Roussillion was a region in north-eastern Catalonia that was ceded to France in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. But I can't seem to find anything on whether or not Spain attempted to take the province back. You'd think that at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that Spain would attempt to push for the province to return to Spain, but it doesn't seem like that was the case, but I 100% could be wrong on this. Nor can I find anything about Franco wanting the region back as condition for joining the Axis in WW2. He, in all likelyhood in bad faith, pushed to gain all of Morocco, Cameroon and Gibraltar in exchange for joining the war, but wouldn't Roussillon be a natural addition as well?
The answer that I'm assuming to be most likely, is simply that Catalonia was not seen as a part of "Spain" proper and thus the Spanish weren't that interested in enlarging the province again. But that's just my guess, and I can't seem to find any definitive answers on this.
Thanks for any replies!
I wouldn’t say that Spain “easily gave up” Roussillion, being that they gave it up after a protracted war with France that left the crown bankrupt twice. Roussillion was granted to France at the end of the Franco-Spanish War, which lasted almost 25 years, and was a theatre of the much larger Thirty Years War. The Franco-Spanish war involved a revolving door of European powers and was primarily a power struggle between France and the Habsburg domains (which consisted of a large section of western Europe at this time). Phillip IV of Spain declared bankruptcy in 1647 and 1652 as a result of trying to fund the sprawling war, which not only had battles at the Spanish border with France but in the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium), northern Italy, and the German Rhineland. The last couple years of battle resulted in a stalemate, and in the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 Spain ceded Roussillon and any other lands in that general area north of the Pyrenees.
Why didn’t Spain take Roussillion back? Well, it’s hard to explain why something didn’t happen, but we can take a few educated guesses. Spain by this period was already in its period of decline compared to the century before, and would spend huge chunks of the next 300 years either involved in a war or civil unrest. After the defeat of Napoleon, the country was in ruins, and the crown was more preoccupied in finding a way to get back their rebellious colonies in Latin America during the discussions at the Congress of Vienna. Regardless, Spain’s delegate, Pedro Gomez Labrador, was considered to be utterly incompetent and widely disliked by the other delegates, so Spain gained next to nothing from the conference anyway.
As for Francisco Franco not asking for Roussillon back during WWII, Spain was a neutral power and had various reasons for not joining the war (which is another topic entirely). Franco repressed all minority nationalities during his rule, and his repression of Catalan culture was particularly brutal. It’s hard to imagine why Franco would want back a Catalan province taken from Spain 300 years before with a now substantial French population.
Sources:
The Projection and Limitations of Imperial Powers, 1618-1850. Edited by Frederick C. Schneid (2012)
The Grand Conde in Exile: Power Politics in France, Spain, and the Spanish Netherlands 1652-1659 – pg 283 - James John Inglis-Jones (1994) Oxford
The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars. – Geoffrey Parker (1972)
Three Centuries of Boom-Bust in Spain – Mises Institute (2016)