Privileged Rebels: A Longitudinal Analysis of Distinctive Economic Traits of Catalonian Secessionism

Josep M Oller,Albert Satorra,Adolf Tobeña

doi:10.3390/genealogy4010019

Josep M Oller, Albert Satorra + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4010019

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Abstract

During the last decade, the Catalonian secessionist challenge induced a chronic crisis within Spain’s politics that does not offer hints of a viable arrangement. The rapidly escalating demands for secession ran almost in parallel with the accentuation of the economic recession that followed the disruption of the world financial system in 2008–2010. Such secession claims reached maximums during 2012–2014, attaining support levels of nearly 50% of citizenry in favour of independence. These figures subsequently diminished a bit but remained close to that level until today. Despite the coincident course, previous studies had shown that the impact of economic hardships was not a major factor in explaining the segregation urgencies, connecting them instead to triggers related to internecine political struggles in the region: Harsh litigations that resulted in an abrupt polarization along nationalistic features in wide segments of the population. In this longitudinal analysis based on the responses of 88,538 individuals through a regular series of 45 official surveys, in the period 2006–2019, we show that economic factors did play a role in the secessionist wave. Our findings showed that the main idiomatic segmentation (Catalan vs. Spanish, as family language) interacted with economic segmentations in inducing variations on national identity feelings that resulted in erosions of the dual CatSpanish identity. Moreover, our findings also showed that the more privileged segments of Catalonian citizenry where those that mostly supported secession, whereas poorer and unprotected citizenry was clearly against it. All the data points to the conclusion that the secessionist challenge was, in fact, a rebellion of the wealthier and well-situated people.

Highlights

Catalonian secessionism acquired relevance in Spanish politics from 2010 onwards
Catalan municipalities coloured in distinctive tones: In red when the sum of the secessionist vote results of the last regional elections (21 December 2017), and adding the votes obtained by the three was greater than 50% of the municipal census and in pale pink, otherwise
We considered two factors for both analyses the levels of which were the possible values of the qualitative variable family/mother language and the dichotomous variable net income plus, using time as a covariate and considering as a dependent variable the percentages of those who self-identified as “only Catalan”, for the first analysis, “as Catalan as Spanish”, for the second one, and “only Spanish” for the third one

Summary

Introduction

Catalonian secessionism acquired relevance in Spanish politics from 2010 onwards. Social activism and political parties pursuing secession were a minor issue. Secessionist forces won three regional elections and sustained governments by tiny majorities in the Autonomous Parliament in this period. Two anomalous consultations about self-determination were organized and around 2 million (38% of population census) supported secession from Spain. Was proclaimed on 27 October 2017, devoid of any legal or practical consequence. Such a move resulted in the full suspension of home rule, sanctioned by Spanish Parliament, that endured until mid-2018

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