The Catalan Nationalist Paradox: Deepening but Not Widening

A comparative view of the programmatic strategy (deepening or moderating the go-it-alone discourse) and the electoral performance (widening or narrowing of social support) of the most important peripheral nationalist movements in the Western democracies can lead to two different expected patterns: (a) a hardening of the pro-independence bid in parallel with vote growth, such as the Scottish and the Flemish cases; or (b) an evolution towards less extremism while keeping or even rising electoral success, like in Quebec or the Basque Country. However, the Catalan evolution is counter-intuitive because is the only important nationalist movement that has lost voters to non- or anti-nationalist parties in the last 25 years (as compared with the four aforementioned cases but also with Corsica, Veneto, Northern Ireland or South Tyrol) and, at the same time, the parties have embraced a radical secessionist programme. This paper will try to explain this paradox analysing the irrational miscalculation of Catalan nationalist elites regarding the nature of the ethno-territorial conflict in Catalonia, the supposedly weak response of the Spanish state or the international/EU support to a unilateral process.