La construcció de la modernitat a Montgai i Butsènit d’Urgell: Del feudalisme tardà a l’arribada del capitalisme (1714-1931)

This book analyses the evolution of Montgai and Butsènit d’Urgell during a key period for the historical construction of the contemporary municipality. It also aims to explain the general dynamics that go beyond its limits.

The historical journey begins after the War of Succession, when the foundations of the new town councils were created and the changes that began in the previous century and that were key to the economic transformation of the country were accelerated.

The slow and long crisis of the feudal system, the reconfiguration of property rights, the disentailment of lands promoted in the 18th and 19th centuries or the arrival of water from the Urgell Canal represented a crucial economic change for the transforma-tion of the entire region.

Both towns experienced the social changes that led to the configuration of a new civil society; the disintegration of the estate structure of the Ancien Régime (with its long agonising reaction), the participation in liberal democracy, the emergence of associatio-nism and republicanism or the echoes of the conflicts in the peripheries of the Empire allow us to follow a path that takes us to the doors of the Second Republic.