Although today the comarques are officially defined under a Catalan parliamentary act, for centuries they had existed unofficially, with citizens identifying with a particular comarca in the same way that people in other parts of the world might identify with a particular region. In some cases, comarques consist of rural areas and many small villages centring on an important town, where the people of the region traditionally go to shop or to sell their goods. This is the case of comarques such as the
Pla de l'Estany, centred on the town of
Banyoles, or the
Ripollès, centred on the town of
Ripoll. In other cases, comarques are larger areas with many important population centres that have traditionally been considered part of the same region, as in the case of the
Empordà or
Vallès. The current official division of Catalonia into comarques originates in an order of the
autonomous Catalan government under the
Spanish Republic in 1936. It was superseded after the 1939 victory of
Francisco Franco's forces in the
Spanish Civil War, but restored in 1987 by the re-established
Generalitat of Catalonia. Since the definition of comarques is sometimes ambiguous, many new proposals have been made since the comarques were first officially designated as attempts to modify the official distribution with what some regions consider to be a traditional comarca. As a result, some revisions to the official division have been made, such as the additions of
Moianès and
Lluçanès to the map, in 2015 and 2023 respectively. Comarques exist as a local government area, and have a representative
county council. They are often known as
counties in the English language, but this can be confused with the
counties that were ruled by
counts. Borders of comarques generally do not cross those of the four state-level
provinces (
Barcelona,
Girona,
Lleida,
Tarragona). However, since the provinces are defined by the Spanish government, while comarques are defined by the Catalan government, exceptions do existmost notably in the case of
Cerdanya, which is roughly evenly split between the provinces of Lleida and Girona (other exceptions generally involve only a handful of municipalities).
Aran, which is included here, is officially not a comarca but a "unique territorial entity" with additional powers. Its current status was formalised in February 2015. == List of comarques ==