The Catalan identity and Catalonia

Catalans are the people who live in the territories of Spain in the autonomous-historical region called Catalonia. Their significance for Spanish inner politics can be understood best if we know that Catalonia (Catalunya) has been, since 1975, the most politically and economically powerful autonomous self-governing region in the Kingdom of Spain – during the last 25 years, basically, a kind of “a state within the state”. As a matter of fact, Catalans are the most integrated ethnohistorical group in Spain together with Basques.

What makes Catalans so interlinked could be understood if we know how Catalans historically understand the concept of group identity. First, they identify a Catalan as “a Catalan is whoever lives and works in Catalonia”, and “a Catalan is whoever speaks Catalan.” These explanations - both hereditary and converting everybody - practically means that a Catalan ethnonational identity is founded on both political (French) and linguistic-cultural (German) concepts or models.

According to the French model, ethnonation is made by all people who want to live together in a single (national) political entity (autonomous region, province or state). According to the German concept, persons speaking the same language, adhering to the same religion, or with the same history and culture are a people in an ethnonational sense. In the Catalan case, a common culture and especially language create the fundamental framework of ethnonational identity: “Nobody will be a Catalan until he speaks like us until he makes our needs his own.^” This indicates that a struggle is needed to get a Catalan identity, and it is believed that the people will hardly give up their already achieved identities after that effort.

Thus, language is the hallmark of integration in Catalonia, but not the only one. People who convert to Catalan participate in its popular culture too - the traditions and habits of Catalans’ newcomers have a sacred task of Catalan nationalism:

“Nationalism is the will to have a particular way of being and the possibility to build up one’s own country”... “Our [Catalan] identity as a country, our will to be, and our perspectives for the future depend on the preservation of our language”... “It is the task of all those who live in Catalonia to preserve its personality and strengthen its language and culture”.

The consciousness of Catalan identity is taught to all newcomers and exercised by both old and new citizens to make Catalonia a strong political unity and Catalans as strong as an ethnonational society. In essence, cultural nationalism, a form of nationalism that places primary emphasis on the regeneration of the nation as a distinctive civilisation rather than on self-determination, is a fundamental cement of Catalan group identity. Cultural nationalism is, however, usually backed by ethnic but not civic nationalism.

Ethnic nationalism emphasises the organic and ethnic unity of the nation, while civic nationalism allows respect for ethnic and cultural diversity that does not challenge core civic values. Catalan ethnonational identity is based on ethnic or ethnocultural nationalism, which naturally struggles for the realisation of its basic political principle – national self-determination or the principle that the ethnonation has to be a sovereign political entity. National self-determination, therefore, implies the idea of national independence (creation of an independent national state). This has brought Catalonia into direct political conflict with the central authorities in Madrid and with the rest of Spain – a country which was never properly united since its foundation in 1479.  

A factor of history

Historically, the Catalan region always struggled with the central government of Spain for several reasons, the most important being:

1)     Catalonia was economically the most developed and industrialised region of Spain, having significant economic resources but feeling financially exploited by Madrid. The Catalan industrial, financial, and commercial élites identified the landowning and financial interests from Castilla and Madrid as responsible for all the ills of Spain, and from time to time the attempts to tax the profits of neutrality were resisted by Catalan industrialists as Madrid’s attack on their liberties.

2)    Catalans developed the highest spirit of ethnonational unity in Spain and always understood themselves to be spiritually superior in to all other administrative-historical regions of Spain.

Modern Catalonia is a legal successor of the historical Kingdom of Aragón – a state founder, together with the Kingdom of Castilla – of the Kingdom of Spain within the legal framework of the union of Castilla and Aragón in 1479. This means that Catalonia included its own state-historical independence in Spain by the political marriage of the Roman Catholic monarchs, Isabel I of Castilla and Fernando II of Aragón, in 1469. Isabel I succeeded to her crown in 1474, while Fernando II did the same with his crown in 1479.

Aragón brought to the new state, together with its mainland territory in the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands, the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and South Italy (Kingdom of Naples). At that time, the Kingdom of Aragón was much bigger than present-day Catalonia, which was an autonomous duchy of Aragón together with the autonomous Kingdom of Valencia. The Kingdom of Aragón was a federation of autonomous principalities. The titular head of the Aragonese feudal federation ruled the various member-states separately, and in each case, there was an individual contractual relationship between monarch and vassals, institutionalised by a representative chamber, Cortes, which the Catalan representatives first assembled in 1218, the Aragonese in 1247, and the Valencians in 1283.

