The Rise of Catalan Identity

This volume helps us to understand that the current political disorders in Catalonia have deep cultural roots. It focuses on the rise of Catalan cultural, national and linguistic identity in the 20th century. What is happening in Catalonia? What lies behind its political conflicts? Catalan identity has been evolving for centuries, starting in early medieval ages (11th and 12lve centuries). It is not a modern phenomenon. The emergence of imperial Spain in the 16 c. and the French Ancien Régime in the 17 c. correlates with a decline of Catalan culture, which was politically absorbed by the Spanish state after the conquest of Barcelona in 1714. However, Catalan language and culture flourished again under the stimulus of the European Romantic Nationalism movement (known as the Renaixença in Catalonia). During the first Dictatorship (Primo de Rivera, 1923-1930), the Spanish Civil War(1936-1939), and the long Francoist era (1939-1975), Catalan language and culture were repressed, yet refurbished and reconstructed at the same time.
This rise of a plural, complex, and non-homogeneous Catalan identity constitutes the subject matter of this volume. National conflicts that emerged later in the Spanish democratic state leant heavily on the life engagement and vital commitment experienced by the entrenched intellectual movements of the twentieth century in Catalonia, Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands. This book reveals the cultural and literary grassroots of these conflicts.

Pompeu Casanovas is Research Professor at La Trobe University Law School (Melbourne). He is also Director of Advanced Research and Professor of Philosophy and Sociology of Law at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB Faculty of Law), and since 2014 onwards, Honorary Professor at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His research interests encompass intellectual history, legal theory, anthropology, ethics, AI, and semantic and data analysis. He is developing regulatory models to implement principles of linked democracy, privacy, and the rule of law (meta-rule of law) on the web of data. At present, he is working on rights, legal compliance and governance in the Australian government-funded Data to Decisions CRC Project, and the EU H2020 Projects TakeDown and SPIRIT (cyber-security) and LYNX (knowledge graph of legal and regulatory data). He belongs to the board of several scientific associations, and serves as general co-editor (with Giovanni Sartor) of the Law, Governance and Technology Series, at Springer. Montserrat Corretger is Associate Professor in the Department of Catalan Philology, at Rovira i Virgili University, and member of the GRILC (Identity Research Group in Catalan Literature). Her research focuses on contemporary Catalan literature and on literary history and criticism, with special attention to the turn of the century, the 1920s and 30s, and the 1939 exile. Her latest books and articles are devoted to Domènec Guansé, Vicent Riera Llorca and Odó Hurtado. Vicent Salvador (Paterna, l'Horta, 1951) is Professor of Catalan Philology at Jaume I University in Castelló (Valence). He has been member of the Patronato de la Biblioteca Nacional de España (2005-2008) and Vice-president of the Catalan Pen Club (2007-2015). He has worked mainly in the field of discourse analysis and stylistics as well as in the field of contemporary literature studies. He has published numerous articles, books, and book chapters as well as essays and poems. Among his books are La frontera literària (The literary borderline, 1988), Fuster o l'estratègia del centaure (Fuster or the Centaur's Strategy, 1994), Elements de lingüística per al discurs literari (Elements of lingüístics for literay discourse, coauthored with Dominique Maingueneau, 1995), Poesia, ciutat oberta (Poetry, Open City, 2000), Els arxius del discurs (The Archives of Discourse, 2001), Figures i esbossos (Figures and Sketches, 2013). He has supervised so far 21 Doctoral Thesis in different Spanish universities.

Acknowledgments.- Catalan Identity: Preface.- Chapter 1. Catalan Identities: Literature, Social Commitment, and Political Engagement in the 20th century; Pompeu Casanovas, Montserrat Corretger, Vicent Salvador.- Part I. Identity: Law, Philosophy, Literature and Language.- Chapter 2. Catalan Identities: Language, Power and Political Pactism from a Historical Perspective; Pompeu Casanovas.- Chapter 3. Catalan Identity Projected Abroad: The Example of the Journal Cataluña (1907-1908); Emili Samper.- Chapter 4. Essay and Philosophy in Catalan Culture from 1940 to 1960; Joan Cuscó.- Chapter 5. Language Policies in Contemporary Catalonia: A History of Linguistic and Political Ideas; Narcís Iglesias.- Part II. Humanities in Exile.- Chapter 6. Carles Riba: An Intellectual Between Poetry and Politics; Jordi Malé.- Chapter 7. Identity and Memory in the 1939 Catalan Literature of Exile; Montserrat Corretger.- Chapter 8. Catalan Translation in Chile in the Exile of 1939; Montserrat Bacardí.- PartIII. Writing under Francoism.- Chapter 9. Joan Oliver Under the Surveillance of Francoist Police (1948-1977); Francesc Foguet.- Chapter 10. Manuel de Pedrolo or The Political Dimension of Existentialism; Xavier Ferré Trill.- Chapter 11. Social Engagement and Urban Identity in the Catalan Novel of the 1970s; Adolf Piquer.- Chapter 12. Spatiality and Valencian/Catalan Identity in the Poetry of Vicent Andrés Estellés; Vicent Salvador.- Part IV. Literature as Social Commitment and Political Engagement.- Chapter 13. Individualism, Madness and Revolution in the Catalan Novel Under the 2nd Republic: Perot i l'Estel by Antoni Fuster Valldeperas; Magí Sunyer.- Chapter 14. Memory and Identity through some Valencian Writers' Autobiographical Texts; Anna Esteve.- Chapter 15. Fantasy, History, and Politics: Jaume Fuster's Trilogy, or the Undone Catalan Nation; Alfons Gregori.- Chapter 16. And the turbid azure of being three times a rebel: Commitment and Identity in the Literary Works of M. Aurèlia Capmany, Montserrat Roig and M. Mercè Marçal; M. Àngels Francés.- Part 5. Extending into the 21st century.- Chapter 17. Catalan's Presence on the Internet (1993-2018); Peter Gerrand.- Chapter 18. Under Construction: Literature and Identities in Contemporary Catalan Culture; Stewart King.- Index.