Abstract

The Catalan quest for independence has undoubtedly become the key issue of contemporary Spanish politics since the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. Alongside the Scottish referendum of independence in 2014 and the rise of Scottish demands for a second referendum to be held after Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU), the mobilisation of Catalan nationalists in favour of independence has also contributed to posit the issue of the so-called 'inner-enlargement' of the EU borders, as well as the convenience and legitimacy of the claim for self-determination in Western European democracies. Most surprisingly, what seemed to be the foci of ethnonational unrest, linked to enduring ethnic conflict, in Western Europe from the 1970s through to the 1990s, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country and (to a lesser extent) Corsica, have been replaced by peaceful mass mobilisation in favour of self-determination, coming from stateless nations that, until quite recently, appeared as a paradigm of pragmatic accommodation within their respective nation- states: Scotland and Catalonia.

Keywords: Catalonia, independence, nationalism, referendum, self-determination, mass mobilisation, stateless nations

How to Cite:

Núñez Seixas, X., (2020) “Catalan Nationalism and the Quest for Independence in the Twenty-First Century: A Historical Perspective”, NISE Essays 5(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/nise.90266