The Catalan Crisis : Between Spanish Liberal Democracy and State (dis) Unity

Applying theory to the political crisis in Catalonia and Spain. 

The Catalan Crisis explores the dissolution of the politico-territorial status quo between Catalonia and Spain and examines the emergence of the Catalan push for self-determination. The main topics covered in the book include the articulation of state unity in post-Francoist Spain; the rationalization of state nationalism and the criminalization of its alternatives; the generation of new forms of radical politics based on the polarization of the political space in Catalonia; and the difficulties encountered by Spanish liberal democracy when trying to accommodate demands based on political and cultural decentralization. In its analysis, the book aims to answer key questions surrounding the conflict, including how the Catalan case can shed light on new forms of democratic participation, resistance, disobedience, and emancipation on a global level.

This study is unique for its anti-essentialist approach to the recent political crisis between Catalonia and Spain. Through a blending of post-Marxist and Lacanian discourse-analysis, it tackles the ontological foundations of the post-1978 status quo between Catalonia and Spain, its partial dissolution during the 2010s, and the attempt made by a significant share of the Catalan population and political leadership to achieve an alternative politico-territorial status. With a radical critique of how the universalism of state unity (and its alternatives) work as organising principles for our political experience of the world, the text analyses the political manifestos, court decisions, and parliamentary speeches of Catalan and Spanish politics of the period. It then proceeds to argue that the Catalan crisis should be understood as the by-product of the mainstream nationalising discourse, whereby Spain has become a liberal democracy after General Franco’s dictatorship.