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As recently as the mid-2000s, Catalonia was described and analysed by scholars as exhibiting a non-secessionist nationalism and was seen within Europe and beyond as a role model for successful devolution which had much to teach other parts of the world. The Spanish state seemed to be on a journey towards an authentic federal order and was generally admired. However, the new century has been marked by an ever-growing independence movement, with 47.8 per cent of Catalonia voting in favour of independence in September 2015. Pro-independence mobilization has produced a rupture in political relations with the rest of Spain leading to a sovereignty struggle with Madrid.
This book explores how an accumulation of long-, medium- and short-term factors have produced the current situation and why the Spanish territorial model has been unable or possibly, unwilling, to respond. The Catalan question is not purely a Spanish problem: it has direct implications for the traditional nation-state model, in Europe and beyond.
List of contents
Introduction Chapter 1: History and context Chapter 2: Culture, language and identity Chapter 3: The crisis of Catalanism Chapter 4: Constructing a movement for independence Chapter 5: Catalonia, north of the south, south of the north: The economic crisis and its consequences Conclusions
About the author
Andrew Dowling is a Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Cardiff University. He has previously written Catalonia since the Spanish Civil War: Reconstructing the Nation (2012), which was published in Catalan as La Reconstrucció Nacional de Catalunya, 1939-2012 (2013).
Summary
This book explores how an accumulation of long, medium and short term factors have produced the current situation and why the Spanish territorial model has been unable or possibly, unwilling to respond.
