This volume helps us to understand that the current political disorders in Catalonia have deep
cultural roots. It focuses on the rise of Catalan cultural national and linguistic identity in
the 20th century. What is happening in Catalonia? What lies behind its political conflicts?
Catalan identity has been evolving for centuries starting in early medieval ages (11th and
12lve centuries). It is not a modern phenomenon. The emergence of imperial Spain in the 16 c.
and the French Ancien Régime in the 17 c. correlates with a decline of Catalan culture which
was politically absorbed by the Spanish state after the conquest of Barcelona in 1714. However
Catalan language and culture flourished again under the stimulus of the European Romantic
Nationalism movement (known as the Renaixença in Catalonia). During the first Dictatorship
(Primo de Rivera 1923-1930) the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the long Francoist era
(1939-1975) Catalan language and culture wererepressed yet refurbished and reconstructed at
the same time.This rise of a plural complex and non-homogeneous Catalan identity constitutes
the subject matter of this volume. National conflicts that emerged later in the Spanish
democratic state leant heavily on the life engagement and vital commitment experienced by the
entrenched intellectual movements of the twentieth century in Catalonia Valencian Country and
the Balearic Islands. This book reveals the cultural and literary grassroots of these
conflicts.
