The Catalan Way to Independence and the Spanish-Catalan Conflict

The call for a referendum on the Catalan independence on the 1st of October 2017 and the complete rejection from the Spanish government fixed two irreconcilable positions: the desire of a new (Catalan) nation state and the desire of maintaining the unity of the existing (Spanish) nation state. The issue was judicialized and an almost inexistent space for political solutions was maintained. The Spanish and Catalan conflict is understood within the framework of multiple crises, some of which are specific to domestic politics whereas others are comparable to developments in the rest of Europe. The sovereignty of the nations is back on the political agenda. The case of Catalonia shows tensions between the shaping of the will of the people and the existing judicial framework, the connections between civil society mobilizations and political actions, and between plurality as an alternative project and the tendency towards homogeneity, characteristic of nation states.