Search results

AbstractHistoriography on the phenomenology of nationalisms has often pointed to the importance of myths and symbols in the construction of these political movements, underlining how the past is transfigured and/or particular historical episodes are recast for use in creating a given political discourse in the present. By adopting this viewpoint, the aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of historiographical thinking on the use of myths and symbols in contemporary politics, giving particular attention to how they were brought to bear in the early days of the Catalan nationalist movement. This initial period, covering the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is of special interest in the case of Catalan nationalism because it was a phase of politicisation marked – much as it was in other nationalist movements across Europe – by a nationalisation of history, a selection of foundation myths and historical milestones, and a crystallisation of the movement's symbols.

The debate over dictatorship and democracy is a fundamental feature of the cultural and political landscape that gave rise to the strategies and approaches of intellectuals between the two world wars. Their conceptions of the two systems weighed heavily in their reflections as liberal democratic ideals lost credibility and fell into decline. It is often said that the revolutions in Russia in 1917 and Italy in 1922 pushed intellectuals to choose between socialism and fascism. The political situation in Catalonia offers suggestive insights into this dilemma. More specifically, the present paper examines the debate sparked among Catalan intellectuals by the kidnapping and assassination of a socialist member of the Italian parliament, Giacomo Matteotti (1885-1924). The Matteotti affair coincided with the publication of a series of articles exploring the connections between democracy and dictatorship. Notable among these pieces are the contributions of the conservative Catalan nationalist leader Francesc Cambó (1876-1947), who wrote for the newspaper La Veu de Catalunya. Cambó's articles, reprinted later in the same year in a book on Italian fascism, Entorn del feixisme italià, spawned a bitter refutation of his position that reached beyond the historical context.

Giovanni C. Cattini is a young historian who offers an itemized study on Berneri's Guerra di Classe: he refers the first moments and also the definitive crisis of this newspaper after Berneri¿s assassination in May 1937. This is not the first work devoted to this militant platform has been annalysed but Cattini's approach observes not only the ideological and political contest maintained with other sectors of the libertarian movement but the contrived militant tools that have allowed its existance during the Spanish Civil War.

El escrito ofrece una aproximación a los temas tratados en el seminario La gran confrontación entre democracia y dictadura Se presentan por apartados: la cronología de la modernización de la sociedad mediterránea; las raíces de la debilidad del liberalismo y el papel de los intelectuales; el uso público de la historia en el debate historiográfico acerca del fascismo/antifascismo y sus transiciones; el papel de la Iglesia; el Ejército y el militarismo en los regímenes autoritarios.