A vegueria (Catalan pronunciation: [bəɣəˈɾi.ə]), plural vegueries, is the highest-level regional division of Catalonia. Each vegueria is further divided into comarques and municipalities. As of 2025, the Catalan Vegueries Law divides the territory into eight vegueries. The autonomous Aran Valley, considered a "unique territorial entity", is not part of any vegueria. The vegueries system is based on the feudal administrative territorial jurisdiction of the vegueries "vicariates" of the Principality of Catalonia, which was abolished with the Nueva Planta decrees of 1716. Preceding the vegueries is the division into ‘functional territorial areas’ in 1995, now mostly identical to the vegueries, except for the merger of the Val d'Aran and Alt Pirineu into a single Alt Pirineu i Aran region for statistical purposes. The current administrative division was established by the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006 with two functions: an inter-municipal government and the arrangement of the services from the Generalitat de Catalunya. Although the vegueries are intended to become Catalonia's only first-level administrative division and a full replacement for the four diputacions of the official provinces of Catalonia within the Spanish system in the future and create a council for each vegueria, the latter is currently still used administratively at state level, as any changes to the State's provinces were ruled to violate the Spanish Constitution. Thus, in practice, despite being official, vegueries are not allowed to carry the administrative powers of the provinces and currently remain only usable for similar territorial deployments to those carried out by the areas, e.g. government services, weather reports, commercial distribution, media coverage, curfew during the COVID-19 pandemic, television frequencies, etc.
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History
Origins and functions The origins of the vegueria go back to the era of the Carolingian Empire, when vicars (Latin: vicarii, singular vicarius) were installed beneath the counts in the Spanish March. The office of a vicar was a vicariate (Latin: vicariatus), and his territory was a vicaria. All these Latin terms of Carolingian administration evolved in the Catalan language even as they disappeared in the rest of Europe. The Catalan terms were even subsequently Latinised: vicarius → vigerius. The functions of the medieval vegueria were feudal, and it was probably initially hereditary. The veguer was appointed by his feudal lord, the count, and was accountable to him. He was the military commander of his vegueria (and thus keeper of the publicly owned castles), the chief justice of the same district, and the man in charge of the public finances (the fisc) of the region entrusted to him. As time wore on, the functions of the veguer became more and more judicial. He held a cort del veguer or de la veguería with its own seal. The cort had authority in all matter save those relating to the feudal aristocracy. It commonly heard pleas of the crown, civil, and criminal cases. The veguer did, however, retain some military functions as well: he was the commander of the militia and the superintendent of royal castles. His job was law and order and the maintenance of the king's peace: in many respects an office analogous to that of the sheriff in England.
Historical vegueries
At the end of the twelfth century in Catalonia, there were twelve vegueries. By the end of the reign of Peter the Great (1285), there were seventeen, and by the time of James the Just, there were twenty-one. Some of the larger vegueries included one or more sotsvegueries (subvigueries), which had a significant degree of autonomy. While the Principality of Catalonia continued to use vegueries as subdivisions of counties, elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula there were the merináticos (Kingdom of Aragon) and the corregimientos (Kingdom of Castile) whose functions were similar to those of the Catalan vegueries. When the Kingdom of Sicily became a Catalan-run state, it was not subdivided into vegueries, since a similar Italian institution was already entrenched there: that of the capitania and the capità. The capità had similar to identical functions as the veguer. When the Catalans conquered the Duchy of Athens, they subdivided that duchy into three vegueries: Athens, Thebes, and Livadia. In the Duchy of Neopatras which the Catalans conquered in 1319, the institution of the capità appeared instead of the vigeriate, but the captaincies (Siderokastron, Neopatras, and Salona) were similar to identical in function to the vegueries of Athens. In Athens, the offices of captain and veguer were often held by the same individual as capitaneus seu vigerius and variants. Once the Aragonese crown had finally subdued most of the Kingdom of Sardinia to their rule by the end of the fourteenth century, they had subdivided its government into vegueries. All the vegueries of the Catalan possessions were, by the Usages of Barcelona, constrained to be held for only three years by any individual. In practice, some kings ignored this. In Athens, a vicar general on the Italian model was instituted above the veguers.
Catalan vegueries have changed their limits throughout history, and there has not always been the same number of them. The vegueries of Catalonia at the time of James the Just were:
Tortosa Tarragona Montblanc Barcelona (including the Vallès sotsvegueria) Osona Berguedà (including the Manresa sotsvegueria) Bages (including the Moianés sotsvegueria) Vilafranca del Penedès (including the Igualada and Piera sotsvegueries) Girona Besalú Camprodon La Ral Ripollès Tàrrega Lleida (including the Balaguer sotsvegueria) Cervera (including the Agramunt and Prats del Rei sotsvegueries) Ribagorça Pallars Camarasa Rosselló (including the Vallespir sotsvegueria) Conflent (including the Capcir sotsvegueria) Cerdanya (including the Ribes and Baridà sotsvegueries) Later, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, four more vegueries were created:
Urgell Balaguer Agramunt Lluçanès Vegueries were officially abolished in 1716, when the vegueries were replaced by 12 corregimientos, a historical Castilian administrative division. In 1833, the new Spanish territorial division divided Spain into provinces, subdividing Catalonia in four (Barcelona, Lleida, Tarragona and Girona), which did not adequate to the comarques, but outside of minor differences remains in use today.
Second Spanish Republic
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