According
to legend, the arms of Aragón were origially plain gold:
in heraldic terms "Or plain". Geoffroy le Velu, king of
Aragón, was mortally wounded fighting on the side of Charles
le Chauve against the Normans. Charles, to show his gratitude
for Geoffroy's bravery, dipped his fingers in his blood
and smeared them onto the shield, making the present arms,
in heraldic terms "Or four pallets gules".
When the Counts of Barcelona became Kings of Aragón, the
two territories of Aragon and Catalonia were united under
one monarch, though they each retained their individual
identity - and arms. The arms of Catalonia are the same
as those of Aragon except that the four red stripes are
horizontal rather than vertical.
Aragonese
teritorries stretched far north of the the Pyrenees
(
Pirenčus,
Pirineus,
Pyrénées)
in the Middle Ages - as far north as Provence. Catalonia
straddled what is now the French-Spanish border - a border
which dates only from the Treaty
of the Pyrenees in 1659.
Most of the northern part of Catalonia was part of the County of the Roussillon. For the purposes of the French administration the Roussillon has now been tacked onto the Languedoc - hence the name of the Languedoc-Roussillon région.
Just
to complicate matters, the département which corresponds
to the Roussillon is called the Pyrénées-Orientales,
but it still uses the arms of the Roussillon (identical
to those of Aragón) and you will see the Catalan flag used
everywhere there.
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