Catalanism and Democracy

State, Regimeand Government in 19th Century

Abstract

The article reviews the attitudes, analysis and proposals of the nineteenth century Catalanism about the configuration of the Spanish liberal state, the different bets on the monarchy or the republic and the role to be played by Catalonia and who were the backbone of the draft Catalan reality. It is called special attention to the strength, continuity and popular will of the progressive and liberal formulations, particularly those who accepted and developed a federal republican matrix. In this line, together with the perpetrators and leaders usually considered, as Valentí Almirall or the same Francisco Pi y Margall, stresses the importance of many other basic and influential too, as Thomas Bertran i Soler, Joan Baptista Guardiola, Josep Narcís Roca i Farreras and, most particularly, Josep Maria Vallès i Ribot. The various political failures just before the consolidation of a bourgeois liberal state in Spain marked by the cacique dynasticism centralist help explain the growing hegemony of conservative Catalanism in Catalonia in the late century. Nor the theoretical background was homogeneous and had several lines of opinion and development, with authors such as weight Duran i Bas, Mañé i Flaquer or Torras i Bages. Tended to move in the context of proposals more cultural, not political. It was only at the gates of the new century, noted the many shortcomings of the Spanish liberal state built from centralism, when he managed to galvanize political interventionism based on covenant claims more directly with economic and social aspects of the Catalan bourgeoisie.