Place and local identity in the Europe of nations: Catalonia and its cities in Restoration Spain (1875–1923)

Abstract

This article suggests that local places and civic identities were historically relevant in the period when national politics and cultures emerged in Europe but have largely not received due attention in the historiography. It argues that the production of the local is a significant factor for understanding the configuration of the nation and that it was tied to how communities—and the agents that constituted them—constructed their own subjectivity and negotiated their place in the social world. It first provides a review of recent historical studies on collective territorial identities to underscore the relative lack of attention given to the local dimension and identify approaches that can be applied to the study of local cultures. It then focuses on the case of Catalonia in Restoration Spain, showing how region‐building dynamics and nationalisation processes coexisted and interacted with strongly assertive civic identities.