Aragonese

The Aragonese are the people of the middle Ebro and its Pyrenean headwaters, heirs of the county of Jaca, which became a kingdom when Ramiro I received Aragon after Sancho III of Navarre died in 1035. In the Reconquista his successors moved the capital to Huesca in 1096 and to Zaragoza in 1118.

The marriage of Queen Petronilla with the Barcelona count Ramon Berenguer IV in 1150 created the Crown of Aragon, under which Aragonese forces built a Mediterranean empire. The Navarro-Aragonese Romance of the Ebro spread into the reconquered lowlands; Hospitaller grand master Juan Fernández de Heredia translated Greek works into Aragonese.

Ferdinand of Antequera took the throne in 1412, and after the union with Castile in 1479 Castilian displaced Aragonese into the Pyrenean valleys; the Nueva Planta decrees of 1707 abolished the Corts and banned Aragonese in schools.