The Downfall of the Catalan Rebellion: A Graphic Representation of Secessionist Political Discourses

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to identify and compare the main historical frames used by Catalan secessionism during the Catalan independence political and civic rebellion that happened in October 2017. Some authors have analyzed the Catalan pro-independence demands. However, this is one of the first researches to focus its attention on how political discourses have been created and how these political discourses legitimized the degree of rebellion that Catalonia underwent. The article that follows uses discourse analysis with the tools of second-level agenda-setting and cognitive linguistics in order to classify and compare quantitatively and qualitatively all the messages posted on Twitter (16.201) by major pro-independence organizations and leaders in 2017. Drawing from the historiographical analysis, we propose to name the frames as follows: “administration,” “fight against injustice,” and “sovereignty,” and codify them from 1 to 3, in a classification that we define as “degree of political rupture.” From this comparison several conclusions are drawn. The first conclusion is that the three frames actually match the strategies and thoughts of organizations and leaders in 2017 and allow us to make graphic representations of the discourse analysis. Another conclusion is that most actors de-escalated their degree of political rupture from October 2017, once they became aware of the actions of the Spanish police and the legal prosecution against them.