Wifred the Hairy (Guifré el Pilós in Catalan) was the Count of Barcelona ( 873–898) for whom the county was formally made a hereditaty title. His son, Wifred Borell, inherited the county without an interregnum and held it 898–914.

Primitive feudal entities developed in the Marca Hispanica, self-sufficient and agrarian, each ruled by a small hereditary military elite. The sequence in Catalonia exhibits a pattern that appears similarly in marches everywhere. The count of Barcelona had been appointed by the king (Berà in 801), the appointment settles on the heirs of a strong count (Sunifred, fl. 844- 848) and becomes a formality, until the county is made hereditary for Wifred. Finally the county is unilaterally declared independent (by Borrell II in 985). At each stage the de facto situation precedes the de jure assertion, which merely regularizes an existing fact of life.

The abbey of S. Joan de les Abadesses in the diocese of Vich (Catalunya) was founded by Count Wifred and his wife Guinedilda,to provide for their daughter Emma, who became the community's first abbess,

Wifred remained obscure until drawn into the historians' net by Sir Richard Southern, in The Making of the Middle Ages, 1953.

References

• William Palmer, "Sir Richard Southern looks back" in Virginia Quarterly Review: based on an interview
• Roger Collins, "Charles the Bald and Wifred the Hairy", in M. T. Gibson and J.Nelson (eds.) Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom (Oxford, 1981), pp. 169-189;

Guifré I | Wilfried der Haarige | Wifredo el Velloso | Wilfred W%C5%82ochaty