Tesis--Madrid. / "Las Costumbres o Constituciones de Miravet estaban inéditas hasta ahora. La presente edición contiene el texto latino, según el manuscrito del Archivo histórico nacional, con las variantes de la parte latina del de la Biblioteca Colombina."--P. xviii. "Durante la dominación de los templarios, regían en Miravet, en parte, las Consuetudines ilerdenses y, en parte, el derecho consuetudinario local ... El Privilegium de Miravet es, en lo fundamental, el cruce jurícico de las Consuetudines ilerdenses con el derecho consuetudinario de la bailia."--Historia y fuentes de estas constituciones, p. [xi]-xiv.

The scholarly field on decentralization and its relationship with secessionism is divided. Two camps can be distinguished, with opposite conclusions concerning the merits of autonomy concessions. A lack of systematic attention given to the varying capacity of decentralization to produce contrary outcomes has been identified. To address this, an in-depth case analysis on decentralization and secessionism in Spain and Catalonia was conducted. Using a theoretically-guided process tracing approach, this study explores the role of the state on the causal argument. Main findings suggest an increase in secessionist activity when full inclusion through central power sharing arrangements within the state’s executive organs is absent or limited.

The social and political history of Catalonia has long been dominated by debates about language, nation and identity and forty years of linguistic and cultural repression have impacted the sociocultural landscape of the region. The new millennium and new nationalist/gendered identities in the context of changing patterns of migration, growing multiculturalism and economic crisis have led to a resurgence of nationalism and renewed demands for Catalan independence since 2010. Adopting oral history as a central method, this thesis examines language, nation and identity from a gendered perspective and investigates to what extent women use Catalan in their everyday social practices to construct gendered and national identities. The focus of the study is three female 'generations' from one Catalan village. It covers 50 years of historical change from the 1960s to the present. The thesis explores women’s contribution to the preservation of Catalan language during Franco's regime (1939-75); how the emergence of a feminist movement and discourse, and changing patterns of migration, have transformed the relationship between gender and national identity in Catalonia; and the role that Catalan plays today in defining women's (individual) identities and as a nation-building tool. Previous research has not considered an intergenerational approach and this study addresses this gap. Drawing on theories of nationalism, gender and nation and language ideologies, I adopt a new analytical approach incorporating discourse analysis and small story research to examine the narratives of 40 oral history interviews and a corpus of social media data. In order to organise the diverse themes in my data I develop a spatial framework in which I identify three principal spaces: physical, ideological and temporal. Mainstream and political discourse exemplify the Catalan nation as civic, intercultural and tolerant. This study challenges these canonical beliefs. The findings reveal ethnolinguistic ideologies and a complex divergence/convergence of issues surrounding migration that are difficult to reconcile with official discourse. Specifically the findings provide insights into some of the issues of inclusion and exclusion that are absent in political and nationalist discourse and suggests that an increased understanding of cultural pluralism at a local level can be abstracted to the Catalan community as a whole.

This thesis addresses the following question: do proponents and opponents in the linguistic disputes in Catalonia and Flanders prioritise individual or group-oriented rights? The dispute in Catalonia is about the use of languages in the Catalan education system, while the dispute in Flanders is about the linguistic regime in certain municipalities around Brussels. Crucially, both are made of competing normative-laden political arguments. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, the thesis situates the conflicting political arguments within the scholarship on the compatibility between liberalism and nationalism. The central argument of the thesis is that the Catalan and Flemish linguistic disputes occur within liberal nationalism. Proponents in Catalonia and Flanders argue in a form of liberal nationalism that is more nationalist than liberal, although the nationalist dimension is more explicit in Catalonia; opponents in Flanders combine liberal nationalism with classical liberalism; and opponents in Catalonia argue in a form of classical liberalism that relies on liberal nationalist elements. In short, the four positions in the two debates participate in different forms and to different degrees in liberal nationalism. The findings suggest that nationalism is an important factor in making sense of the paradox that the normative consensus on political liberalism does not translate into political consensus in these specific cases. It is hoped that the findings of this thesis will make two main contributions. The first is an explanatory contribution to improve the understanding of the Catalan and Flemish linguistic disputes: the disputes are not between liberals and nationalists, but between liberal nationalists. The second is a theory-building contribution to refine the theoretical debate about individual and group-specific rights: liberal nationalist scholars run the risk of being unable to account for the national attachments many people experience in ‘the real world’ if, in their efforts to build acceptable liberal theories, they circumscribe their defence of national membership to its instrumental role for individual autonomy. In addition, their conceptualisation of nations as bounded and homogeneous seems to be built upon flimsy empirical grounds.

