For an extended period, Catalonia, as part of the former Kingdom of Aragon, continued to retain its own usages and laws, but these gradually eroded in the course of the transition from feudalism to a modern state, fueled by the kings' struggle to have more centralized territories. Over the next few centuries, Catalonia was generally on the losing side of a series of local conflicts that led steadily to more centralization of power in Spain, like the Reapers' War (1640–1652). In 1652 the Spanish Crown offered the Roussillon territory to the Kingdom of France. Now this territory is the Department of Pyrénées-Orientales, and also is named Northern Catalonia (Catalunya Nord).

The most significant conflict was the War of the Spanish Succession, which began when Charles II of Spain (the last Spanish Habsburg) died without a direct heir in 1700. Catalonia, like the other territories that had formed the Crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages, mostly rose up in support of the Habsburg pretender Charles VI of Valencia Holy Roman Emperor, while the rest of Spain mostly adhered to the French Bourbon claimant, Philip V. Following the fall of Barcelona on 11 September 1714, the "special status" of the territories belonging to the former Crown of Aragon and its institutions was abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees, under which all its lands were incorporated to the Crown of Castile as provinces, within a united Spanish administration, as Spain moved towards a centralised government under the new Bourbon dynasty.