Suchergebnisse

Secession is normally viewed as legitimate only as a last resort for oppressed peoples, but contemporary independence movements in Europe are working hard to shift perceptions of the legitimacy of secession as a democratic phenomenon. In this context, the recent growth of the independence movement in Catalonia has given rise to a direct confrontation between two opposing conceptions of the legitimacy of secession in democratic nation-states. On one hand, pro-referendum Catalans claim that a vote on the matter would be entirely consistent with the basic principles of democracy. On the other, the Spanish government rests its denial of a referendum on the legal authority of the Spanish Constitution, which states that Spain must remain united. This article traces the two competing discourses of democratic and legal legitimacy (what we might call the 'right to decide' vs. the 'duty to abide') through an examination of the rhetoric of key political actors. It concludes that the Catalan government's attempt to prove that Catalonia could constitute a politically legitimate independent state, and should therefore be allowed to ask its residents whether they wish it to do so, is particularly significant as a challenge to generally accepted 'remedial right' theories of secession.

The Museum of the History of Catalonia (MHC), opened in 1996, houses a permanent exhibition that takes the visitor through the story of Catalonia from pre-history to 1980, as well as temporary exhibitions. It was conceived as a political project with a clear nation-building function,
devised by the ruling centre-right Catalanist coalition Convergncia i Uni as a way of teaching Catalans a different version of their history from the one that had come to them from the Spanish state, especially under the Franco regime. The article analyses the structure and content
of the Museum's permanent exhibition, as well as some of the debates that have surrounded it, in the light of work by Tony Bennett and others on the evolution of the role of museums in state- and nation-building since the nineteenth century. The analysis shows how the nationalist ideology
of CiU shaped the design and functions of the MHC in the period up to 2003.

Abstract
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