On (National) Citizenship and (De)Politicised Nations: Everyday Discourses About the Catalan Secessionist Movement

The Catalan Procés

Whilst formally part of the Spanish state, Catalonia presents a distinct nation-building process from the very consolidation of modern European nation states. Throughout the Spanish history, there are synergies and coexistences between Catalonia and Spain, but also conflicts and tensions. Catalan nationalism and claims for independence have been an integral part throughout this history. More recently, Catalan independentism has taken the form of what is called “el Procés”.

In 2012, Catalonia was governed by a right-nationalist party, Convergència i Unió [Convergence and Union], that rapidly changed its agenda to an independentist position related both to the Catalan-ethnic national belonging of their representatives and the state of political uncertainty derived from the 2008 global crisis (Barrio & Rodríguez-Teruel, 2017). A right conservative party, Partido Popular [Popular Party], was the ruling party in Spain defending a centralist state-model. This institutional conjuncture created discomfort in Catalonia, especially because of the attempts to recentralise the power by the Spanish State, leading to the rejection of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2010. However, other factors such as a long-lasting tradition of a Catalan national identity or the consequences of the global economic crisis cannot be neglected as catalysed the rising of independentism (Dowling, 2017).

This multifactorial situation enabled the emergence of varied and often conflicting versions of the independentist movement, all of them sharing the use of national-cultural discourses as well as varied interpretations of populism (Ruiz Casado, 2020). This provoked structural tensions both within the Catalan government (Miró, 2021) and in the broader political functioning of the Spanish state as a whole (Dowling, 2017). During the following years of successive mobilisations, Catalanist¹ discourses notably shifted toward more democracy-related frames of nationhood, at the expense of ethnic or cultural conceptions (Clua i Fainé, 2014; della Porta & Portos, 2021), even encouraging the paradoxical inclusion of Spanish identity within the Catalan independentist political project (Aramburu, 2020).

The celebration of a Referendum about Catalan independence on October 1^st, 2017, which was not authorised by the Spanish state, intensified the discursive framing of the movement in democratic and emancipatory terms against oppression and for political freedom (della Porta & Portos, 2021). Therefore, el Procés may be understood as a nationalist movement embedded in, and enacted through, citizenship constructions in ways that (re)construct Catalan and Spanish political communities. In the following section, we outline the paper’s approach to citizenship using a rhetorical perspective emanating in social psychology.

Citizenship as an Everyday Practice: A Rhetorical Psychological Perspective

A conceptual distinction may be drawn between citizenship as a legal status that signals a nation-state belonging and citizenship as a practice by which lay social actors engage with political matters in everyday life (Andreouli, 2019). While the former conception takes citizenship as a product of the nation state, the latest understands it as something that people do assuming an actor-oriented perspective on citizenship that puts citizen actions in the centre of political analysis.

Citizenship may be then understood as a set of practices where people become members of the political community (Isin, 2009). Isin’s (2009) works particularly evidence that there are multiple and distinct ways of acting citizenship. He introduces the notions of “active” and “activist” citizenship to refer to different ways of “doing” citizenship that can be performed by different social actors to reproduce or transform instituted practices and to modify the symbolic and material boundaries of citizenship. Approaching citizenship as an everyday practice brings to the fore the idea that lay social actors have an active role in maintaining or modifying broader socio-political dynamics (Andreouli & Figgou, 2019).

It is in this practice-centred perspective where recent studies in social psychology have made a relevant contribution (Andreouli, 2019). Specifically focusing on the linguistic practices by which citizenship is constructed in everyday life, social psychological studies illuminated its plural, negotiated, and contested character (Condor, 2011; Sapountzis & Xenitidou, 2018; Stevenson et al., 2015). Mostly drawing on a rhetorical perspective, this bulk of studies understand citizenship as a constructive, active, and collective process where political communities emerge with both exclusionary (Di Masso, 2012; Stevenson et al., 2015) and cohesive consequences (Stevenson & Sagherian-Dickey, 2018). It is precisely the focus on citizenship practices which enables discussing its contested character and its discursive-rhetorical dimension (Barnes et al., 2004; Condor, 2011).

