Catalan Nationalism - The Development of Modern Catalanism

The Development of Modern Catalanism

The Renaixença ("rebirth" or "renaissance") was a cultural, historical and literary movement that pursued in the wake of European Romanticism the recovery of the own language and literature. As time went by, and particularly immediately after the fiasco of the Revolution of 1868 (led by the Catalan general Juan Prim), the movement acquired a clear political character, directed to the attainment of self-government for Catalonia within the framework of the Spanish liberal state.

Like most Romantic currents, the Renaixença gave historical analysis a central role. History, in fact, was an integral part of Catalonia's "rebirth." Texts on Catalonia's history—inspired by the Romantic philosophy of history—laid the foundations of a Catalanist movement. Works like Valentí Almirall i Llozer's Lo Catalanisme, Victor Balaguer's Historia de Cataluña y de la Corona de Aragón and Prat de la Riba's La nacionalitat catalana used history as evidence for Catalonia's nationhood. According to Elie Kedourie, such claims were common in 19th century nationalist discourse because "the ‘past’ is used to explain the ‘present,’ to give it meaning and legitimacy. The ‘past’ reveals one's identity, and history determines one's role in the drama of human development and progress" (36). Publications of histories thus "explained" why the Catalans constituted a nation instead of a Spanish region or coastal province.

At the heart of many of works of the Renaixença lay a powerful idea: the Volk. Indeed, the concept of Volk (pl. Völker) played a vital role in mainstream Catalan Romantic nationalism. It has its origins in the writings of German Romantics like Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and, most notably, Johann Gottfried Herder.

The concept of Volk entered Catalan intellectual circles in the 1830s, stemming from the emphasis on the region's medieval history and philology. It first appeared in the writings of Joan Cortada, Marti d'Eixalà and his discipline, Francesc-Xavier Llorens i Barba, intellectuals who reinvigorated the literature on the Catalan national character. Inspired by the ideas of Herder, Savigny and the entire Scottish School of Common Sense, they asked why the Catalans were different from other Spaniards—especially the Castilians (Conversi 1997: 15) For example, Cortada wanted to determine why, despite its poor natural environment, Catalonia was so much more successful than other parts of Spain. In a series of generalizations, he concluded that the "Catalans have succeeded in developing a strong sense of resolution and constancy over the centuries. Another feature of their character was the fact that they were hardworking people" (Llobera 1983: 342). D’Eixalà and Llorens held a similar understanding of the Catalan national character. They held that that two characteristics particular to Catalans were common sense (seny) and industriousness. To them, "the traditional Catalan seny was a manifestation of the Volksgeist", one which made Catalans essentially different from Castilians (Llobera 2004: 75).

The early works on the Catalan Volk would remain on paper long before they entered politics. This is because the Catalan bourgeoisie had not yet abandoned the hope of spearheading the Spanish state (Conversi 1997: 14). Indeed, in the 1830s, the Renaixença was still embryonic and the industrial class still thought that it could at least control the Spanish economy. Notions of Catalonia's uniqueness mattered little to a group that believed it could integrate and lead the entire country. But this all changed around 1880. After decades of discrimination from Spanish elites, Catalan industrialists buried their dream of leading Spain. As Vilar observes: "It is only because, in its acquisition of the Spanish market, the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie did not succeed either in securing the state apparatus or identifying its interests with those of the whole of Spain, in influential opinion, that Catalonia, this little "fatherland", finally became the 'national' focal point", (1980: 551)

This switch of allegiance was particularly easy because the idea of a Catalan nation had already matured into a corpus of texts about the region's "uniqueness" and Volksgeist. Inspired by these works of Romantic nationalism, the Catalan economic elite became conscious of "the growing dissimilitude between the Catalonia's social structure and that of the rest of the nation" (Vilar 1963: 101). Consequently, Romantic nationalism (and the Volk) expanded beyond its philosophical bounds into the political arena.

In the last third of the 19th century, Catalanism was formulating its own doctrinal foundations, not only among the progressive ranks but also in the conservative, and at the same time it started to establish the first political programmes (e.g. Bases de Manresa, 1892), and to generate a wide cultural and association movement of a clearly vindicatory character.

In 1898, Spain lost its last colonial possessions in Cuba and the Philippines, a fact that not only involved an important crisis of confidence, but also gave an impulse to political Catalanism. The first modern political party in Catalonia and Spain was the Lliga Regionalista. Founded in 1901, it formed a coalition in 1907 with other Catalanist forces (from Carlism to Federalists), grouped in the so-called Solidaritat Catalana, and won the elections with the regionalist programme that Enric Prat de la Riba had formulated in his manifesto La nacionalitat catalana (1906).