Catalonia's Advocates: Lawyers, Society, and Politics in Barcelona, 1759-1900

1. Introduction: LAWYERS AND THE CITY

1 Introduction Lawyers and the City Over the course of what has been termed the “long nineteenth century ,” lawyers throughout much of Europe accomplished something rather remarkable. In the late eighteenth century, they constituted an order of experts, modestly comfortable within the privileged universe of the Old Regime. In the new century, however, unlike other professionals, they not only survived political and industrial revolution but thrived. Their feat can be appreciated when compared to others. The physician saw his practice threatened and overturned by educated and popular surgeons, barbers, and other healers more effective at cures.1 It would take some time before doctors would expand their practices beyond diagnosis; incorporate surgical methods and blend with surgeons; overhaul medical knowledge; and, by so doing, reestablish and, in fact, augment their prestige, authority, and monopoly . The secular and especially the regular clergies witnessed their influence dwindle. The difficult fit between sacred ideas and the scientific needs of an industrializing society made men of religion expendable; in Catholic countries, legislators auctioned off the properties of a bloated landowning church to service the national debt and to put farms in the hands of owners capable of increasing productivity.2 But lawyers were different. During the fall of the Old Regime and the consolidation of the constitutional state, they spectacularly augmented their influence in law, politics, and business. Just about everywhere, the nineteenth century was a renewed era of splendor for the bar. Among historians, this ascendancy has been taken for granted when it has not been ignored. Others enter and exit the stage—the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, the crown, the army, the church—but the bar is often assumed to be part of the scenery, a seemingly (and perhaps regrettably ) endemic feature of the Western condition rather than a critical agent ofsocialandpoliticalchange.Notallperiodshavesufferedfromsuchneglect. Histories of the Middle Ages treat the rise of lawyers, the rediscovery of Roman law, and the making of a Western legal tradition as a defining feature of the epoch.3 Lawyers multiplied in numbers, penetrated high politics, and Introduction  2 S brought royal justice to much of the population during the early modern period , a phenomenon that has also attracted ample scholarly attention.4 With respect to modern Europe, there are many fine studies but also noticeable lacunae.AlthoughtheLondonbarhasbeenthesubjectofthoroughscholarly inquiry, only limited comparative lessons can be drawn: Education, training, and practice at the Inns of Court had few parallels elsewhere; what is more, the division of tasks between English barristers and solicitors was quite different from that which existed between continental advocates and proctors.5 Withrespecttothecontinent,lucidmonographshaveaddressedcrucialperiods —the Enlightenment, the French and Russian revolutions, the decades leading up to fascism in Germany and Hungary.6 These have covered the late eighteenth and the early twentieth centuries, but a conspicuous gap remains in the middle. Missing is a social history of a continental bar during the long nineteenth century when political and industrial revolutions, the rise of the liberal state, and the advent of nationalism radically rearranged society and politics.7 A proper understanding of how an Old Regime profession gained renewed prominence and flourished in the modern age remains a pending challenge. This study seeks to fill part of that void. Barcelonaprovidesanattractivesettinginwhichtoundertakesuchasocial history. Itwas aliberal, revolutionary, andindustrialcitythat experienced the fullgamutofchangesassociatedwithwhatwasoncecommonlyreferredtoas the Great Transformation.8 In the mid-eighteenth century, the bar consisted of a few dozen practitioners who went about their business, litigating in royal courtswithoutattractingtoomuchattention.Butoverthecourseoftheensuing century, lawyers dramatically augmented their influence. During the Enlightenment ,theyenterednewforums,contributedtothecreationofapublic sphere, abandoned a myopic intellectual preoccupation with Roman and ecclesiastical law, elevated practical jurisprudence to scholarly prestige, and intermixed legal reasoning with modest doses of philosophy and economy. They shed their nostalgic attachment to urban nobility; embraced a professional ethos of probity, reason, and independence; and stressed the utility of advocacy in society. In the early nineteenth century, they emerged as liberal elites amid revolutionary scenarios, forging key compromises that helped establish a constitutional order. During the middle decades of the century, theyresurrectedthehumanistheritageofthebarandbuiltpuissantcorporate associations. Many became political leaders in a burgeoning and conflictive metropolis undergoing industrial takeoff, demographic boom, urban renovation , social dislocation, and intense episodes of political violence. At the  Introduction S 3 outset of the twentieth century, lawyers headed a nascent nationalist movement demanding home rule for Catalonia. Obviously, the goal is not to tell a lineal, triumphal story of success but to treat the history of lawyers with the same critical attention afforded to...