Page 71 [71]
JAVIER MORENO LUZÓN
Empire. As tends to be the case with the modernist school of analysis, we
must attribute a leading role in these movements to local elites who were
seeking to emancipate themselves from Spanish centralist control.
This was an era of cultural nationalism across Europe, and these sub-state
movements adopted features of the German model, such as the emphasis on
language. Both Basques and Catalans developed nostalgic discourses of a
golden age in which their peoples were free, a subsequent fall into decadence
provoked by Spanish oppression and the necessity of recovering their lost
greatness. Both movements were based on powerful links with civil society,
through cultural and recreational associations. Both likewise created their
own national symbols, adapting pre-existing heraldry and songs in the
Catalan case or, in the Basque example, creating completely new ones.°
Nevertheless, there were important differences between the Basque and
Catalan nationalists. The Basques insisted on the importance of religion — as
did Spanish Catholic nationalism — and race, understood as family lineage
and measured by the number of Basque surnames each person could trace
in their family history. In effect, Basque nationalism was a reaction against
the arrival of Castilian immigrants to work in the region’s industries, and
xenophobic in character, and only in the second place did it defend the
Basque language, Euskera. The Catalans, in contrast, placed their emphasis
on history — in memories of the grievances Castile had caused them centuries
ago, which gave rise to Catalan National Day, in memory of a defeat in the
18" century — and above all on language: the Catalan language and the
literature written in it, revived in a cultural renaissance that had preceded the
nationalist movement, and which became their principal symbol of identity.
In this case, regionalism developed into nationalism.
In addition there was one notable significant difference in the political
sphere between Basque and Catalan nationalisms: the Basque movement was
from the beginning separatist, seeking independence, and wished to know
nothing of Spain, while Catalan nationalism was compatible with some form
of political autonomy within the Spanish state, and the Catalan nationalists
even had projects for Spain as a whole. Spain could become a confederal and
multinational state, in their view, in which Catalonia would see its special
characteristics recognized. Their model was the Austro-Hungarian Empire
during the same period, in which Catalonia could take the role of Hungary,
united with Castile in a state that shared some common functions, and above
all the crown as a symbol. For, if the Emperor of Austria was also King of
Hungary, the King of Spain was at the same time Count of Barcelona. While
Basque nationalism was above all Catholic and highly conservative, within
® Javier Moreno Luzén — Xosé M. Nujfiez Seixas: Los colores de la patria: Simbolos nacionales
en la Espana contemporanea, Madrid, Tecnos, 2017.
+ 70 +