A few months ago, I was speaking to someone about my plans to go home for Christmas. ‘Where is home?’ they asked. After a moment of hesitation, I replied, ‘Barcelona’. However, I am not from Barcelona – my hometown is almost two hours away. This is simply the answer that I most often resort to when I want to explain where I am from without giving extensive political speeches. Referring to Spain as my home does not feel right. Catalonia would be a better answer, but not everyone may know about the region, and even if they do, it comes with strong political connotations that I do not always want to get into. ‘Barcelona’ therefore is a nice compromise: it is a well-known city and it still allows me to define my identity as something other than Spanish.
The nation-state as the dominant form of political organisation, with a central state that has total sovereignty over a territory that is generally culturally homogenous, remains extremely pervasive. In recent years, the rise of the far right has reinforced it even more: the perceived threats represented by immigration and multiculturalism have led to growing exaltations of nationalism, opposing globalisation and the dilution of state borders. However, the assumption that nations’ borders overlap perfectly with state borders has been the source of many conflicts. If we take Benedict Anderson’s definition of nation as an ‘imagined community’ whose members all share a collective sense of belonging to the same group, we can easily conclude that there are many nations without states – Catalonia clearly being one of them as a culturally distinct community within Spain. However, the refusal to fully recognise it as a nation has been the source of political struggles that continue to this day.
The Spanish Constitution, written in 1978, speaks of ‘the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation’, which is composed of different ‘nationalities and regions’ that have been given the right to autonomy. This has been used to affirm the impossibility of Catalan independence without substantial Constitutional reform, but it also reflects the compromise reached by political elites in the aftermath of the Francoist dictatorship to successfully transition to a democratic regime. It was their attempt to set up a unified state that recognised its own internal pluralism, but only partially: the term ‘nationality’ is extremely ambiguous and has not been given an official definition. Though it was originally used to refer to the so-called historical nationalities of Spain – Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia – as distinctive regions and concede to their demands to self-government, this wording nonetheless puts them in a subordinate position, as they are not sovereign in and of themselves but rather their sovereignty is delegated from the state, which holds ultimate power. Furthermore, nationality is not synonymous with nation: in 2006, the Catalan government attempted to pass a new Statute of Autonomy that included a preamble which defined Catalonia as a nation and asserted that ‘Catalonia considers Spain to be a plurinational State’. These passages, among several others, were forced to be modified while being reviewed by the Spanish Parliament for approval.
In this way, Spain has paradoxically refused to officially define itself as a plurinational state, establishing a framework wherein only a single, unified Spanish nation exists, while simultaneously seeking to neutralise nationalist tensions. These efforts have resulted in a decentralised administrative model known as Estado de las Autonomías, ‘State of Autonomies’ – a compromise between a centralised system and federalism. Although it was originally developed to grant autonomous competencies to the aforementioned historical nationalities, it was soon expanded to the entire territory. Consequently, though the 1978 Constitution was designed to give an official image of national unity, the contradictions embedded in the Spanish State’s administrative framework have been the source of constant conflict.
These contradictions also manifest themselves in the cultural realm, a clear example being the way in which Spain regulates its multilingualism. The Council of Europe has criticised Spain for not complying with the regulations set out in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, highlighting the lack of use of minority languages in state administration and judicial proceedings, and limitations to teaching these languages at all levels of education. It was only in September 2023 that a new law was passed allowing co-official languages other than Spanish to be used in the Spanish Congress. In the case of Catalan, although its social use has significantly declined in recent years, being the primary language of only 32% of the population in Catalonia, right-wingers have constantly attacked its language immersion model in public schools whereby Catalan is used as the language of instruction in all taught subjects to guarantee its preservation. Furthermore, in the judicial realm, Spanish is the de facto language for all legal proceedings, to the point where the right to have a trial in Catalan is not guaranteed. These policies evidence the refusal from the Spanish state to elevate its minority cultures and their languages to the same level of prestige as monolithic Spanish culture despite the EU Charter.