From this rhetorical psychological perspective, everyday talk is embedded in historically established ideological traditions (e.g., republican or royalist), which provide the discursive basis for the “thinking society”, enabling citizens to have their own “private” opinion to argue for or against a given topic in public debates that are relevant to sustain or to challenge the social order (Billig, 1991). Ideology is then understood as “lived”, as a set of culturally available ideas and beliefs, often expressed in the form of common-sense notions (e.g., “every nation has the right to be free”) deployed in everyday discourse in ways that legitimize or challenge the status quo, as speakers build a strong position to warrant their voice or to persuade others. Consequently, ideologies are always contradictory and dilemmatic (e.g., “people must be free, but freedom must have limits”), pushing people to make complex rhetorical manoeuvres to navigate the flow of argumentation and counter-argumentation (Billig, 1991). Citizenship may be then understood as a lived practice by which lay actors engage with political matters (Andreouli, 2019).

The mobilising character of citizenship practices and its psychological implications are discussed, for example, in Di Masso’s (2012) study on lay constructions of citizenship identity, status and entitlements as people enact and contest normative behaviours in public spaces, i.e., the “natural” arena of citizenship. In that vein, citizenship practices might reproduce state and conventional constructions of what a citizen should be or, conversely, challenge these assumptions (Andreouli, 2019). Citizenship practices may contest the status quo and the rules that govern one political community. As we argue in this paper, those both different citizenship constructions coexist and conflict in secessionist movements as el Procés reinforcing or challenging the symbolic and normative boundaries of belonging to the (national-)political community.

Rhetorical Articulations of Citizenship and Nationhood

Citizenship is also performed when common-sense assumptions are discursively mobilised through varied ideological traditions that accomplish different rhetorical functions (Andreouli & Figgou, 2019; Sapountzis & Xenitidou, 2018), such as excluding immigrant people from citizenship rights because of their lack of (national-)cultural knowledge (Kadianaki & Andreouli, 2017). Central to the rationale of this article is the idea that citizenship matters often carry national connotations that, far from being suppressed in the name of political rights and memberships, are often submerged and ideologically re-organised through the language of citizenship.

For this reason, we may not overlook that independence is tied up with nationhood as the pragmatic and programmatic goal of secession is the constitution of a new state whose institutional scope meets both the territorial limits and the psychological boundaries of the national imagined community (Anderson, 1983). This demand reflects the traditional political principle of nationalism according to which each nation is represented by its own state (Gellner, 1983).

From a social-psychological view, nations are not essences or natural characters but political constructions that serve to different agendas (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001) and can be claimed and enacted through different discourses (see McNicholl et al., 2019; Wallwork & Dixon, 2004). However, explicit nationalist assertions may be seen as illegitimate political demands in a cosmopolitan and global world (Calhoun, 2017), provoking distinct and apparently non-national expressions of national identities (Billig, 1995; McNicholl et al., 2019; Wallwork & Dixon, 2004). This enables a distinction between “hot” national understandings (hereafter, “political nationalism”), where the nation is overtly claimed, and banal understandings, defined by their routine, unattended character, and their mindlessness (Billig, 1995).

Focusing on banal nationalism implies observing how the nation is (re)produced in mundane daily practices (i.e., sports competitions, flags in institutional buildings or deictic expressions as “we-they” “here-there” to refer distinct national communities) that silently remember us that we belong to a particular nation in an (inter)nationally organized world (Billig, 1995). These practices are assumed as “natural” and “non-political” ways of being, contrary to “hot” national claims (McNicholl et al., 2019). Recent work in the field of “everyday nationhood” has shown the coexistence of nuanced and varied understandings of the nation, challenging monolithic explanations that treat nationalism as an extreme right-wing ideology (Antonsich, 2020; Skey & Antonsich, 2017).

