The Church, the Right and the Forging of a Catalan Nationalist Movement, 1875–98

Abstract

This chapter will focus on the articulation of a conservative alternative to the Centre Català by the Catalanist Right. Several questions will be addressed. First, it will analyse the reasons behind the adoption by sectors of conservative Catalanism of a more clearly Catalan nationalist discourse and practice from the late 1880s. Second, it will examine the make-up of the conservative Catalanist movement; its strength, the different groups within its midst, the main strands of its discourse, and its attempts to construct a specific cultural and symbolic iconography. This will entail further discussion of the impact that the Castilian language and what might be called the Castilian-Andalusian rendition of Spanish culture had on Catalonia, and of Catalanist attempts to construct a specifically Catalan cultural base. Finally, it will analyse the impact that the 1895 Cuban revolt and the agitation that preceded the outbreak of war with the United States in 1898 had on the movement. The direction this agitation took would be a key barometer of the extent to which Catalan nationalist sentiment had penetrated the population or, on the contrary, Spanish nationalist identity still held sway.