Catalan ‘nation-building’ and the Transition to Democracy in Spain

Abstract

Primordialist nationalists would perhaps deny that nations have to be built; for them, nations may have existed forever, perhaps in the form of ethnic groups. Some Catalan nationalists trace their national origin back to Guifre' el Pelos, the Count of Barcelona who achieved a sort of independence from its feudal lord, the Carolingian emperor. Instead, we may take a constructivist point of view and argue that nations are essentially a modern phenomenon and have to be built just as states have to be built. But we cannot argue that Catalan nation building only started after Franco. Catalonia's autonomy had already been recognised by the Spanish republic when Franco and other generals rebelled against their legitimate government. One of Franco's first measures was to abolish autonomy and persecute all sorts of Catalan nationalism. Therefore, Franco's dictatorship interrupted Catalan national history. The Castilian language, which had been co-official before, was again imposed on the Catalan population as the only alternative ('speak christian', 'speak the language of the Empire'), prohibited in some contexts, and of course outlawed in schools. Catalan national symbols (flag, national anthem etc.) were forbidden or reduced to the category of Spanish folklore (sardana, the national dance). The last president of autonomous Catalonia, Llufs Companys, was executed. Catalan institutions were dissolved. In the fifties and sixties, massive immigration from Southern Spain was encouraged, and Barcelona and other industrial cities took a more 'Spanish' outlook. 1 The Catalan bourgeoisie, who had led this most industrial part of the Spanish state, and who had defended 'light' forms of Catalan regionalism, lost power. State controlled industries like SEAT arrived, and finally, transnational