The Emergence of Catalan Nationalism

With the 1880s, a coherent nationalist ideology, Catalanism, emerged in the hands of a conservative Catalan intelligentsia. Rather than formal independence, Catalanism sought Catalonia’s self-government within a federal Spain, as well as the modernization of the Spanish state. Catalanist pressures resulted in the Mancomunitat, Catalonia’s first self-government. However, by the 1930s the Catalan nationalist movement had become firmly leftist, while remaining committed to Catalan self-government rather than outright independence. The Catalan Generalitat, created in 1932, was undermined by the rejection of Catalan nationalism by the Second Republic Spanish state, as well as by divisions in Catalonia between nationalists and anarchists.