Originally published in Spanish. Luis Abenza. Politikon.
Where does the support to nationalism come from? Is this the result of a clash of legitimacies, of conflicting ideas about democracy, of a constitutional crisis? Or is this the expression of antagonisms structured by deeper factors?
The 2006 Estatut, the “Scam Theory” and the “Clash of Legitimacies”
A diagnostic that seems to have jelled on is that the rise of the pro-independence movement in Catalonia is a straight consequence of the Constitutional Court ruling. This idea has become so mainstream that now is the base upon which the different solutions are established. There seems to be a consensus that Catalan self-government’s aspirations could not fit in the Spanish constitution, hence the reformist proposals on one side, and the secessionist will on the other.
This narrative is also the base of the conflict perception as “the rule of law” vs “the right to decide”. It is also the base of I may call the “scam theory”. According to this theory, Catalonia would have arrived to a self-government deal with the Spanish state. But the latter found a way to bypass the deal. What we are seeing now is the natural reaction to the breach of trust. What happens between the referendum and the Constitutional Court ruling is what a liberal friend has called a “clash of legitimacies”. The diagnostic of the secessionism being the consequence of a legitimacy and institutions problem has illuminated the structure of the whole debate, and solutions, as the need for a referendum, the negotiation legitimacy, and the foundation for territorial boundaries to the democratic principle in the state as a whole (the so-called “self-government guarantees).
In the future, historians will come to an agreement about what happened. But this narrative contradicts quite clearly what I remember. Two years ago I tried to offer an alternative interpretation on the Constitutional Court ruling (here and here). I have found two texts (here and here) that point in the same direction. In this post I would like to outline an alternative explanation.
Consumption and Nationalism
If we look into the data on the support to the sovereignty movement, the concept that it is caused by the Constitutional Court ruling seems to have some foundations: indeed, an increase immediately follows. This, in my opinion, is not enough to explain the phenomenon we are witnessing, and it faces some tensions enunciated in the two previous articles.
What is happening in Catalonia with the ruling on the Estatut is above all a crystallization act, a communion on a common narrative, on a set of political sentiments which were latent in the society, not just the Catalan society, but also the Spanish. This is what I will call “expectations crisis theory”: the manifestation of contradictions between promises and realities of the economic system.
Between 2008 and the present, in Spain we suffered a big shock caused by the economic crisis. After almost fifteenth years of economic elation and institutional erosion, where the country spent far more than it produced, we had to accept a consumption adjustment almost unprecedented. Consumption is the area of Economics that have a most direct impact on our life standards. Specially the spending in consumer durables, which are the most dependant on credit, is the main expression of the status, translating the aspirations and promises that we feed as consumers, but also as citizens.
The marks of this impact are visible in many places. In the press, or in oral accountings, the trauma is palpable. This crystallized into different realignments that still today, once the shock has gradually disappearing, we keep suffering: people started to think that they were spending “little” in different expenditure items. Many voters abandoned their traditional political parties. Others physically abandoned the country. Spain, its institutions, the 1978 Regime, its parties and all we associate to it, as a status quo or a project, became something very unattractive. Specially for the young —which is the subject of our book to be released in November.
My impression is that the rise the of pro-independence movement translates accurately this expectation crisis. Of course, for a shopkeeper in Cuenca, independence is an outlandish idea. But for a group of people with little attachment to the rest of Spain, already with the idea of independence hovering over them, the pro-independence step is only a little further. The Catalan pro-independence movement is the crystallization among nationalists of a collective sentiment of discontent and frustration suffered by the whole country due to the economic crisis.
Nationalism and Alliances
My perception is that this hypothesis is a plausible interpretation of what can be observed from the data, or at least as plausible as the Estatut idea.
This explains the particularly high support among an especially conservative group as is the nationalist oligarchy. To the middle and higher classes (and the young in particular), and conservative people in the rest of Spain, the shock that comes with the crisis has not many political options. Voting for an anti-establishment party is not very attractive, nor to take to the streets in protest. Its fortunes are too linked to institutions. The best they can do is to vote for Citizens party.
