The Catalan Crisis: Between Spanish Liberal Democracy and State (dis) Unity

This study is unique for its anti-essentialist approach to the recent political crisis between Catalonia and Spain. Through a blending of post-Marxist and Lacanian discourse-analysis, it tackles the ontological foundations of the post-1978 status quo between Catalonia and Spain, its partial dissolution during the 2010s, and the attempt made by a significant share of the Catalan population and political leadership to achieve an alternative politico-territorial status. With a radical critique of how the universalism of state unity (and its alternatives) work as organising principles for our political experience of the world, the text analyses the political manifestos, court decisions, and parliamentary speeches of Catalan and Spanish politics of the period. It then proceeds to argue that the Catalan crisis should be understood as the by-product of the mainstream nationalising discourse, whereby Spain has become a liberal democracy after General Franco’s dictatorship.