Although it is believed to have been settled by the Phoenicians and the Greeks many years before, the city of Barcelona was founded in 300 BC by Hamilcar Barca, a general and statesman from the city of Carthage (Now known as Tunis the capital city of Tunisia). Leader of the Barcid family and father to Hannibal, who famous traversed the Alps with an army of war elephants, he named the city after his family. Barcino as it was known, was occupied by the Carthaginians up until around 206 BC, when they were finally defeated by the mighty Roman empire.

After being colonized by the Romans and turned into a military camp around 15 BC, it was renamed to Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino. In the beginning the town lived in the shadow of its more illustrious neighbor, Terraco. (Modern day Tarragona). However, with a picturesque location and easily accessible port, the town soon grew in wealth and stature, eventually producing its own coins. The Romans occupied the territory for the next 600 years and their influence of grid like town planning is still evident today.

After Rome was defeated in 410 AD the German Visigoths turned their attention to Spain. Any Roman resistance soon capitulated and the Visigoths made Barcelona their capital city, renaming it Barcinona. However, they didn’t hold onto the city long as they were soon invaded by the Moors in 711 AD who then took control of Spain.

Almost a hundred years later the Catalunya region of Spain was captured by the empire of the Franks. King Charlemagne's son Louis made Barcelona the seat of Carolingian and created a buffer zone known as the "Spanish Marches" (Marca Hispanica). This zone was to be a defensive barrier between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom. (Marca Hispanica is also assosiated to Counts or Lordships created by the Franks. Most of these lordships either merged or gained independence from Frankish imperial rule and now only Andorra remains as a completely automonous state).

Unhappy with Louis V’s reluctance to rid Spain of the Moors, the Counts of Barcelona became increasingly independent, expanding their territory to include all of Catalonia. The flag of Catalunya, which consists of four red stripes across a gold background, represent the first Count of Barcelona, Guifré el Pilós’s four bloody fingers across his shield. This period of time is largely considered as the birth of Catalunya as a nation state.

Over the following centuries Barcelona became one of the intellectual and creative epicentres of Europe, facilitating the exchange of Knowledge between Christian and Islamic schools of thought. During this time many of the gothic structures and landmarks were created, including the world famous Cathedral. However in the 16th Century the City’s inflence began to decline and Madrid earned the status as the nations Capital city.

Toward the end of the 16th Century, the city of Barcelona allied with France in a war against the spanish. But was devastated in 1652 when the spanish wrestled back control. Since then the city has been under seige a number of times, most notebly in wars with the French around 1680 and 1690.

1705 saw the beginning of the War of Spanish Succession. The province of Catalunya signed a treaty with England and Genoa and went to war with the rest of Spain. After a long siege the war ended on the 11th September 1714, (now Catalunya’s national day) and the Catalan language was banned.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Catalunya was the center of socialist and anarchist activity. In 1931 the Catalans established a separate government, which in 1932 won autonomy from the Spanish Cortes. A revolution for complete independence failed, but in 1936 autonomy was restored. In the civil war of 1936–39, Loyalist Catalunya sided with the Republic and suffered heavily for its opposition to Franco. Barcelona became the capital for loyalists from October 1937 to January 1939. But then fell to Franco in February1939. Under his dictatorship, the use of Catalan was banned in public life.

Catalunya elected its first parliament as an autonomous region in 1980, and by the mid-1990s Catalan nationalists had become a force in both Catalonian and Spanish politics. Increased autonomy for Catalunya and recognition of the region as a "nation" within Spain was approved in 2006.