Balearic Islands PAU History of Spain common mistakes
Balearic Islands PAU History of Spain · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Dating the Taifa period and the Almoravid/Almohad arrivals from memory as a single block ('after the caliphate everything is Taifas'), so answers place the conquest of Mallorca by Jaume I (1229) inside an Almohad or Taifa frame without distinguishing the three taifa phases (1031–1094/1110s, 1140s–1172, 1228–1248).
The three-phase taifa structure and the North African interventions are taught as a list of dynasties rather than a timeline, and the Balearic case (Banu Ghaniya, Almoravid remnant rule until 1203, then Almohad/taifa fragmentation) is rarely drilled separately from the peninsular sequence.
What to do instead
Build a dated strip: 1031 caliphate collapse; 1085/1086 Almoravid entry; 1147 Almohad takeover; 1229–1235 Balearic conquest; 1238 Valencia; 1248 Seville; 1266 Murcia. For each entry write who ruled Mallorca specifically. Practise three exam-style chronology questions where Mallorca and the peninsula must be placed on the same line.
Treating the Crown of Aragon as a centralised state and describing the 1287 Privileges of Union or the 1348 Battle of Mislata as episodes of 'national' unification, then writing that the Consell de Cent or the Generalitat were royal administrative offices.
Modern state vocabulary (state, parliament, government) is projected backwards, and the pactist model (monarchy plus estates, distinct laws of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia and Mallorca) is summarised in one sentence in textbooks, so its institutional consequences are never tested in detail.
What to do instead
Write a one-page institutional map: Corts of each kingdom, Diputació del General/Generalitat, Consell de Cent (Barcelona municipal), Sindicat de Fora, jurats and Consell de Mallorca (Gran i General Consell). For each, state who elected it, what it controlled (taxes, grievances) and its relationship to the king. Then answer a practice question on the Privileges of Union explaining what the nobility wanted, not what a 'state' wanted.
Answering 'Reis Catòlics' questions with a generic 'they unified Spain', and failing to separate the personal union of the Crowns (1479), the conquest of Granada (1492), the incorporation of Navarre (1512) and the survival of separate laws, taxes and borders (Catalan/Valencian/Mallorcan fueros, Aragonese institutions) until 1707–1716.
The 'unification of Spain' narrative is memorable and short, so candidates stop there and never learn the institutional detail that examiners reward; the Balearic syllabus also expects the specific consequences for Mallorca (Inquisition, remença-type conflicts, bandolerisme).
What to do instead
Memorise a four-column table: date, territory, legal status after incorporation (same king, different law), and one local consequence for Mallorca or the Crown of Aragon. Add a sentence on the 1492 expulsion of the Jews and the 1502 conversion decree for Castile as separate events. Practise writing a five-line answer that explicitly says 'personal union, not legal unification'.
Writing about the 'decadence' of the 17th century as a single cause ('the Habsburgs were bad kings') instead of identifying specific mechanisms: the 1620s currency manipulations (vellón), the Union of Arms of Olivares (1625), the Catalan Revolt and the assassination of the viceroy (1640), the Reapers' War, the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees.
The crisis of the seventeenth century is taught as a mood rather than as fiscal and institutional mechanics, and candidates cannot connect Olivares's Unión de Armas to the specific refusal of the Corts of Catalonia and the later Catalan and Portuguese secessions.
What to do instead
Make a cause-effect chain for each crisis: war expenditure → vellón inflation → new taxes → refusal by Corts → forced recruitment (quintas) and billeting → revolt. Include Mallorca: the 1640s unrest and the 1660s plague and depopulation. Then write a 150-word answer on Olivares using at least four dated facts.
Confusing the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) with the War of the Reapers (1640–1659) and describing the Nueva Planta decrees as abolishing all fueros everywhere at once, instead of distinguishing Valencia and Aragon (1707), Mallorca (1715) and Catalonia (1716), with the survival of some Aragonese and Valencian civil law.
Both are 'wars in the Crown of Aragon against the king', and the Nueva Planta is usually reduced to the phrase 'centralisation', so the staggered dates and the partial survival of private law are lost.
What to do instead
Learn a dated list: 1701–1714 war; 1707 Almansa and the decrees for Valencia and Aragon; 1715 Mallorca; 1716 Catalonia; 1718 abolition of the Consell de Mallorca and creation of the Reial Audiència and the intendancies. Write a short answer explaining what changed (taxes, representation, language of administration) and what did not (civil law in some territories).
