The Catalan Crisis

Between Spanish Liberal Democracy and State (dis) Unity

Sergi Auladell Fauchs

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781837721719
• eBook ISBN: 9781837721733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Essentialist Pitfalls of the Literature
• 3 A Psychoanalytical and Post-Marxist Approach to Social Institution and Change
• 4 On Monadic Unity: The Point de capiton of the Status Quo (and the Seeds of its Dissolution)
• 5 The Rule of Law and the Symptoms of Consensual Democracy
• 6 Sourcing Absence and Alienation to Name Collective Emancipation
• 7 The Sublimation of Choice into an Emancipatory Horizon: A Procés to Exert the Dret a decidir
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography