"The knowledge of this people": Mapping a global consciousness in Catalonia (1375-2009)

There is a chronology to this project, although its final form more closely resembles a constellation. In 1375, a Jewish cartographer in Mallorca named Cresques Abraham composed a mappamundi at the request of his patron, King Pere III of Aragon. Shortly thereafter, it was sent to Paris as a gift to Charles V, and it can still be found there, in the Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1975, in honor of the six hundredth anniversary of what became known as the "Atles de Cresques," Editorial Diáfora, in Barcelona, produced a limited edition volume, which included a complete reproduction of the atlas, with a good deal of supplementary content, celebrating the atlas as a masterpiece of Catalan culture.¹ (In historical accounts, the 1375 work is sometimes called the "Atles de Cresques" and sometimes called the "Catalan Atlas." For the sake of clarity, I will refer to the 1375 atlas with the descriptor "Atles de Cresques" and the 1975 volume as the "Catalan Atlas.") In 1997, Catalan novelist and historian Alfred Bosch wrote a novel about the Atles de Cresques, relying on the Catalan Atlas for a good deal of historical material. In 2002, I read Bosch's novel, and in 2008, I went to Paris to see the 1375 atlas and to Barcelona to see the homage that had been paid to it in 1975. One year later, again in Barcelona, I visited an apparently unrelated exhibit at the Museu d'Història de Barcelona called "Barcelona Connectada," and everything fell into place.