[4] Each comarca has a representative county council (Catalan: consell comarcal), except for Barcelonès, which abolished it in 2019, and Aran, which instead has the Conselh Generau d'Aran.
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.
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It was superseded after the 1939 victory of Francisco Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War, but restored in 1987 by the re-established Generalitat of Catalonia.
In a non-binding referendum in July 2015, a majority of municipalities of the Lluçanès region of Osona voted to join a proposed new comarca of that name.