The Catalan “empire” began to be formed when its territorial expansion southwards reached the boundaries agreed with the Kingdom of Castilla and Catalonia turned her attention to territorial expansion to the Mediterranean Sea. Catalonia established a permanent presence in North Africa and intervened in the political affairs of the states on the Apennine Peninsula (later Italy). Sardinia became the first Italian victim of Catalan expansionism, followed by Sicily and South Italy. Catalan consulates were opened from the Levant to Flanders, and two Byzantine duchies of Athens and Neopatras were incorporated into the Aragonese federation. Two Catalan provinces – Cerdenya and Roussillon – existed north of the Pyrenees, today in France.

With the creation of the Aragonese maritime empire, Catalan industrial exports grew tremendously in return for slaves and spices from the east. The Catalan language became the lingua franca of the Mediterranean Sea basin concerning trade, followed by Catalan trading customs becoming the first set of rules of maritime law that was finally codified as Libre del Consolat de Mar. In the mid-14th century, the golden age of Catalan mercantile and maritime expansion reached its peak, with spectacular evidence of such power and economic prosperity visible in Barcelona, the political and economic centre of the Aragonese maritime empire until the unification with Castilla into Spain, when Madrid became the epicentre of the Spanish overseas empire.    

The historical dispute between Castilla and Aragón/Catalonia over political leadership of Spain and its overseas colonies in America (since 1492) broke out in 1504 when Queen Isabel of Castilla died. Aragón’s representative, King Fernando, claimed that his original crown land now had to have leadership of Spain, while the aristocracy of Castilla argued that according to the political marriage in 1469, Castilla had to be the leader, as:

1.    Castilla was three times larger than the combined kingdoms of Aragón, Valencia and Mallorca and the Principality of Catalonia.

2.   Castilla was more heavily populated, with five million inhabitants (and taxpayers) against under a million in Aragón.

3.   Castilla was much richer in taxable wealth and disposable income.

4.   Castilla was more dynamic and expansionist, having in her hands an American colonial empire.

What was keeping Spain together since 1469 was really the Roman Catholic Church as a common ethnic origin never existed in reality. The fragility of Spanish common identity, followed by regional-historical separatism, was in evidence during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 when the presence of the Republican government in Barcelona from the end of 1937 caused endless friction between the centralist authority and the proponents of Catalan autonomy or even secession. While many Republicans looked upon Catalonia as a state within the state, not fully contributing to the war effort against the forces of General Franco, the Catalans felt that the central government was constantly seeking to erode their autonomy and even regional-historical identity. When Barcelona fell on January 25th, 1939, the war was nearly over – Madrid capitulated on March 28. Spain entered the age of Roman Catholic supremacy in all spheres of life under the open dictatorship of Caudillo de España.      

In March 1939, General Francisco Franco became head of Spain, until he died in 1975. The problem of Catalonia was left unsolved, and the leading political forces of Spain were aware that Catalans were the only organised ethnic group in the country, even under Franco’s dictatorship. The first serious strikes in Franco’s Spain occurred in Barcelona in March 1951, followed by the rest of Catalonia and some other regions. Spain did not want to lose a region which was so mobilised and rich, so the central government in Madrid had to do something special for Catalans in order not to lose them.

Before General Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia had a set of autonomous regional privileges, but under Franco, Catalans lost their autonomous status as the whole country was heavily centralised, and Catalans felt themselves to be the main losers of Franco’s military-ecclesiastic regime. But the severe cultural and political repression did not destroy Catalan ethnonational and regional-historical identity or desire for separate status and administrative autonomy. The Catalan Church continued to foster Catalan cultural studies and set itself up as a Catalanist focus. Having Catalan example, in 1966 the Basque provinces started to reclaim their regional rights, which the Basques had shortly enjoyed during the Civil War.

Catalonia’s autonomy

Catalonia regained its autonomous status in 1978, three years after Franco’s death. Despite the conditional support in Northern Spain, the constitutional charter approved in the plenary session of Congress and Senate on October 31, 1978, ratified by the nation on December 6 and sanctioned by the King on December 27, provided a framework of guarantees to ensure democratic coexistence within the Constitution and laws of the country. The most novel aspect of the 1978 Constitution was the reorganisation of the Spanish administrative territory into 17 (+2) autonomous communities as a semi-federal state.

