archbishop of Zaragoza and thus rejecting the surrender Peter II had made to the Papacy, in an otherwise traditional ceremony. According to his own later reports, this act caused him some “distress”. He did, however, affirm the liberties and privileges of Aragon. Also while he was at Zaragoza an embassy from Castile had met him and asked that he promise to uphold the donations of land his father had made to his stepmother Eleanor, but he refused to give a clear answer as to the legitimacy of the donations.
After the festivities in Zaragoza, Peter began on his way to Valencia to receive coronation there. En route he stopped at Lleida to affirm the Usatges and Constitutions of Catalonia and receive the homage of his Catalan subjects. This offended Barcelona, at which the ceremony had usually been performed, and the citizens of that city complained to the king, who claimed that Lleida was on his way to Valencia. While in Valencia he decided on the case of his stepmother’s inheritance, depriving her of income and outlawing her Castilian protector, Peter Ponce of León and Jérica. However, Jérica had enough supporters within Peter’s domains that Peter was unable to maintain his position and in 1338, through papal mediation, Jérica was reconciled to the king and Eleanor received her land and jurisdictional rights. Peter was largely forced to capitulate by a new invasion from Morocco aimed at Castile and Valencia.
In 1338 he married Maria, second daughter of Philip III and Joan II of Navarre. In May 1339 he allied with Alfonso XI of Castile against Morocco, but his contribution of a fleet had no effect at the pivotal Battle of Río Salado (October 1340).
Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a country mostly located on the Iberian Peninsula in Europe, with there also being two large archipelagoes, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea and the Canary Islands off the African Atlantic coast, two cities, Ceuta and Melilla, on the African mainland and several small islands in the Alboran Sea near the African coast. The country’s mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only European country to have a border with an African country (Morocco) and its African territory accounts for nearly 5% of its population, mostly in the Canary Islands but also in Ceuta and Melilla.
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With an area of 505,990 km2 (195,360 sq mi), Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spain’s capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao and Málaga.
Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Sp(a)n or Spania. At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations in migration from Central Europe invaded the Iberian peninsula and established themselves in relatively independent realms in its western provinces, including the Sueves, Alans and Vandals. Eventually, the Visigoths would integrate by force all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces into the Kingdom of Toledo that more or less unified politically, ecclesiastically and legally all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was then known in documents as Hispania.
The Visigothic kingdom fell to the Moors except in the north where shortly after started a process known as Reconquista. Spain emerged as a unified country in the 15th century under the Catholic Monarchs, who completed the eight centuries-long Reconquista in 1492. In the early modern period, Spain became one of history’s first global empires, leaving a vast cultural and linguistic legacy that includes over 500 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world’s second most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.
Spain is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state. It is a major developed country with the world’s fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the Eurozone, the Council of Europe (CoE), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), OSCE, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and many other international organisations. Spain has a “permanent invitation” to the G20 summits that occur generally once a year.
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