ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a particular instance of multi-ethnicity, considered not synchronically but in terms of the history of a place marked by the interaction of different peoples. It analyzes the strategies followed by legal scholar and antiquarian Lluis Pons d’Icart to make sense of the multi-ethnic and multi-layered inheritance of his native city in Libro de las grandezas de Tarragona (1572). The author shows that the need to determine the extent of the contribution by Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Muslims, and Christians to Tarragona’s landscape and culture proved delicate for Pons d’Icart. This was especially the case in the political and religious climate of 16th-century Europe and due to the fact that the establishment of continuities in jurisdiction and identity was understood to be part of the historian’s duty. He demonstrates also that Pons’s ideologically motivated emphasis on the continuity of native populations throughout Tarragona’s existence amidst successive waves of migration resulted in contradictions that crucially jeopardized his portrayal of the city’s history. At the same time, Pons’s focus on transitions and overlapping of peoples with different ethnic and religious backgrounds elicited from him a reflection on continuity within rupture and sameness within difference.
