The Path Towards the Recovery of Self-Government (19th-20th centuries)

The most decisive and directly political action, in terms of the effective recovery of the political power lost when the Generalitat was abolished by Philip V, was the constitutional assembly of the Unió Catalanista in 1892, formulating the “Bases for the Catalan Regional Constitution”, commonly known as the Bases de Manresa. This document called for a Catalan Corts, an executive body exercising autonomous power, the reestablishment of the Tribunal of Catalonia as a body of judicial power, autonomous control over public order and education, and official status for the Catalan language as the sole native language of the country. The fundamental principle inspiring the Bases was that “Catalonia shall be sovereign in its internal government”.

At the turn of the century, Catalan political nationalism was reinforced by a cultural, artistic and literary renaissance of some importance. Catalonia emerged from a period of crisis and exhaustion. With the impetus provided by the industrial revolution and the dynamic nature of its society, which already had close ties with Europe, it became the economic driving force of the Iberian peninsula.

The first unified body representing Catalan nationalism was Solidaritat Catalana, founded in 1906. Solidaritat was a pro-autonomy movement which brought together the Lliga Regionalista, the Unió Republicana, the Unió Catalanista, the Republican nationalists, the Federalists, the Carlists and the Independents. This movement emerged as a protest against the military repression of the Catalan press of the time, and also to oppose a law on jurisdiction proposed by the central government which was clearly an attack on democracy and autonomy. The following year, Solidaritat Catalana won a clear victory in the elections to the Corts.

The two most notable members of Solidaritat Catalana, Enric Prat de la Riba (1870-1917) and Francesc Cambó (1876-1947), were important figures in Catalan politics at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1906, in La nacionalitat catalana, Prat de la Riba expounded a philosophical justification of Catalan nationalism, calling for the establishment of a Catalan state within a Spanish fede-ration. He was also the creator of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya.

The Mancomunitat, established in 1914, was based on the union of the four Catalan Provincial Councils and represented the first territorial reunification of Catalonia. It was made up of an Assembly composed of the ninety-six deputies of Catalonia in the Spanish Parliament, a Council of eight ministers and the President, Prat de la Riba. Without any budget other than the funds collected by the four provincial Councils, the Mancomunitat carried out cultural and civic work of which the results can still be seen today. But the Mancomunitat was also abolished in 1925, this time by the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1923-1930).

The general reading room at the Library of Catalonia

The fall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship brought down the monarchy, defeated in the municipal elections of 12 April 1931 in which the Republican forces triumphed. In Catalonia, these forces had coordinated their efforts during March of 1930 with a view to establishing a federal republic (Manifest de la Intel·ligència Republicana) which would see the restoration of real self-government in Catalonia. On 17 August 1930, representatives of the Republican movement from all over the state met in San Sebastian to agree on the establishing of the Republic. The Catalan Republican representatives who went to San Sebastian demanded recognition of Catalonia’s right to autonomy as a precondition. The legal solution accepted in the Pact of San Sebastian was that Catalonia would express its autonomous aspirations in a Statute of Autonomy, which would be subject to the approval of the people in a plebiscite, and of the Corts with respect to the division of powers between the central government and the autonomous government of Catalonia.