Catalan Independence Research Articles

‘We are Patriots, not Fascists:’ Spanish Nationalism in 2017

AbstractThe 2017 Catalan Independence Referendum prompted a historic resurgence of Spanish ‘centre’ nationalism. Such resurgence is indicative of a change in Spanish national identity as overt nationalism and is connotationally related to the Franco regime. This research focuses on the power and dissemination of newspaper narratives in the promotion and descriptions of such nationalism. Newspapers are discursively analysed to understand the decreasing reticence towards ‘centre’ nationalism in Spain, as evidenced by nationalist rhetoric and symbolism, and the significance of this change for the Spanish transition to democracy. It is found that the Catalan referendum inspired a strong counter‐reaction of dissociating centre‐periphery relations suggestive of pre‐democratic transition sentiments in the maintenance of the ‘centre’ as dominant and relegating the ‘periphery’ to its Franco‐era ‘threat’ status. Newspapers facilitated this shift in the nationalist narrative through their descriptions of the independence movement and the use of references and allusions to Spain's history and ‘near past.’

Public International Law and the Catalan Secession Process

AbstractThis article briefly identifies the aspects of public international law related to the Catalan secession process, bearing in mind that Spain is a constitutional social and democratic state governed by the rule of law and a member of both the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE). Over 6 years ago, on 27 October 2017, the regional Catalan Parliament proclaimed the independence of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. From the start, the most recondite stratum of the Catalan pro-independence strategy has consistently invoked international law considerations with no real basis. Here we explain why. First, given the function of state sovereignty (today humanized and, in the context of the EU and CoE, democratized), under international law, these events can only be classified as a secession process (stricto sensu), that is, a revolutionary act in the constitutional order of the state of Spain with undertones that are far from peaceful. Second, we address the facet of the Catalan pro-secession strategy – typical of populist policies today – consisting of abusing terms and concepts, a language policy that, in our view, was and still is intended to win the minds of both the Catalan population and any other uninformed external observers. Finally, we examine how statehood is acquired under international law and its relationship to the 2017 declaration of Catalan independence and the present-day situation.

“You Said Independence?” The Case of Scotland's and Catalonia's Nationalisms: A Discussion of J. H. Elliott's Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion

Abstract This review essay addresses one of the most complex contemporary political issues: secessionism. The review essay discusses J. H. Elliott's 2018 book, Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion, to raise questions regarding the processes of independence in the European Union. Particularly, it focuses on the problematic conceptualization of the debates about Catalan independence in twenty-first-century Europe, explaining why concepts such as nation and nationalism should be rethought, which also implies the need to rethink the use of symbols such as national flags. It also insists that one cannot write on such an urgent political topic without addressing at length the role of culture in political thought and national sentiment. The author theorizes the role of the emotions in the creation of political subjectivities, concentrating especially on the central role that the web and the media are given in the fight for independence.

A History of Dread.The (Im)mediate Experience of the Push for Catalan Independence

A History of Dread.The (Im)mediate Experience of the Push for Catalan Independence

Predicting radicalism after perceived injustice: The role of separatist identity, sacred values, and police violence

Perceptions of injustice are central to fueling violent political action, though not everyone within a social movement will support violence in response to collective grievances. So who supports violence and who doesn’t after perceived injustice? To address this question, we followed up on the same individuals (N = 805) before and after a court decision in Catalonia (Spain) sentencing nine separatist leaders to prison, an event that led to mass violent and nonviolent protests. We tested three hypotheses by combining classical theories of collective action and more recent extremism models and found support for all three hypotheses. Namely, individuals who exhibited steeper increases in radicalism (controlling for activism) after the court ruling were those who had previously experienced police violence (social dynamics hypothesis), those who identified as separatists (separatist identity hypothesis), and those who held Catalan independence as a sacred value (sacred value hypothesis). Our findings offer a complex picture of real-world conflict settings, where the three evaluated factors seem to be intertwined. We discuss potential venues to restore inter-group relations after perceived injustice, with an assessment of how likely these strategies are to succeed based on the three adopted perspectives.