This is not true in its Catalan equivalent. Historically, Catalan conservatism has perceived the Generalitat as its private hunting land, and its historical aspiration has been always to exercise more influence in political decisions. And many interest groups and intellectuals aspire to a share of power in the new state to which could not aspire to in Madrid. Secession is the Catalan bourgeoisie’s revolutionary strategy.
The discontent materializes in a articulated political movement, successful in Catalonia, but not in the rest of Spain, precisely because its class dimension. In the rest of Spain, the discontent for the crisis breaks the left into a coalition strategically unable to take power. In Catalonia, the nationalist anti-establishment bloc is brought together by the crucial role of bourgeoisie; it can provide resources (starting with the state institutions, but also financial and media resources) that the anti-establishment coalition lacks in the rest of the territory.
The Catalan right did not support the reaction against the cutbacks or the adjustment policies, but it can coordinate with the nationalist left in a shared project. This is what it leads to Catalan MP Gabriel Rufián to say that “The process was our 15-M”. It differs from the 15-M Movement in the crucial character petty bourgeois of the Catalan process, that is, it is carried out with the decisive support of the middle and higher classes.
The Catalan process is the system whereby advanced Catalan capitalism, and its dominating elites, cope with their core antinomies. To the Catalan elites, the Spanish state serves as a scapegoat, allowing them to avoid facing to 30 years of corrupt patrimonialist management by the Catalan government (a management model that, as my colleague Elena Costas has explained, is still very present). To the popular classes, joining the project is also very appealing. As Moses Shayo explains in his now classic article, national identity allows to offload frustrations created by class claims. For all of them, the independence is the receptacle where they project their (conflicting) aspirations. Those with fewer reasons to join up remain by the roadside.
The Contradiction Analysis Strengths
One of the strengths of this idea is that by speaking of expectations, it allows to understand why collectives with social-economic statuses and class interests so different can politically coordinate in a common proposal. This is not to say that the people most harmed by the crisis became pro-independence. What is important is not the shock level, but the gap with a self-perceived entitlement (the sense of entitlement).
Another interesting thing about this idea is its generality. In opposition to explanations based in an history of encounters and missed encounters between Catalonia and Spain, which only can be understood as an idiosyncratic Spanish phenomenon, this explanation allows to understand the revolt leaded by Catalan middle and higher classes as a simple application of the logic of class struggle. Not as a territorial idiosyncrasy, but as an expression in Catalonia of the wave of resentment that takes place across Spain. This discontent is not the translation of an emerging emotion or a singular history; it is the expression of a conflict which occurred across Spain and, to some extent, across the world.
Seen from this perspective, the Catalan conflict fits also in the historical dynamics of Catalan nationalism. Nationalism has been historically associated to moments of crisis in the Spanish national project, and leaded by what David Laitin calls “ethnic entrepreneurs”. For example, some historians frequently describe the political effervescence of nationalism in the late 19th century as the Catalan translation of a collective crisis suffered by the country after the 1898 disaster. Back then, as now, a big economic shock (the industrial bourgeoisie’s loss of the overseas markets) represented a serious blowback to the economic aspirations of the coalition of the hegemonic class in Catalonia, and its political expression was the nationalist project.
The Stubborn Persistence of Dialectics
These days, are frequent the Catalan problem approaches that favour the relegation to a second place of conflicts that have proved to be inherent to the mature capitalism rationale, favouring legalist or constitutionalist analysis. A prominent moderate intellectual recently suggested that this dimension was only part of the story. However, the concept that political conflicts mirror class tensions and alliances is not an extravagant idea —it is one of the oldest, strongest and most orthodox concepts of modern science.
If my analysis from a class perspective is right, the analysis based in the narrative about the ruling on the Estatut —which emphasizes the importance of negotiation, symbolism and identity— might not be incorrect. As the André Malraux’s quotation, recalled by a friend: “It was neither true nor false but what was experienced”. But my intuition is that the gears coordinating the nationalist power bloc’s interests will not be deactivated only with symbolism and election rituals.
