The Faculty of Law and the Chair for Valencian Regional Law organise a conference on the legacy of the fueros (regional laws) of Valencia.

The conference “Historia, sociedad, derecho: los valencianos y el legado foral” (History, society, law: the Valencian people and the regional law legacy) aims to review critically the historical reality of the Valencian fueros and the imaginary created from its abolition in 1707. As is well known, the Statute of Autonomy of 2006 take the fueros as starting point for the exercise of the power for legislating in the field of civil law, with the objective of saving the objection of the Constitutional Court regarding to the existence of a previous compilation and for settling once and for all the careless disregard in respect to the rest of the other territories of the former Crown of Aragón.

Taking advantage of the fact that this year we commemorate the 775 years of the conquest of Valencia and the publication of the ancient “Costum”, the Faculty of Law and the Institutional Chair for Valencian Regional Law want on the one hand to collect recent studies on the relation between the regional law legal system and the Valencian society during the medieval and modern period-until the Bourbons abolition -, in order to assess its influence and its identity value (something that was already noted in the past by classic historians and that now the young one are emphasizing).

In a second part we want to analyse the trajectory of the fueros abolished in the Valencian imaginary of the 18th and 20th centuries. We can know trough the researches that come to light that the 18th century is a time of strong survival of the regional law memory, with a dozen attempts for recovering at least the private law like the other realms of the Crown. The Cortes of Cádiz mark the border between this period more active and other marked by obscurity (which is influenced by several factors). In recent years some historians have begun to study a certain “resurrection” of the fueros in the ideals of the Renaissance and the forging of a Valencian regionalism in which the fueros constituted one element, although distorted by Carlist claims, that in Valencia has certain consideration. This part arrives until the fights between the “fusterianas” and “blaveras” or regionalist positions after the civil war, in which also appeared los fueros; and that reach our days (A lecture on the amazing “resurrection” of regional after the reform of 2006 is being prepared).

José Tudela Aranda will be in charge of the opening lecture of the Conference, he is lawyer of the Cortes de Aragón and general secretary of the “Gimenez Abad” Foundation. For the lectures a group of professors of the University of Valencia, with a great research career on the subject matter, have been selected, such as Mariano Peset, Antoni Furió, Pascual Marzal, Teresa Canet, Carme Pérez Aparicio, Amparo Felipo, Remedio Sánchez Ferriz, Pilar García Trobat and Francisco Blasco Gascó, among others.

The Conference previously scheduled for Monday 21 and Tuesday 22, have been reduced in order to allow the attendance of students outside the days of strike. It will be held in the Faculty of Law of the University of Valencia, in the Salón de Grados.