The Development of Foreign Language Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence through Telecollaboration

Telecollaboration has proved to be an excellent means for the development of students’ intercultural skills (O’Dowd & Dooly, 2012). Based on this presumption, a telecollaborative project was carried out between B2 level (CEFR) learners of English from Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) and B1 level (CEFR) students of Spanish as a foreign language from the University of Bath (UK). The aim of the project was to help learners from both universities, Aerospace Engineering students in particular, to develop their intercultural communicative competence. Throughout a six-week period, students carried out asynchronous discussions focusing on two cultural topics in groups of four and participated in synchronous Zoom sessions in pairs. The topics at the core of the discussions were a) Catalan Independence b) Digital Education. Topic a) was conducted entirely in Spanish and topic b), in English. The social network used for students’ written interaction was MeWe (www.mewe.com). To conclude the project, the participants completed a collaborative task with their overseas partners that was assessed by the instructor. Qualitative data was gathered through the students’ posts on MeWe (which was then analysed following Byram’s (1997) proposed objectives for the assessment of Intercultural Communicative Competence), analysis of transcripts from the Zoom sessions as well as a final project survey. The results from the qualitative analysis show traces and instances of all the objectives proposed by Byram (1997), while the findings from the final project questionnaire reveal that at the end of the course all participants felt they had learnt something about their partners’ culture. The quantitative analysis further demonstrates a correlation between the number of videoconference sessions and spontaneous conversation about cultural topics, which suggests that, in order for a telecollaborative project to be successful, students should attend the scheduled sessions.

On (national) citizenship and (de)politicised nations: Everyday discourses about the Catalan secessionist movement

This paper examines the Catalan independentist movement understood as a paradigmatic case of secessionist politics in a European context. Drawing on recent rhetorical-psychological studies on citizenship and nationhood, we explore how constructions of citizenship and national identity interweave to shape, warrant, and contest opposing arguments about Catalan independence and Spanish sovereignty. We conducted a discursive-rhetorical analysis of thirty open-ended interviews and one focus group with Catalan residents that held different positions towards independence. The analysis shows that arguments for independence construct secession demands as a citizenship right that, in turn, assumes different versions of the Catalan national community. Arguments against independence reify the Spanish national identity by constructing it as a political community where all citizens have the same rights. Both argumentative poles position “the nation” as a core element in political citizenship discourses. Specifically, we argue that a diversity of citizenship formulations stressing democratic rights, practices, and political traditions, rhetorically work both to support and to challenge otherwise explicitly ethnic, cultural, and civic understandings of nationhood. The article advances a historically situated approach of citizenship and national categories attending to their specific rhetorical mobilisations in current independentist conflicts.

Sports Journalists and Readers: Journalism and User Incivility

ABSTRACT This article assesses the impact of sports journalism style on uncivil conversations, by analyzing the news that has generated the most deleted comments and the published readers’ comments. The two sports newspapers with the largest number of readers in Spain (As and Marca) between 2019 and 2020 are compared. The analyzed journalistic pieces in both newspapers are proven to promote controversy and user participation, thus creating a polarized and strongly confronted community. Journalists lose their status as professionals by using a subjective, emotional and colloquial style, and they become mere commentators who can be discredited. This style is the breeding ground for uncivil conversations. Localized hate expressions are ideological: Spanish nationalism confronts Catalan independence in such a way that the world of football becomes dependent on the country's politics. There is no lack of negative gender stereotypes either in the predominantly male order of sport. Since no changes were observed during the pandemic, it can be established that these characteristics are part of the journalistic routine. Only the paywall introduced by As in the second half of 2020 change conversations: the number of messages, including deleted ones, was reduced, and positive feelings advanced in more rational conversations.

Leaving Europe, leaving Spain: comparing secessionism from and within the European Union

Are secessionisms from and within the EU comparable? What motivates them and to what extent do they pose similar challenges to EU territorial governance? This article addresses these questions by comparing the framing of the British Leave campaign and the Catalan independence movement. Drawing on the FraTerr database and method, the analysis suggests that secessionism from the EU and secessionism within the EU are different political phenomena despite sharing an emphasis on sovereignty and the common goal of breaking-up from an existing polity. Secessionism from the EU is primarily a call for the recovery of lost sovereignty and of classical functions of the state such as border control. Secessionism within the EU invokes sovereignty as the right to external self-determination and adds narratives around a better future and greater democratic quality and social justice. These two types of secessionism pose different challenges to EU territorial governance because the first entails a full rejection of the European project while the latter calls for a review of European multi-level governance.

Need for affect, need for cognition, and the desire for independence.

