Selling the Nation: Identity and Design in 1980s Catalonia

Abstract

highly instrumental in configuring the position of modern design in Barcelona and, more generally, the relationship between design, modernity, and regional identity in Catalonia. One of them was the process of urban regeneration that affected both the physical aspect of the city and the quality of the urban experience. The other one, which will be developed here, was the rise of the nationalist discourse that provided the main ideological context for cultural and political life in transitional Catalonia. While the concern around issues of national and regional identity was paramount in transitional Spain and colored its political discourse throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s, it was also of interest in international academic circles and a fashionable topic in design circles at the time. During the 1970s, countries such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal emerged from the twilight of dictatorship into the brightly lit stage of the European Union; and the breakup of the Soviet Union after 1989 provoked a renewed effervescence of Eastern European nationalisms. The resulting interest in the study of nation alism and the political transformations taking place in Europe led to the reemergence of discussions about the relationships between national identity and design. For design journalism, this revival of the national question provided for easy, if mediocre, copy and simple themes for exhibitions. In the 1980s, contemporary design discourse became concerned primarily with finding and describing the formal charac teristics that could identify a particular product as French, Japanese, Italian, or German. This approach often relied on comparative case studies in order to highlight different national styles; backing the use of product semantics with cursory historical analysis, and emphasizing the commercial benefits of product differentiation. For example, the 1985 exhibition National Characteristics in Design, held at the Boilerhouse in London abounded in stereotypes of German efficiency and English heritage. Journalist Hugh Aldersey-Williams's book World Design,