SPAIN RECOGNIZES THAT CATALONIA IF IT EXISTED BEFORE SPAIN BUT WHEN EXPLAINING TO IT ALONE THEY NOTICE THE BLOODY THING

It seems that in spite of the necessity that Spain has of denying the Catalan identity the history it certifies Catalonia just the opposite he has identity and history a lot before exists Spain, the curious of the case is that when the history appears this reality from the Spanish press they decide to take it like I reflect undoubtedly of the terribly bad ones that we are the Catalan, if that scares Spain they don't have more than to be read its own history and to review the conquest of America and the sacred inquisition. 

So that they see that absurdity is that the Spanish sensationalist press is devoted to make bad press to the Catalan I go them to there is to comment the article published in Digital" "Freedom regarding the adventures of the Almogávares, certainly I don't plan to modify substantially alone to add characters' details and to add dates and to fix the errors of writing the dates in Roman numbers that it seems that the author of the article doesn't dominate them a lot but in short to what we go.  

The “almogávares” was the most terrible soldiers in the time. They came from the Iberian and of the valleys of the Perineum (that is to say of the Pyrenees and the Catalan counties). The great majority of these “Spanish Warriors” (they could not be Spanish because Spain didn't exist like such) so alone they were Catalan, The almogávares, in occasions also called peons and field men, they were some crash troops, espionage and guerrilla present in all the Christian Kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula during the Muslim invasion, formed mainly by slight and specially well-known infantry by the asset paper that they played in the Mediterranean, those mercenaries coming from the crown of Aragon among the XIII and XIV centuries (not in the XVII and XIX centuries as he says the article of LD). They fought as mercenaries in favor of which paid them more.  

These soldiers became an authentic nightmare for the inhabitants from the Balkans. Such a print left its lootings and murders in this region that even today in some countries the Catalan" "mercenaries are synonymous of "monsters". Therefore, in Albanian the Catalan word "a monster, an evil" man means and it is even used to scare the children. In other regions of the Balkans the sentence is still used "that the Catalan vengeance reaches" you. What is there behind this history? What did they make these mercenaries exactly? 

In 1261 Miguel VIII Paleólogo was able to restore to the Byzantine Empire after defeating the Latin’s that had controlled the old empire from 1204. However, before the vulnerability of their empire that was threatened so much by the Latin’s and the Sicilians of the occident, as well as for the Ottoman invasions of Asia, Miguel VIII were forced therefore to look for the Pope's protection Gregorio X., after the Second Council of Lyon 1275, the emperor made an important concession to the Pope when recognizing and to impose the authority of the Catholicism on the Orthodox Church in all the Byzantine territories. 

However, most of the monks of Athos didn't accept the union of the two Christian churches. For it, the Pope's representatives in the Byzantine Empire sent to the mount from Athos to Catalan mercenaries that had the mission of "convincing" the friars like outside. The mercenaries plundered some of the monasteries until arriving to that of Zografou. In spite of the threats of the Catalan, the 26 religious of Zografou refused to accept the Pope's authority then, the mercenaries, in the face of the impossibility of subjecting the monks, burned them alive in one of the towers of the monastery  

However, one of the religious, Partenio, was able to escape from the terror and to count this tragedy that would be in the history of the orthodox world as of the heroism of the 26 martyrs which they defended its faith in spite of the "extreme cruelty" of the Catalan" "mercenaries. They didn't finish the furies almogávares here. On the other hand, the monks of the monastery of Ivirón were drowned in the sea, while the youngest in them were sold as Slavs in Italy. In the monastery of the Vatopediou, these mercenaries murdered the old men that lived there, and then they hung to their monks in the near forest that would be known starting from that tragedy like "the forest of those hung." 

About thirty years later, the decadence of the Byzantine Empire was already more than evident, mainly, for its inability of defending its territories of the more and more dangerous Ottoman invasions. Then, in their intent despaired to save to their empire, Andrónico II Paleólogo, son of Miguel VIII, it hired the services of the terrible Catalan mercenaries, whose leader was Roger de Flor, an old templar again. Of Flower and their army they were able to defeat the Ottoman in several occasions, those that would be the first and only victories against the powerful Muslims from Asia. 

However, the Byzantine emperor didn't not only pay the mercenaries that agreed but rather it also ordered his leader's murder. Then, the almogávares undertook the call Catalan" "vengeance: they were divided in decrees and they plundered all the Byzantine territories for those that happened. The warriors not even had women's pity and innocent children. The Mount Athos neither survived of the invasion. A great part of its monasteries was destroyed by the Catalan, while many of the monks were murdered. Byzantine columnists, as Nikiforos Grigoras, assures that the terror of the mercenaries on the monasteries lasted three years (1307-1309) until Jaime II of Aragon (1267-1327), the Fair one that was king from Aragon, of Valencia and count from Barcelona, and king from Sicily between 1285 and 1302 intervened to put an end to the blockade 

The newspaper concludes the article in the following way: Artur Mas heir of the medieval past feels for this reason during centuries the Spaniards from Catalonia they have had forbidden the entrance to the monasteries of the Mount Athos. This situation would change in 2005 when the Generality decided to invest 240.000 Eurus in the restoration of the monastery of the Vatopediou in intent of assuming the responsibility for the medieval past.