 By the end of the thirteenth century, Santa Coloma de Queralt was an important regional centre, serving as a market town that linked the local community and their need for commercial goods brought from other parts of the Mediterranean with the outside world.These commercial activities attracted Jews, so that by the early fourteenth century, of the one hundred and fifty houses in the town, fifty were occupied by Jewish families.The Catalan Revolt in the mid-seventeenth century came about as a result of the continuing presence in Catalonia of Spanish troops during the Franco-Spanish War between the Kingdom of France and the Monarchy of Spain.