Josep Serrano Daura, lecturer in History of Law and Institutions at the UIC Faculty of Law, took part from 7 to 9 September in the international congress Political Unions in European History (10th–18th Centuries), and Their Perception in the Cultures of Remembrance (19th–21st Centuries), held at the House of European History in Brussels.

Organised by the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Polish Academy of Sciences, the congress brought together researchers from across Europe to examine the political unions and composite structures that have shaped the continent’s history over the past thousand years, as well as their influence on contemporary cultures of remembrance.

Within this context, Josep Serrano Daura presented the paper “The Dynastic Union of the So-Called Crown of Aragon (12th–18th Centuries)”, in which he examined the origins, consolidation and evolution of the dynastic union that gave rise to the Crown of Aragon.

His presentation reviewed the process initiated in 1137 with the marriage of Petronilla of Aragon and Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, and the subsequent development of this political structure, which brought under a single monarch territories including Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia, Sicily and Naples. He also analysed the union with Castile following the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469, as well as the disappearance of the institutions specific to the territories of the Crown of Aragon after the War of the Spanish Succession, between 1710 and 1716.

Over the three days of the congress, participants examined other examples of European political unions, including the Kalmar Union; the kingdoms of Castile and León; Poland and Lithuania; and Bohemia and Hungary, as well as unions associated with the Habsburgs, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and the present-day European Union.

The congress highlighted the importance of these unions in shaping Europe’s political landscape and reinforced UIC’s commitment to excellence and the international engagement of its teaching staff.