Barcelona Green Book

"Llibre Verd de Barcelona", 2004.
Editorial Base.
Limited edition.
Numbered copy 325/1198.
In original wooden case.
Presents marks of use.
Measurements: 12,5 x 29 x 40 cm (book); 42 x 14,5 x 30 cm (box).

The Green Book of Barcelona, a manuscript codex from the 14th century, preserved in the Historical Archive of the City of Barcelona, gathers the privileges that governed the municipal life of the Catalan capital in the Middle Ages. In addition to being of great interest to historians, the Llibre Verd has a very high symbolic value for the people of Barcelona. The beauty of the miniatures and the capital letters also give it an exceptional interest as a work of art and make it one of the most precious pieces of the Catalan codices that have been preserved. The facsimile edition of the Green Book, published in 2004, is one of the most extraordinary publishing achievements in the history of publishing in Catalonia. Editorial Base wants to make available to everyone the study edition of the facsimile of the Green Book of Barcelona.

The Green Book of Barcelona has a double value, historical and symbolic. Firstly, it is an instrument, a documentary source at the service of historians who want to study Barcelona's past. The thematic field that it allows to know is very wide. It covers political and institutional aspects related to the regiment of the municipal life of the Catalan capital, but also social, economic and cultural issues. And others of a very plural nature. It is also of codicological and artistic interest.

But, for the people of Barcelona, the Llibre Verd is also a symbol that evokes a centenary past of life in freedom, during which Barcelona, in addition to building itself, day by day, played a decisive role in the construction of a national reality, of which it was, since the early Middle Ages, the head and home, or, to put it in lesser words, the backbone of a whole, no less important, that we call Catalonia. This high symbolic value of the Green Book has been expressed, for centuries, in the fact that it has been the physical recipient of the oath or promise of the city councilors - of those people appointed by hand for many decades, and of those democratically elected by the citizens of Barcelona, since recently - at the time of assuming the office of serving the community that had been entrusted to them.