José Antonio Sanahuja is a professor of international relations at Complutense University of Madrid. He is also head of development and Cooperation Department of Spanish Research centre “Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales” (ICEI). He is regarded as a keen critic of current independence movements.
SZ.de: Mr. Sanahuja, in her recently published essay “Post-globalisation and rise of extreme right”, y claim that current independence movements such as Catalan were based on a “narrative construction”. What does that mean?
José Antonio Sanahuja: The Catalan independence movement is in many respects a specific matter. Of course, it is also influenced by factors that we know from similar movements-a socio-economic crisis, for example. Spain was hit by world economic crisis 2008 harder than or countries. But what historian Eric Hobsbawm calls ” invention of Tradition” also provides an important explanatory approach.
Hobsbawm speaks of a construction or reinterpretation of historical events to legitimize current claims of power.
In Catalonia, historical facts are rightly bent so that y serve justification of an independent nation state. In particular, we want to occupy traditions that only existed for a short time, or even invented, to enforce certain values and norms of behaviour. One can certainly speak of a post facto nationalism.
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Do you have an example?
In Catalonia, defeat in Spanish Succession War 1714 is often stylized into an American Civil war, in which Catalans wanted to split from Kastiliern. But that is politically rightly bent. The war was never a battle between two cultures. It was a war between Habsburgs and Bourbons, in which Catalans were in wrong camp.
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Anor example: The proponents of independence refer to ir right to self-determination as Catalan people. It is concealed that this right, according to interpretation of United Nations and common case law, is reserved for peoples who are colonized or oppressed solely because of ir ethnicity. To Catalans, neir one nor or applies. Anor narrative is that Spain is an authoritarian state. Which is plain mischief.
What values and behavioural standards does it appeal to?
First of all, it creates feeling of a historically grown victimhood. The impression of being oppressed over and over again. Behind it, I suspect, is need for identity and belonging.
That seems to work.
Because it also falls into an increasingly confusing world, where national borders and regional peculiarities play an ever-diminishing role and national states lose power. The feeling that globalization was accompanied by a general loss of control increased with global economic crisis of 2008. Many lost ir jobs, savings were devalued. And established parties provide little satisfactory answers.
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