A formal and legal regional autonomy of Catalonia is guaranteed by a new democratic post-Franco 1978 Constitution of Spain. This practically meant that, for the first time in Spanish history, the Catalans and Catalonia received significant ethno-regional autonomy and sovereignty, with a high degree of political and administrative rights. In fact, Catalonia became, according to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of the State, a state within the state (of Spain). According to Article 1 of this Convention, the state has four features: a defined territory; a permanent population; an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

According to this view, the political existence of the state is not dependent on its formal recognition as “independent” by other states. It means further that, according to Article 3,  the state, even without formal recognition, has the right to defend its integrity and sovereignty, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, and consequently to organise itself as it sees fit. The main feature of the concept of the state is sovereignty – the principle of supreme and unquestionable authority, reflected in the claim by the political unity to be the sole author of laws within its territory.

Catalans, within the constitutional framework of their sovereign autonomy, had the right to decide whether or not to accept the decisions of the central government in Madrid concerning Catalonia in the senses of economy, justice and social security; they had a legal power to exercise their political-regional sovereignty in competition with the central government of Spain. Such a state-within-the-state in the federal system is historically very rare, and can be compared with Kosovo’s Albanian sovereignty in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1974 to 1989, with the common conclusion: de facto political-regional independence leads to the requirement of its formal international recognition as an independent state.     

Amid celebration in Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, pre-autonomy status for this region was recognised with the re-establishment of the Generalitat. The ethno-regional sovereign privileges of Catalonia in the senses of politics and economy according to the Generalitat were:

A. Juridical Regime:

The Generalitat, as the Constitution of Catalonia mentions that:

“The High Court of Justice of Catalonia is the supreme jurisdictional body of the legal system in Catalonia, and it is competent, under the terms established by the corresponding organic law, to hear the appeals and cases of the different jurisdictional areas, and to protect the rights recognised in this Estatut. In all cases, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia is competent in the areas of civil, penal, contentious-administrative and social law and other areas of law which may be created in the future.”

This guarantees the equal treatment of all citizens and decreases the level of conflicts derived from the lack of a central administration. Also, it gives confidence to Catalonia that it has the right to implement juridical processes about the issues of the Catalan region. Nevertheless, having a separate juridical regime makes Catalans stronger within the state of Spain.

B.   Trade and Trade Fairs:

“The Generalitat has exclusive power in matters of trade and trade fairs, including the regulation of non-international trade fair activities and the administrative planning of trading activities.”

This indicates that Catalonia has the right to implement its own trade activities according to its own wishes and benefits. In practice, when this legal right concerning the hinterland of Barcelona comes together, it gets easier to increase the welfare of the region.

C. Education:

“Determination of the educational content of the first cycle of infant education and the regulation of the centre in which this cycle is taught, and also the definition of the staffing arrangements and the qualifications and specialisations of the other staff.”

This shows that Catalonia has the right to exercise the manner of education with regard to its own culture. Although it is obligatory to teach Spanish lessons in schools, Catalans are still being educated in Catalan culture. This also makes them both more integrated into Spanish society and gives a sense of a separate Catalan identity. 

D. Public Security:

“In matters of public security, the Generalitat, in accordance with State legislation, is responsible for planning and regulating the public security system for Catalonia and organisation of the local police and public safety and public order.”

This gives the autonomous region the right to protect the welfare of its citizens. Due to the fact that the people of the region know their own problems better, providing security while being aware of the real problems makes the region stronger.

E. Participation in the Treaties of the European Union:

“The Generalitat shall be informed by the State Government of initiatives for review of European Union treaties and of subsequent signing and ratification processes. The Government of the Generalitat and Parliament shall address, to the State Government and to the Cortes Generales, the observations that it deems pertinent to this effect.”

This indicates that although Catalonia does not have a direct influence on the European Union (EU), the central government in Madrid still has to inform Catalonia about the issues of EU-Spanish relations. This shows however that the Autonomous Region of Catalonia within Spain is legally powerful.

F. International Treaties and Conventions:

“The Government of the State shall inform the Generalitat in advance of the signing of treaties which have a direct and singular effect on the powers of Catalonia. The Generalitat and Parliament may address the observations that they consider relevant to these matters to the Government.” and “In the case of treaties which have a direct and singular effect on Catalonia, the Generalitat may request that the Government include representatives of the Generalitat in the negotiating delegation; the Generalitat may request that the Government sign international treaties in areas within its jurisdiction.”

This indicates a very important issue: although Catalonia is formally an autonomous region of Spain, it has a real right to influence Madrid about Spanish decisions in regard to Catalonia, and it has the right to challenge the decisions by the central Spanish authority.  

(To be concluded…)