14 September 2012
Professor Guibernau’s comments appear in an article on the escalating Catalan nationalist movement. A recent march calling for independence from Spain, which in the past has never drawn more than 50,000 people, pulled in a crowd estimated by city police at 1.5 million. One factor amplifying the pro-independence movement in recent years was the Spanish state’s legal challenge to a 2006 statute, approved in a Catalonia-wide referendum, that transferred significant powers to the regional government. Spain’s highest court declared many of the statute’s provisions unconstitutional: “It outraged Catalans,” says Professor Guibernau. “That initiated the change in thinking.”
