Spring, component-scan causes FatalBeanException around NamespaceHandler

Question

When I use component-scan I get the folowing exception:

Caused By: org.springframework.beans.FatalBeanException: Class [org.springframework.context.config.ContextNamespaceHandler] 
for namespace [http://www.springframework.org/schema/context] 
does not implement the [org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandler] interface
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultNamespaceHandlerResolver.resolve(DefaultNamespaceHandlerResolver.java:126)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.parseCustomElement(BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.java:1433)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.parseCustomElement(BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.java:1428)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.parseBeanDefinitions(DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java:195)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.doRegisterBeanDefinitions(DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java:139)

Here is the XML configuration.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.2.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.2.xsd">

<bean id="version" class="java.lang.String">
    <constructor-arg value="${project.version}"/>
</bean>

<context:component-scan base-package="base"/>

When I remove the component-scan evertying is parsed fine, but obviously this isn't a solution. What is casuing the problem?

I have read a lot about old version of Spring being on the classpath but I can verify that is not the case.

Here are my dependiences with ${spring.version} being 3.2.5-RELEASE.

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-expression</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

Answer 1

I had a similar error, but the xml context file being loaded, had a namespace reference to spring-webmvc. I had forget to add the mvc dependency to my pom file.