The last decade has witnessed a significant rise in European secessionist movements leading to considerable political turmoil (e.g., protest, repression, imprisonment of political leaders). While scholars have identified a number of economic and political factors that influence the support for secessionist movements, fewer studies have focused on its psychological roots. Using evidence from Catalonia, this paper investigates the role of two fundamental individual traits, Need for Affect (NFA) and Need for Cognition (NFC), in influencing the support for Catalan independence. It analyzes a large representative sample of adult Catalans in 2013, during the peak of the secessionist movement, to examine the influence of NFA and NFC, and their interaction, on the intention to vote in favor of seceding from Spain. Results indicate that individuals who have high levels in NFA and those who have high levels of NFA and low levels of NFC are more likely to support independence. In other words, individuals who have low levels of both NFA and NFC have the lowest support for independence. In conclusion, these findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in psychological motives in order to fully understand support for secessionist movements.

«Democratic Tsunami» as an online stage of the Catalan independence movement

Introduction. Catalan independence is an issue that has shaken Spanish politics not even for years, but for centuries. In 2012, an overwhelming majority in parliament was received by MPs who announced the Declaration of Sovereignty. In 2017, the Catalan Parliament declared independence from Spain. In turn, the Spanish authorities arrested the initiators of this decision. Protesters took to the streets against the jailing of Catalan separatist leaders. Thus, it led to the emergence of a new protest group “Democratic Tsunami” that left a significant imprint in the struggle for the independence of the region. Research aims. To describe the “Democratic Tsunami” from the points of origins, its members, organizational structure, strategies and tactics, published content, symbols, ideology, impact and state response. Methodology. The main methods are secondary data analysis (two stages) and qualitative content analysis (649 tweets). The research period is from August 2019 to February 2020. The necessary data were collected from mass media websites and social media platforms. Results. The available data allow us to single out the communication strategies of the “Democratic Tsunami” and present their examples. The scientific article describes the operation of various online communication tools (social media, mobile application) that were used by the movement to achieve its goals. It is important to note that the Spanish authorities were not ready to confront new technologies. The studied practices can be borrowed and used in any country of the world for similar purposes and processes. Conclusions. Although the “Democratic Tsunami” lasted only six months, it was able to take the pro-independence movement to a new level of development. The main feature was the work with social media platforms and the mobile application. These movement’s tools simplified the process of mobilization and coordination between leaders and protesters. They created the mechanism to transform the Catalan independence movement into a more private and highly protected protest community.

Legality of implementing Kurdistan Region Referendum

Referendum is one of the strong tools of state-building process and self-determination of nations. Nations express themselves through a peaceful referendum in which they vote on their own desired framework of the wider state and to establish their own way of life. Referendum is an ancient practice and has been implemented in the United State Confederate and France after the French revolution. Recently, it has been implemented in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in September, 2017. As such, it cannot be overemphasized the critical importance of the need for a referendum, which is an essential tool to safeguard the self-determination of nations all over the world. The process of referendum can be implemented via bilateral agreements between the central and regional governments under the constitution and monitored by relevant international monitoring bodies. Nevertheless, the process can also be conducted unilaterally by regions, federal states and regional governments, in case the central governments are not willing to collaborate. The Kurdish and Catalan Independence Referendums represent the will of the Kurds and Catalans for independence from their respective central governments. These two central governments were annexing Catalonia and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq by force. In the past, the people Catalonia and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have been trying with various forms of struggle and eandouvers in order to achieve the goal of independence. Owing to a strong legal basis of the referendum, the authorities in the Kurdistan Region and Catalonia have realized that holding a peaceful referendum could be the most effective way of securing independence from their respective occupiers. Despite of the solid legal grounds of referendum, which was held in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and the overwhelming majority which voted in the favor of the independence, the results were later suspended by the Kurdistan Regional Government mainly because of the lack of regional and international support it needed.

