This paper focuses on a dialectic of repression and resistance at work in the most recent wave of contentious politics in Catalonia. It emphasises the brief but certain resurgence of a discursive and performative repertoire recollecting Catalonia's revolutionary past in the wave of contentious politics that has swept the region over the past decade, since the onset of the so-called Eurozone crisis. The paper seeks to provide an interpretation of the region's recent cycle of contentious politics through the lens of state repression. It hones in on an emblematic moment, from the spring of 2011, associated with the Indignados movement. It pays particular attention to their violent removal by the police from the Plaça Catalunya in May, and to the attempt to surround the Catalan Parliament to disrupt the budget debate the following month. It contends that the violent repression of the Indignados movement in Catalonia by the "regional" authorities is best understood as a reflex response to an incipient challenge to existing constellations of hierarchical and oppressive social relations - a challenge that echoed, indeed threatened to revive, long-suppressed memories of the region's revolutionary past, to "blast" this past "out of the continuum of history," to "appropriate its memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger" (Benjamin). This moment of violent repression by the Catalan authorities proved the precursor, the condition of possibility, for the subsequent re-channelling of contentious politics within the more comfortable confines of hierarchically-structured, nationalist imaginaries.
This paper focuses on a dialectic of repression and resistance at work in the most recent wave of contentious politics in Catalonia. It emphasises the brief but certain resurgence of a discursive and performative repertoire recollecting Catalonia's revolutionary past in the wave of contentious politics that has swept the region over the past decade, since the onset of the so-called Eurozone crisis. The paper seeks to provide an interpretation of the region's recent cycle of contentious politics through the lens of state repression. It hones in on an emblematic moment, from the spring of 2011, associated with the Indignados movement. It pays particular attention to their violent removal by the police from the Plaça Catalunya in May, and to the attempt to surround the Catalan Parliament to disrupt the budget debate the following month. It contends that the violent repression of the Indignados movement in Catalonia by the "regional" authorities is best understood as a reflex response to an incipient challenge to existing constellations of hierarchical and oppressive social relations - a challenge that echoed, indeed threatened to revive, long-suppressed memories of the region's revolutionary past, to "blast" this past "out of the continuum of history," to "appropriate its memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger" (Benjamin). This moment of violent repression by the Catalan authorities proved the precursor, the condition of possibility, for the subsequent re-channelling of contentious politics within the more comfortable confines of hierarchically-structured, nationalist imaginaries. ; Este trabajo trata la dialéctica de la represión y la Resistencia en la reciente ola de política contenciosa en Cataluña. Ponemos énfasis en el resurgir breve pero cierto del repertorio discursivo y performativo del recuerdo del pasado revolucionario de Cataluña durante esta ola que ha barrido la región desde hace una década, desde el inicio de la asi-llamada crisis de la Eurozona. El trabajo intenta proveer una interpretación del ciclo de política contenciosa de la región a través del enfoque de la represión estatal. Afilamos en un momento emblemático, de la primavera de 2011, asociado con el movimiento de los Indignados. Prestamos especial atención en su desalojo violento por parte de los Mossos d'Esquadra en mayo, y el intento en el mes siguiente del cerco al Parlament Catalán, con el fin de interrumpir en el debate presupuestario. Sostenemos que la represión violenta del movimiento de los Indignados en Cataluña por parte de las autoridades 'regionales' mejor se entiende como la respuesta a un desafío incipiente a las constelaciones jerárquicas de relaciones sociales oprimentes – un desafío que se hizo eco, de hecho amenazó con revivir, recuerdos largamente reprimidos del pasado revolucionario de la 'región', un desafió que pudo haber hecho "explotar" este pasado fuera del "continúo de la historia," para "apropiarse de su memoria cómo se enciende en un momento de peligro" (Benjamín). Este momento de represión violenta por las autoridades catalanas demostró ser el precursor, la condición de posibilidad, para la posterior canalización de la política contenciosa dentro de los confines más cómodos de imaginarios nacionalistas – imaginarios, por supuesto, estructurados jerárquicamente.
This paper contributes to the research strand within empirical democratic theory dedicated to operationalizing representation and measuring levels of responsiveness. It discusses the merits and limits of the criterion of responsiveness for assessing the functioning of representative institutions. It builds on comparative findings about the susceptibility of party hierarchies to capture by relatively privileged segments of society, and on comparative findings about the consequences of policy packaging. It posits these as two crucial mechanisms that help account for the propensity of the democratic arena to become a relatively autonomous, privileged site for the construction of ideological hegemony. Furthermore, it presents original data from an elite survey of members of regional parliaments in Spain to illuminate the role of representative institutions and parties in recent efforts to forge and consolidate a particular type of ideological hegemony-micro-nationalist hegemony-in Catalonia and the Basque Country. It contrasts and explains the political dynamics operative in the two regions, emphasizing the divergent trajectories of left-wing party construction. In so doing, it contributes to the literature on nationalism as well, by honing in on the neglected arena of democratic politics as a critical site where the struggle for the success of nationalist hegemonic projects takes place. Adapted from the source document.
The literature on nationalism too often relies upon over-simplified accounts of the phenomenon. It tends to treat national identifies in exclusive & binary terms; & it tends to portray the ideological content of nationalist movements in static & stereotyped ways. This paper combats these deficiencies. It employs secondary analysis of opinion data available for the general population there, contrasted with primary analysis of data front 355 interviews with political elites & school teachers in the context of Catalonia in Spain, in order to: demonstrate that most citizens in Catalonia do not consider themselves either only Catalan or only Spanish; trace the evolution of hegemonic definitions of Catlanitat from primordial & exclusionary to territorial & assimilationist; & map the distribution of alternative & contradictory conceptions of membership across different segments of the society. Adapted from the source document.