Particularly, in secessionist conflicts, banal expressions of the nation may become evolve to “hot” nationalist claims becoming publicly discussed and debated topics (Fox, 2017). That is, nations are politicised in secessionism without implying that banal constructions become absent. Further, this politicisation of the nation also provokes the emergence of a repairing work to restore the “banal” national order (Fox, 2017). This latter dynamic can be understood as an attempt to de-politicise the independentist public debate and return to a “placid” and taken-for-granted (inter)national world. In sum, secessionist conflicts offer a complex discursive dynamic of national constructions that should be analysed in its specificity attending to how nations are “differently mobilised by different people in different contexts and for different purposes” (Antonsich, 2020, p. 1235).

The versatility and multiplicity of national meaning-constructions imply attending to the apparently “non-national” discourses by which the nation is claimed (Wallwork & Dixon, 2004). In secessionist movements, citizenship constructions seem to play a crucial role as independence can be claimed as a right of the citizens to create their own separate institutions (self-determination right) (Kymlicka, 2020) and as secession implies the construction of a new field of citizenship in the brand new nation-state (Hennebry-Leung & Bonacina-Pugh, 2019). For all this, we argue that the study of struggles for independence in consolidated liberal democracies allows for a deeper understanding of the ideological “osmosis” between nationhood and citizenship, as the demand for a separated nation-state for a people’s distinctive nation also implies an ideological re-articulation of citizenship practices.

Data Collection and Participants

The aim of this study was to understand how (anti-)secessionist everyday claims are discursively navigated in el Procés. Thirty open-ended interviews and one focus group were conducted in three moments, all after the celebration of the non-authorised secession Referendum that took place on October 1^st 2017: April-June 2019 (5 pilot-interviews); December 2019-March 2020 (20 interviews); September 2020-February 2021 (5 interviews and an on-line focus group with 5 participants). These periods correspond to different moments and intensities of Catalan independentism: during the broadcasting of the trial of Catalan independentist leaders, after the court’ convicting verdict, and after the systemic burst of the Covid-19 pandemic, respectively.

While the interview was the main data-gathering method, the focus group had two purposes. First, validating and enriching the analytical insights obtained in the interviews; and second, setting the scene for an open discussion triggering a rich exchange of arguments between a variety of political positions in relation to the Procés. However, with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic we could only conduct one focus group. Therefore, we did not include an analysis of its interactional features and decided to analyse its content and rhetorical features as we did with the interviews.

Participants were selected following maximum diversity criteria (Flick, 2009) to capture a broad spectrum of positions on the topic. Our participants lived in different Catalan cities or towns, they were born in Catalonia or in other Spanish regions or countries, they presented themselves as having different political ideologies (i.e., right-left), and different degrees of practical engagement with the independence movement (i.e., marching, voting, etc.). Age, gender, preferred language, and socioeconomic and sociocultural backgrounds were also diverse. The focus group included participants who agree with the idea of a Referendum on self-determination but had different opinions about Catalan independence about el Procés as a movement². See the Appendix for a table with this characterisation.

To ensure the diversity of the sample, we recruited participants through a snowball strategy (Flick, 2009), starting with a message sent to close contacts of the first author. Participants were selected depending on their reported political preferences and demographic characteristics. The first author, a female native Catalan speaker and native Spanish speaker, conducted all interviews and the focus group adapting her language use to the participants’ preferences.

We followed Brinkmann's (2017) suggestions to create a distended comfortable ambience, giving a central role to active listening and promoting that people could speak comfily about el Procés. The interviewer took a comprehensive role, requiring participants to provide a rich, genuine, and deep account of their lived experience and their opinions on the topic. Most of the interviews took place in natural daily spaces such as cafés, parks, or participants’ homes and lasted an average of 61 minutes. Three interviews and the focus group were online due to Covid-19 restrictions. Interviews guides (see Supplementary Materials) were designed based on theoretical questions and salient aspects of the conflict at that time. Participants were asked, for example, about their experience of el Procés, about their participation (or not) in protests, and about their views and bonds with Catalonia and Spain.