Describing the 18th-century Bourbon reforms only as 'Enlightenment modernisation' without naming instruments and limits: the intendancies, the cadastre of Patiño/Marqués de la Ensenada (1749), the 1766 Esquilache riots, the expulsion of the Jesuits (1767), the free trade decrees to the Indies (1765, 1778) and the demographic and economic growth of the Balearic islands under the Carrera de Indias.
The Enlightenment is remembered through names (Jovellanos, Feijoo, Floridablanca) rather than through measures, and candidates lack a model of how reform was financed and resisted.
What to do instead
For each reform write: instrument, who paid, who resisted, outcome. Add a Balearic line: growth of Palma, the 1778 free-trade decree's effect on Mallorcan shipping, and the 1784 founding of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País in Palma. Practise a question that asks you to evaluate, not just list, the reforms.
Treating the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz as a liberal constitution in force and describing the whole 1808–1874 period as a smooth liberal triumph, instead of distinguishing the six-year cycles: 1812–1814 (Cádiz, abolished 1814), 1820–1823 (Trienio Liberal), 1823–1833 (absolutist decade), 1833–1840 (Carlist war, Estatuto Real 1834, Constitution of 1837), 1845 (moderate constitution), 1869 (democratic constitution) and 1873 (First Republic).
Textbooks summarise the period as 'from absolutism to liberalism', and the repeated reversals are the hardest part to retain; candidates also mix the 1812 Constitution with the 1837 or 1869 texts.
What to do instead
Make a timeline with a column for 'constitution in force', 'who wrote it', 'suffrage', 'sovereignty' and 'religion'. Then answer one question per cycle in five lines each. For Mallorca, add a line on the 1836 abolition of the Consolat de Mar and the disentailment (desamortización) of Mendizábal and its effect on island land ownership.
Naming the Restoration's political system as a 'democracy' or as pure fraud, without explaining the mechanics of caciquismo, the turno pacífico of Cánovas and Sagasta, the 1876 Constitution, the 1890 introduction of universal male suffrage (which did not end electoral manipulation), and the 1898 Disaster as a turning point.
The vocabulary of democracy is applied to a system that was formally parliamentary but socially oligarchic, and the role of the local boss and the Ministry of the Interior in engineering results is rarely studied in detail.
What to do instead
Draw the mechanism: king → two parties → governor → cacique → voter, and mark where fraud occurred (encasillado, pucherazo). Then write a paragraph explaining why universal male suffrage in 1890 did not democratise the system. Add the regional and labour consequences: 1901–1909 Catalanism, 1909 Tragic Week, 1917 crisis, 1923 Primo de Rivera's coup.
Answering the Second Republic and Civil War with a moral narrative ('the Republic was democratic, the coup was fascist') without dates, reforms and their opponents: the 1931 Constitution, the 1932 Agrarian Reform and Statute of Catalonia, the 1933 Casas Viejas events, the 1933–1935 biennium negro, the 1936 Popular Front, the 17–18 July 1936 rising, the Non-Intervention Committee, the 1938 Battle of the Ebro and the 1 April 1939 end of the war.
The period is emotionally charged and taught through values rather than a chronology of measures and reactions; candidates also confuse the 1931 Constitution with the 1978 one and the Statute of Catalonia (1932) with the Basque Statute (1936).
What to do instead
Build a two-column chronology: 'reform' and 'reaction', with dates. Add a Balearic line: the 19 July 1936 landing at Porto Cristo and the Battle of Mallorca, and the island's role as an Italian and Nationalist base. Then write a 200-word answer on why the Republic failed, using at least six dated facts and no adjectives.
Describing the Transition as a single event ('1975–1978') and the 1978 Constitution as simply 'establishing democracy', without distinguishing the 1976 Law for Political Reform, the 1977 general elections and Moncloa Pacts, the 1978 Constitution (Article 2, Article 137, Title VIII), the 1979 Statutes of Catalonia and the Basque Country, the 1981 coup attempt of 23 February, and the 1983 Statute of the Balearic Islands.
The Transition is taught as a success story with few dates, and the constitutional architecture (autonomous communities, distribution of competences in Articles 148–149, the role of the Constitutional Court) is compressed into a single paragraph.
What to do instead
Learn a dated list from 1975 to 1983 with one line per event. Then draw the constitutional map: Article 2 (indissoluble unity, right to autonomy), Article 137 (municipalities, provinces, autonomous communities), Article 148 vs 149 (competences). Add the Balearic specifics: the 1983 Statute, the Consell Insular as the island government, and the 2007 reform of the Statute. Practise a question asking you to explain, not narrate, how the autonomy process worked.