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Lluís Roura i Aulinas is Professor of Early Modern History at the UAB. He was awarded an Extraordinary Degree Award at the University of Barcelona (1976), and has taught at various universities in Europe -in the European University Institute in Florence and the University of Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

His research focuses on the study of the Age of Enlightenment and the Spanish Liberal Revolution, as well as the history of Catalonia in the context of Early Modern Europe. He is co-founder - and currently subdirector – of the Trienio magazine (Madrid) and member of the editorial board of the Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française (Paris).

With the title of Ephemérides Comentáreas de la Quinta del Principado de Cataluña, this memorial demonstrates how exceptionally complex and firm were the difficult relationships between the Bourbon monarchy and various sectors and institutions of Catalan society in the eighteenth century. Historiography often considered that the Bourbon repression had been dissolved under the reformist ideas of the monarchy throughout the century. The present document, generated in the inner circles of the Bourbon authorities in Barcelona, ​​however, denies this twofold. On the one hand, due to the principles proclaimed, the importance given to events related, and the measures proposed to address them; and on the other hand, due to the interest the author has when setting the tone to establish what should be, according to him, the historical memory of those events.

Throughout the memorial, the author of Ephemérides… fully reproduces a total of 37 documents generated during the conflict, interlaced with his own discourse, which is organised into 104 chapters or paragraphs. The present edition is introduced by a critical study of Lluís Roura i Aulinas, complemented with two appendices: one with the list and synopsis of all documents transcribed by the anonymous author and the other with a detailed chronology of events. The transcription of the text was made by Jaume Sobrequés (who also makes a brief presentation as a Director of the Centre for Contemporary History) and by Mercè Morales.

The Quintas riot showed the capability of will and resistance Catalan society had against the Bourbon monarchy at the end of the eighteenth century, who continued to apply in full effect the Nueva Planta decree. Catalan society’s resistance to the call-up -which had never been contemplated in the Catalan constitutions- would come to exude the pride of generating, with the revolt of 1773, the first capitulation of the Bourbon monarchy in Catalonia.