O presente trabalho objetiva analisar a ascensão de movimentos nacionalistas periféricos na Europa, no período pós-Guerra Fria, em um contexto de intensificação do processo de integração observado na União Europeia nas últimas três décadas, além de estabelecer comparações entre as três nações sem Estado que mais avançaram na luta independentista no século XXI: Flandres, Escócia e Catalunha. Também serão analisadas as circunstâncias que levaram à realização de ações de descentralização política nos três Estados que contêm as nações aqui estudadas: Bélgica, Reino Unido e Espanha e por que estas medidas de acomodação de minorias nacionais não surtiram o efeito esperado, já que, em vez mitigar a luta por autonomia e/ou soberania por parte destes movimentos subestatais, a fortaleceram. A pertinência do tema se revela à medida que recrudescem estes movimentos, não só na Europa, mas em todo o mundo, denotando a crise que vive o Estado democrático liberal no que concerne ao binômio: reconhecimento das minorias nacionais e manutenção da integridade territorial dos Estados que as contêm. Além disso, a força dos nacionalismos revela o quanto os processos de globalização e integração regional vêm sofrendo reveses neste século. Dentro da perspectiva da Geografia Política, é fundamental que o tema do nacionalismo seja fortemente analisado, já que se vislumbra um cenário de reorganização do espaço mundial, em função das fragmentações territoriais que podem ocorrer a partir do recrudescimento dos movimentos nacionalistas periféricos. Este quadro já foi visto em outros momentos da História, como nos períodos pós-Primeira Guerra Mundial e pós-Guerra Fria, com as desintegrações de Impérios no primeiro caso, e com o desmantelamento da União Soviética e Iugoslávia, no segundo caso. / This current paper aims to analyze the rise of peripheral nationalist movements in Europe in the post-Cold War period, in a context of intensification of the integration process observed in the European Union in the last three decades, as well as comparisons between the three stateless nations more advanced in the struggle for independence in the 21st century: Flanders, Scotland and Catalonia. It will also analyze the circumstances that led to political decentralization actions in the three States that contain the nations studied here: Belgium, the United Kingdom and Spain and why these measures of accommodation of national minorities did not have the expected effect, since instead of mitigating the struggle for autonomy and/or sovereignty on part of these sub-state movements, they have strengthened it. The relevance of the theme is evident as these movements intensify, not only in Europe, but throughout the world, denoting the crisis that the liberal democratic State is experiencing in terms of the binomial: recognition of national minorities and the maintenance of the territorial integrity of States which contain them. Moreover, the strength of nationalism reveals how the processes of globalization and regional integration have suffered setbacks in this century. Within the perspective of Political Geography, it is fundamental that the theme of nationalism be strongly analyzed, since a scenario of reorganization of the world space can be seen, due to the territorial fragmentations that can occur from the resurgence of peripheral nationalist movements. This picture has been seen at other times in history, such as post-World War I and post-Cold War periods, with the disintegrations of empires in the first case, and with the dismantling of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the second case.

Catalonia, struggling with a national identity, minority language rights, and an independence movement serves as the backdrop for this dissertation which focuses on the communicative practices of fifteen Honduran youth immigrants living in a segregated neighborhood on the periphery of a Catalan city. Ethnographic fieldwork in a Catalonian neighborhood and high school dominated by Latin American immigrants reveal a number of factors which influence the languaging of Honduran diasporic youths. The participants in this study negotiate multi-layered, often hybrid, transnational identities which influence their linguistic choices both in and out of school. Data collection via in-depth interviews and participant observations identify investment in Catalan language for academic and employment purposes and the maintenance of Honduran Spanish and/or variations for social "currency." Furthermore, this dissertation examines the implications of the Honduran youths' communicative practices for educational and pedagogical purposes as well as for language policy and planning in Catalonia, Spain.

This dissertation explores the role of ideas, paradigms and ideology in the definition of public policies. To understand this issue, the thesis developed a conceptual framework and a set of propositions based on the academic literature related to the meaning of ideas and paradigm change in public policy, the impact of epistemic communities, the influence of legacies and the role of ideology from the perspective of the socio-cognitive school of Critical Discourse Analysis. In this dissertation ideology is understood as the ‘fundamental beliefs of a group and its members’ (Van Dijk, 2004: 6) that form the basis of social practices (Van Dijk, 2004: 9) whereas paradigms have been defined as ‘taken for granted world views (…) that constrain the range of policy choices’ (Campbell, 2002: 21) and in turn are bounded by ideology. The research examines the case of the Catalan National Agreement on Research and Innovation (CNARI) which was developed between 2007 and 2008. To capture and analyse this process of policy design the research uses qualitative methods that include face to face interviews, documentary research and coding of visual and textual data. The findings suggests that the design of the CNARI was based on ideas that were firmly placed within a widely acknowledged overall paradigm in innovation policy that itself was shaped and limited by a dominant broader ideology. Factors influencing the role of these ideas included the fact that the underlying paradigm was widely shared across different political territories and levels within Europe, and that the ideas were propagated by two key international organisations (EU and OECD) as well as by a number of highly respected representatives of the international epistemic community, which served to re-enforce the overarching policy paradigm, introduced these policy ideas to the Catalan context, and supported their regional adaptation. The dissertation identifies three proposals for future research: 1) an examination of the role of organisational structures in elaborating and implementing policy which does not involve civil servants, 2) an exploration of how a politician’s personal experience impacts the elaboration of a political programme, and 3) an analysis of the role of open and participatory processes to define policies.

The popularity of sport, in particular football has transformed it into a strong means that is widely utilized by politics nowadays. Hence, the influence of football club's identities and values on the political vote of their supporters should never be neglected. The aim of the current paper is to study the influence of four major clubs in self-determination processes in Scotland and Catalonia in the times of the referenda for independence in 2014 and 2017. The study takes a qualitative approach to the matter and analyzes the way clubs' identities and values affect the political vote of their supporters. The paper takes an unobserved field of research, by merging the factors of football clubs' support and fan culture with its possible significance on the political arena, as well as on the fate of submerged nations' independence movements. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This thesis analyzes the role of the news media in the Referendum for Independence in the Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia. More specifically, I seek to shed light on if a newspaper's geographical location or political views result in biased media coverage. Based on communications theory, I argue that news coverage can shape the public's political opinion and attitudes. My research analyzed the reporting of two core newspapers by sampling articles from a major newspaper based in Madrid, El País, and a newspaper based in Catalonia, La Vanguardia. My results suggest that the newspaper's location and distribution had a greater impact on coverage compared to its political and ideological leanings.

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