All data was audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed using a simple version of Jefferson’s (2004) annotation suggestions as we adopted a discursive-rhetorical perspective which requires a narrower selection of transcript conventions to bring into analytic focus the main linguistic manoeuvres from the view of epistemic construction, social action, rhetorical orientation, and variability (Potter, 1996). Pauses, hesitations, repetitions, and emphasis were marked (see Supplementary Materials).

Analytic Approach

The analysis followed the principles of a discursive-rhetorical approach (Billig, 1991; Di Masso, 2012; Potter, 1996; Wallwork & Dixon, 2004). This analytic framework pays close attention to the constructive properties of language (i.e. how discourse creates the meaning of the object), its action-orientation (i.e. what it’s actually done when talking, such as blaming, managing stake, etc.), its variability across the textual data (e.g., contradiction, nuance, etc.), and its accountability dimensions (i.e., what it says about the speaker’s identity and how he/she is oriented towards what is going on in the conversation). A specific emphasis to language rhetorical organisation and ideological implications was also analysed. That is, how arguments are designed to support and undermine conflicting positions and how the ebb and flow of argumentation channels broader ideological traditions. A discursive-rhetorical analysis it is particularly suitable for understanding the politicised context of Catalan independentism, as it posits that any argument is located in a public controversy where at least two sides can be defended and oppose each other (Billig, 1991).

Our analysis aimed to produce a map of broad rhetorical patterns mobilised through pro/anti-independence claims. To do so, we examined the content and rhetorical strategies arguing in favour of Catalan or Spanish political projects and their broader ideological orientations. A first analytic overview allowed us to detect that the most prominent arguments were rich and dense in rights-based topics and themes, embedding citizenship rhetoric in national argumentation and vice versa. We selected the most illustrative extracts in which these topics were discursively constructed and rhetorically dealt with. Extracts were translated into English after analysing them in their original Spanish or Catalan form, making sure that the translations conveyed the original sense in a way that made the analytical claims remain valid and coherent. The selected extracts were those that best illustrate the analytical highlights.

In a second stage of the analysis, we examined the particular ways in which claims for/against independence reinforce or contest traditional nation-state citizenship conceptions. This was in line with our theoretical position that ideology contains “the seeds of its own critique” (i.e., it is dilemmatic, Billig, 1991, p. 26), and that in periods of political uncertainty around an issue (e.g., independence), lay political rationalities may become de-anchored from established patterns of political common-sense and transform in often unpredictable ways (Andreouli et al., 2020). In this second phase of the analysis, the three coauthors discussed and validated the discursive interpretations of the extracts, following an iterative process of collective analysis to triangulate the data interpretations.

Claiming and Contesting (National) Citizenship

Participants in our study recurrently deployed citizenship constructions in ways that relied on nationalist assumptions, but they also mobilised citizenship claims to contest the validity of national categorisations. This section illustrates how civic and ethnocultural nationalist poles are constructed or challenged in citizenship constructions that advance independentist demands.

According to the rhetorical psychology perspective (Billig, 1991), an argumentative utterance includes two opposed positions. In Catalan independence rhetoric, opposing constructions of “the Spanish” and “the Catalan” identities are discursively articulated via different citizenship understandings. Extract 1 illustrates the opposition between these two national citizenship constructions.

In this interview extract, different but rhetorically complementary ways of constructing Spanish political culture can be identified. First, Paula introduces the idea that Spain is linked with its dictatorial past (Line 1), and this makes its political culture “narrow” and centred in maintaining the government’s power (Line 2-3). Spanish political culture is constructed as an example of what Billig (1995) refers to as “hot nationalism”.