These political and cultural tensions, alongside the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, fuelled the growth of the Catalan independence movement, culminating in the celebration of the unilateral referendum for independence – ruled to be illegal by the Spanish Constitutional Court – on October 1st, 2017 that was met with heavy state-sponsored police violence. The need to adhere to the rule of law and respect the unity of Spain in accordance with the Constitution was used to justify the use of force and deny the right to self-determination of the Catalan people. These events played a significant role in the subsequent rise of the far-right party Vox in Spain, which presented itself as the only party capable of defending, with sufficient aggression, the unity of the country. While Spanish nationalism has generally been stigmatised and frowned upon as it continues to be associated with the ultra-nationalism of the Francoist dictatorship, studies have found that the Catalan referendum was perceived as a threat that triggered a change in social norms, making overt expressions of Spanish nationalism seem acceptable again by a sector of the population.
Scholars have pointed out the imperial roots of Spanish nationalism, as the concept of the Spanish nation did not emerge to configure a liberal state of free and equal citizens, but instead to provide symbolic cover in identitarian terms to a broad colonial empire that extended over several continents. After losing the last of its colonies, Spain had to be redefined from a singular imperial nation to an idea of a nation that coexists with other national realities – a transition that has yet to be consolidated. On the one hand, most political leaders – including the left-wing government of current president Pedro Sánchez – have opted to attempt to consolidate the nation by advocating for a civic nationalism. This promotes a vision of Spain more as a state than as a nation, advocating for a sense of belonging based on a common legal framework and democratic community and allowing for the existence of multiple national identities. However, its lack of emotive appeal to the nation makes it difficult to appeal to the masses. On the other hand, the far right and conservative forces have advocated for an ethnic type of nationalism characterised by a united, homogenous nation defined in cultural terms – although it is not clear what ‘Spanish culture’ they are pointing to. Even beyond Catalonia, Spain is not culturally homogenous: Andalucia, Aragon, the Basque Country, Canary Islands, Galicia, and Valencia are all recognised as ‘nationalities’ and have distinct regional and cultural identities. This type of discourse doesn’t only antagonise Catalonia but also the Spanish left for supporting the decentralisation of Spain and therefore ‘breaking up the nation’. This growing tension between right and left forces, rooted in different conceptions of Spain and how its territory should be administered, has led to a significant increase in political polarisation in recent years.
In Catalonia, traditional nationalist discourse conceives of the Catalan nation simultaneously in cultural and civic terms and portrays itself as a ‘good’ nationalism, with a moral superiority that stems from Catalonia’s vulnerable situation as a stateless nation. Nonetheless, the far right has also been able to carve its own space, particularly through the new pro-independence far-right party Aliança Catalana (Catalan Alliance), which entered the Catalan Parliament for the first time following the May 2024 elections. Drawing from people’s grievances and frustrations after the failure to gain independence, it has positioned itself as an alternative to mainstream Catalan parties. Under the guise of wanting to ‘save Catalonia’, it promotes a strong anti-immigration stance: alongside Spanish nationalism, the arrival of immigrants poses a further threat to the preservation of Catalan culture and language.
What is most striking about all these competing perspectives and discourses is the prominence of the modernist territorial order represented by the nation-state and how it continues to shape our spatial imaginaries. It appears that Catalonia’s options are either to become a new independent state or to continue in its struggle as a minority nation within Spain. Scarce attention has been given to other possible alternatives, such as setting up a Spanish federalist model that would give greater autonomy to Catalonia and fully recognise it as a nation. With European integration having paved the way for the erosion of national sovereignty, further decentralising state power is not such a far-fetched idea. However, this would still require breaking away from the legal order set up by the 1978 Constitution. To definitively resolve nationalist tensions, a complete reimagining of the nation needs to take place. Spain would have to recognise itself as a plurinational state and embrace its cultural and linguistic diversity at all levels. Doing that could help me and many others feel more at home.