The Rise of Catalan Independence: Spain's Territorial Crisis by Andrew Dowling

Author:Andrew Dowling [Dowling, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317169444
Google: GCBBDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 37488344
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

A transformed political culture

The combination of collective grievances and solution sought for their resolution has changed the nature of Catalanism and of the political demands of a substantial number of Catalans. The umbrella-like quality of Catalanism has fractured. Middle-class sectors have responded to the apparent failure of one project and have hardened their political demands. As we have noted previously, for a variety of reasons, political Catalanism had been increasingly in crisis from the late 1990s and for many, the turn to secession has provided the necessary resolution for this crisis. Sovereignty has thus become the axis of political articulation. Between the summer of 2010 and September 2012 Catalonia experienced a profound rupture in its political culture. These two years after the decision of the Spanish Supreme Court confirmed the failure of the autonomist strategy. The discrediting of Zapatero and the PSOE and the landslide victory of the Partido Popular (PP) in November 2011 was a further layer added into the crisis. The PP embraced recentralisation as a mechanism to address the economic crisis, which led to further deterioration in relations between Madrid and Barcelona. The rejection by the Spanish government of any improvement to the fiscal situation of Catalonia further led to the collapse of autonomist and federalist sentiment. From 2011, accommodation between the Spanish and Catalan governments gradually vanished and polarisation became increasingly evident.32

The PP in Catalonia is increasingly seen as an alien political force. Since the transition to democracy, the centre-right political space in both Catalonia and the Basque Country has been occupied by the regional nationalists. Neither Catalonia nor the Basque Country are territories where the PP needs to do well in to ensure it can govern in the rest of Spain. The PP are seen to represent Madrid and other areas of Spain and are perceived as the political embodiment of an unreconstructed Spanish nationalism. The PP in Catalonia has rarely received more than 10 per cent of the vote in Catalonia. The progenitor to the PP, Alianza Popular, was deeply hostile to the trajectory of autonomy and only the inability of Aznar to obtain clear electoral victories in 1993 and 1996 held back the re-assertion of centralisation, which had to an increasing extent become a strategic goal of the party. The PP has been the leading expression of a post-Francoist modernised Spanish nationalism, which increasingly clashes with the political cultures of the Basque Country and Catalonia. This clash was particularly strong in the case of the Basques until 2007; however, Catalonia has been its centre since. The credibility of the PP and its seeming representation of anti-Catalan values was reflected in the eyes of Catalans by the party’s mobilisation against the Estatut and its organisation and collection of four million signatures against it. Under Mariano Rajoy, support for Catalan independence exploded as the new administration was perceived to embody anti-Catalan hostility. In November 2011, when the new Spanish government was formed, support for independence was found at a level of around 23 to 25 per cent.

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