The Sociolinguistic Situation in Spain: The Protection of Language and Nation

This article analyses the influence of the processes of globalization and regionalism on the sociolinguistic situation of minority languages that obtain a special value as the sole and main depositories of the national culture. As national minorities begin to claim their linguistic rights, the international community addresses the problem at all levels: the EU level, national and regional. The article examines the linguistic situation in Spain, which preserves and promotes regional and minority languages better than almost any other European country, and that in Catalonia, where the most intense focus of linguistic tension in the EU is currently observed. Our analysis of the current state of co-official and minority languages in Spain shows that the struggle for these languages has been won. The country's linguistic policy has been fruitful, but, at the same time, it has produced a series of dangerous consequences for the stability and integrity of the Spanish state itself. Now Spain must undertake the difficult task of preserving itself. The progressive weakening of the strong ties that previously held the Spanish state together, the erosion of the concept of the sovereign national state, and the delegation of the leading public powers to a supranational structure have given a solid boost for nationalism and reactivated the Catalan independence movement. Therefore, today the State language policy, which is of special importance, must be highly balanced and guided by established long-term national interests.

Political Identity and News Media Choice: The Polarizing Logic of Selective Exposure During the Catalan Independence Conflict

ABSTRACT Political communication scholars have explored selective exposure by focusing on the left-right cleavage, overlooking how other sources of political identity might guide news consumption, partly because of the U.S. dominance of the discipline. We address this gap by exploring how political attitudes on the national divide influence news choices for three news media types (television, radio, and newspapers) in Catalonia over a seven-year period (2010–2017) that covers the development of the Catalan independence conflict, including four regional elections, a controversial independence referendum, and the suppression of autonomy. Binomial logistic regressions applied to four post-electoral surveys indicate that support for independence and national identity are significant predictors of Catalans’ news media choices, and that support for independence becomes increasingly relevant as a driver of news choices for broadcast media as political polarization on Catalan independence grows. We discuss the implications for democracy of such audience segregation, and underscore how political context influences media choices.

Counter-surveillant organizing during the secessionist cycle of contention in Catalonia

ABSTRACT The literature on repression in social movement studies focuses mainly on protest behavior and neglects other aspects of activism. This paper expands this literature by looking at how surveillance as a covert form of repression affects organizational practices in social movements. The secessionist mobilizations around the 1 October 2017 referendum in Catalonia serve as a case study to explore this question. Semi-structured interviews with organizers from the Catalan independence movement were used to identify two surveillance threats. Organizers feared the monitoring of their digital communication and the infiltration of their assemblies. They responded to these threats with five moves of counter-surveillant organizing: encryption, face-to-face communication, analogizing meetings, committee decision making, and closingoff assemblies. How organizers perceived surveillance and responded was closely connected to the cyclical dynamics of contention over time. The five moves allowed the movement to resist surveillance at least in the short term without moderating their claims or going underground. However, they were also harmful to the Catalan independence movement’s organizing culture based on inclusivity and horizontality. These findings suggest that the consequences of repression for social movements go well beyond protest behavior and have a profound impact on their organizational practices.

Dicotomía entre “nosotros” y “ellos”: la causa catalana en la prensa

The following study aims to be a critical approach to the political situation in Spain in relation to the autonomous region of Catalonia. We tried to make an analytical treatment of the Catalan conflict in the national and Catalan press, from the celebration of the Diada, on September 11 of each year, until the imprisonment of the leaders of the process on November 02, 2017. Therefore, an attempt was also made to collect samples throughout the months of September until November 2017 to analyze them qualitatively, dealing with opinion articles. Therefore, the methodological design of the research focuses on examining the treatment made by the reference press, both state and regional (Catalan, Basque, Galician), about Catalan independence in their opinion articles (editorials). The sample is made up of 10 newspapers. The results obtained reveal the position of each newspaper on this controversial issue. The conclusions of the case highlight the primordial importance of the press as the fourth power of the State and, at the same time, its capacity to reshape public opinion.

Continuity and change: language ideologies of Catalan university students

ABSTRACT Catalonia is an interesting site for language ideology research for several reasons. It is a multilingual and multicultural territory, where both Catalan and Spanish enjoy the status of co-official language. Adding to this, over the course of the last two decades there has been a growing movement that has called for the independence of Catalonia from Spain, one which frequently places linguistic concerns at its centre. Against this backdrop, we report on a project that qualitatively examines the language ideologies of university students in the period after the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. Specifically, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 33 undergraduate students attending three universities from the wider Barcelona area. We examined the language ideologies of this cohort through the theoretical lens of linguistic authority, in particular, the concepts of anonymity and authenticity. Two central themes emerged from the data analysis: ‘Catalan: “lingered” authenticity?’ and ‘Spanish: glocal anonymity’. The findings reveal a complex array of language ideologies toward both Catalan and Spanish. Furthermore, in an ever-changing socio-political and sociolinguistic landscape in Catalonia, we maintain that qualitative methods can act as a powerful tool when examining cases of complex multilingualism.

