Privileged Rebels: A Longitudinal Analysis of Distinctive Economic Traits of Catalonian Secessionism

Abstract

During the last decade, the Catalonian secessionist challenge induced a chronic crisis within Spain's politics that does not offer hints of a viable arrangement. The rapidly escalating demands for secession ran almost in parallel with the accentuation of the economic recession that followed the disruption of the world financial system in 2008-2010. Such secession claims reached maximums during 2012-2014, attaining support levels of nearly 50% of citizenry in favour of independence. These figures subsequently diminished a bit but remained close to that level until today. Despite the coincident course, previous studies had shown that the impact of economic hardships was not a major factor in explaining the segregation urgencies, connecting them instead to triggers related to internecine political struggles in the region: Harsh litigations that resulted in an abrupt polarization along nationalistic features in wide segments of the population. In this longitudinal analysis based on the responses of 88,538 individuals through a regular series of 45 official surveys, in the period 2006-2019, we show that economic factors did play a role in the secessionist wave. Our findings showed that the main idiomatic segmentation (Catalan vs. Spanish, as family language) interacted with economic segmentations in inducing variations on national identity feelings that resulted in erosions of the dual CatSpanish identity. Moreover, our findings also showed that the more privileged segments of Catalonian citizenry where those that mostly supported secession, whereas poorer and unprotected citizenry was clearly against it. All the data points to the conclusion that the secessionist challenge was, in fact, a rebellion of the wealthier and well-situated people.

Predicting Collective Action in a Secessionist Context: Different Motives for Two Opposed Stances

“…However, it is important to notice that the pro-independence group was in various respects privileged inside Catalonia. First and foremost, the Catalan Government had been pro-independence for several years at the time of research (Qvortrup, 2021) but research also shows that the pro-independence camp in Catalonia is in overall terms of a higher socioeconomic status (Miley and Garvía, 2019;Oller et al, 2020). Ultimately, this asymmetry in the situation and aims of both groups should imply that different motivations influence action in a distinct fashion (Jost et al, 2017).…”

Parochial Linguistic Education: Patterns of an Enduring Friction within a Divided Catalonia

“…Finally, the present findings highlight the persistence of an ethnolinguistic divide between two neighbouring communities, which has probably functioned as the main point of contention in the debate created by the sustained and essentially top-down pro-secession campaign, which lacks the support of a social majority (Elliot 2018;Miley 2007Miley , 2013Miley and Garvía 2019;Baldoli and Mocca 2021;Oller et al 2019bOller et al , 2020Tobeña 2017Tobeña , 2021. It does so despite the repeated but unsubstantiated scholarly attempts to deny its relevance (Vergés-Gifra and Serra 2021).…”

“…The frequent presentation of the linguistic educational immersion system in Catalonia as an example of a "successful policy" that promotes both social cohesion and opportunities for advancement in the job market with greater earning potential (Capellari and Paolo 2015) not only lacks robust endorsement by a sufficient body of empirical evidence (Woolard 2016;Vilarrubias 2018;Oller et al 2020), but also contradicts repeated surveys exploring citizens' preferences regarding linguistic education systems in schools (Miley 2013;Miley and Garvía 2019;Santana 2018, 2020). The aforementioned findings regarding the effects of the immersion system on school performance (Calero and Choi 2019) provide a warning about the non-trivial negative effects on overall academic performance for students coming from homes where Catalan is not the family language.…”

“…These two ethnolinguistic components determine alignment in terms of both feelings of national identity and support for secession. In a subsequent analysis, Oller et al (2020) suggested the additional, although relatively minor, influence of economic segmentation on the differential alignments in favour of or against secession. These findings were fully confirmed by surveys exploring the role of material interests in preferences for secession (Hierro and Queralt 2021) and through detailed analyses of recent electoral results (Llaneras 2021).…”

Need for affect, need for cognition, and the desire for independence

“…Future research should focus on evaluating the over-time changes in the strength of psychological factors on the support for secessionist movements using research designs better suited for this purpose (e.g., long-term longitudinal survey data). While other scholars have been able to conduct longitudinal studies on the impact of various socio-political factors on secessionism [ 12 , 80 ], we unfortunately lack longitudinal data to evaluate the relationship between psychological constructs and attitudes toward secession over time.…”