Localism and Nation in the political cultures of Catalonia of 19th century

Abstract

In the Catalonia of century XIX the localism, the parochialism and other municipal patriotisms constituted milestones for the construction of the plural ones and opposed political identities. Its continuity, in spite of the successive attempts to reduce it or to accommodate it to the new forms of State organization, is perceived throughout the century and it becomes explicit, by all the Catalan territory, in cultural, economic, social and civic terms. The aim of this article is to rescue its original sense and to insert it in its historical context, despite of the later reconsiderations that fixed this devotion as a protonationalistic purpose.