Framing the Catalan Conflict: A Decade of el procés in the International Media

Since 2010 the Catalan secessionist movement has been reported on extensively in the global media. Beginning with the 2010 demonstrations against the decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court to reject a new Catalan statute of autonomy, and covering subsequent events such as the unofficial self-determination referendum in 2017, the trial and imprisonment of Catalan political leaders, and the violent protests against the verdicts; the events in the region have all featured heavily on the front pages of the international press. This study analyzes how US and UK newspapers have covered the Catalan independence movement during the period from 2010 to 2019. To do so, this study focuses on two US newspapers ( The New York Times and The Washington Post) and two from the UK newspapers ( The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian) and observes how the positions of the Spanish and Catalan governments are represented through the analysis of the frames used to construct the newspapers’ coverage, as well as the overall tone and the sources used by the journalists. To detect the dominant framework, a framing analysis is undertaken from a communicative and deductive perspective, applying Semetko and Valkenburg’s classification. In-depth interviews are also conducted with the newspapers’ Spanish-based foreign correspondents which allows the analysis to include the correspondents’ views on the difficulties faced by them during their time spent while covering the conflict. The study’s primary conclusion is that the international press downplays the significant role played by social movements and civil society in the secession movement, with a strong preference shown by journalists to rely on representatives of official sources as the most valid spokespersons for the movement. Secondly, the study finds that media attention follows closely the flash-points of the conflict with more coverage appearing at the moments of greater political tension between the Spanish and Catalan governments. This suggests that civil society mobilizations attract less interest from the media that instead prefers to focus on developments in the political sphere.

Discourses about independence: A corpus-based analysis of discourse prosodies in Spanish and Catalan newspapers

The present study is a corpus-assisted analysis of discourses on the Catalan movement of independence in the Catalan and Spanish press. A referendum for Catalan independence was held on 1 October 2017 but was not approved by the central Spanish government and was declared illegal. Spanish and Catalan newspapers differed considerably in their treatment and representation of the conflict, which also drew the attention of the international press to Catalonia. My analysis interconnects theoretical perspectives from linguistic critical discourse studies, cognitive linguistics, and media studies. The methodology is based on the analysis of two comparable corpora of journalistic texts (in Catalan, Spanish). My aim is to identify and compare different features of the semantic prosody of words describing the event of geopolitical separation and the different narratives on this sociopolitical conflict that these prosodies contribute to producing. More specifically, I focus on a selection of keywords, like independence, secession, and sovereignty, that seem to be indicative of different discursive strategies consciously, and possibly unconsciously, chosen by a selection of national Catalan and Spanish newspapers. By carrying out a contrastive analysis of the two corpora, I am able to describe certain similarities, like the similar frequent use of the word independence, and differences, like the more frequent use of the word secession in the Spanish corpus, that indicate different framings of the same event and can be related to different ideological positionings against or in favor of Catalonia’s independence from Spain.

Who owns “democracy”? The role of populism in the discursive struggle over the signifier “democracy” in Catalonia and Spain

ABSTRACT After the notoriety of the Catalan independence bid in the 2010s, the already extensive literature on Catalan nationalism has grown even further to offer multifarious explanations for the conflict over independence both within Catalonia and between Catalonia and Spain. This article draws on recent approaches incorporating populism – in its articulation with nationalism – as an essential theoretical and empirical tool to better describe the emergence and dynamics of the Catalan independence movement. The study argues that the prevailing populist construction of a sovereign ‘people’ in Catalonia led to a discursive struggle over the floating signifier ‘democracy’ between two majority blocs: the one governing Catalonia vis-à-vis the one governing Spain. This is followed by a discourse-theoretical analysis of each bloc’s attempts to endow the floating signifier ‘democracy’ with distinctive meanings. Each bloc, acting in line with their political interests and against the will of relevant minorities within their sovereign demarcations, discursively articulated alternative interpretations of what democracy ‘truly’ is, thus claiming democratic legitimacy for themselves while demonizing the opponent as ‘anti-democratic’. As a result, the insoluble conflict in Catalonia can largely be explained as a struggle with important ethico-political implications between two irreconcilable understandings of ‘democracy’: constitutional democracy versus majoritarian democracy.