Territorial Mobilisation and Regional Cohesion: an Examination of the Spanish Case

A substantial body of literature examines the role of the economy and its interaction with the centre-periphery cleavage. Initially considered a triggering factor for territorial mobilisation, the relative economic position of a stateless nation has increasingly been situated at the core of secession demands. The idea of secessionism of the rich entails that regions with a better economic situation than the rest of the State will be inclined towards supporting secession, having more incentives for entering conflict with the State. At the same time, poorer regions might have less incentives to enter a secession conflict, and thus mobilise other types of territorial claims. The economy has become a focus of attention for the centre-periphery cleavage scholarship, especially regarding the explanatory power that the various forms that economic relations between territories can have. The causal mechanism underlaying this relation has been rather left as an assumption, where having more or less resources is often the issue at stake. But the result of an economic distribution is only part of this story, and this paper aims at exploring narratives around territorial inequalities underpinning territorial demands. Catalonia, often suggested as an example of the so called ‘secessionism of the rich’, and Galicia, a relatively deprived region in the north of Spain, offer enough commonalities and differences allowing this paper to explore how the relative economic position determines regionalist actors’ narratives about territorial cohesion and redistribution in relation to their territorial demands. By analysing the framing of such demands in political documents such as press releases, policy positions and party manifestos from regionalist actors in both regions since 1990, characterisations of distinctive positions towards regional solidarity and redistribution are highlighted. The paper finally aims a looking at the conditions explaining this divergence.