Workshop on The Political Economy of Democracy
Barcelona, June 5 – 7, 2008
Sponsored by 
"... the Hall of the Hundred (Consell de Cent) is different. No one who respects democracy could sit here without feeling moved. This hall is the symbol of Europe’s oldest and most profound democratic movement. I do not want to bore you with history lessons you all know, but I remember clearly my surprise when I discovered this. Those of us who are not Catalans tend to assume that democracy was born at the end of the 18th century thanks to the ingenuity of American politics. And this is true as far as national government is concerned.
But on a local scale, the roots go back further: to the year 1274, when Barcelona was the reigning Gothic city of the Mediterranean, and Madrid was little more than a few churches and a group of mud huts. In those days, the principle organ of city government was run by a group of one hundred people, who did not act solely on behalf of the nobility and upper class traders: for the first time in the world, artisans and workers had more or less the same influence as landowners and bankers. The Hall of the Hundred was the most ancient proto-democratic organ of Europe. And consequently it is much more than a medieval relic."Robert Hughes
Opening Speech of the 2000 La Mercè Festival