When the interviewer asks if this Spanish legacy has intensified in “recent years”, Paula acknowledges an increase (Line 8), but she also depicts it as an eternal trait of Spanishness by repeatedly extrematising it (i.e., “always”, Lines 8-9) (Potter, 1996). In her argument, this characterization of Spanish political culture is what has caused reluctance to Catalan independence, fuelling right-wing ideologies within Spanish political parties (Lines 10-15).

By contrast, Catalan independence is presented as a legitimate political claim and independentist demands are depicted as an assertion of democratic values (Line 19). Paula frames the independentist movement as an act of citizenship (Line 19), rather than a nationalist claim. She concludes by reiterating the point that the response of the Spanish state is emanating from a non-democratic and regressive understanding of the nation.

These nationally-centred and regressive constructions of Spanish political culture in Catalan independentist rhetoric are strongly connected by implication (Durrheim et al., 2009) with Spanish nationalism. On the one hand, the Spanish democratic state was re-built during the democratic transition (late ’70s and early ’80s) in a way that maintained significant institutional and ideological continuities with the dictatorial Francoist regime, through its national symbols (e.g., flag), its economic and legal structures, and its Constitution (Bernat & White, 2020). On the other hand, in fact, Francoist culture blurred the difference between national signs and Francoist connotations in formal politics (Hernández Burgos, 2021). Currently, in Catalonia, these national citizenship constructions are cultural common places (Billig, 1991). Constructing Spanish political and cultural citizenry as national-Francoist rhetorically warrants the opposing argument that Catalan independence is a legitimate political demand that has no basis on backward-looking ethnic-cultural motivations.

Hence, in Extract 1, Paula constructs Catalan independence demands as a right (Line 19), simultaneously depicting a civic version of citizenship that opposes the ethnonational and undemocratic Spanish citizenship. Traditional ethno-cultural and civic-nationalist imaginaries are attached to different national projects, Spanish and Catalan respectively, legitimising civic claims over ethno-cultural conceptions (especially as they are closely related to undemocratic principles) and supporting Catalan-independentist positionings. One must also note that Paula constructs Spanish citizenship as a fact (something that people have) while Catalan citizenship is presented as something that is done (right-claiming actions) illustrating its transformative and forward looking potential.

This right-claiming rhetoric is also contributing to the construction of a Catalan national identity. Paula’s account includes banal nationalist deictic, such as the “we-they” distinction (Billig, 1995; Fox, 2017), positing a difference between Catalan and Spanish people. The utterance “We can aspire to have our own state” (Line 19-20) represents Catalans, before being a political subject, as being a national category different from the Spanish one. However, there is no explicit cultural or ethnic characterisation of Catalan people. Independence is claimed via a de-nationalised discourse in which civic (Catalan) understandings contest ethnocultural (Spanish) characterisations.

Extract 2 illustrates in more detail how secession can be claimed using citizenship constructions that oppose ethno-cultural conceptions within Catalan independentism itself.

In this interview extract, Eduard depicts el Procés as an ideologically crosscutting movement that contains different political projects, ranging from sovereigntist defence of the referendum to demanding independence for manifold purposes (Lines 1-4). Eduard sides with a transformative understanding of independence, linking independentism to the implementation of “transformative and radical public policies” (Lines 5-6). Using a rhetorical contrast (Potter, 1996), Eduard also constructs another independentist project related to emotional, patriotic, and identity-based understandings, with which he disagrees. Independentism is then constructed as a project that can lead to the creation of a civic community (what he constructs as a minority position within the independence movement – Lines 11-15) or an ethno-cultural one (that he describes as the majoritian option among independensits). Thereby, Eduard shows how both political poles of nationalism are defensible in the Procés. He also uses those civic arguments to criticise the political functioning of the Spanish state, which is described as a “show” (Line 6), empty of political substance and impeding transformative politics.

Furthermore, this transformative version of independence is constructed as a left-wing project as Eduard locates their supporters in parties of the left: the CUP (a far-left pro-independence party) and the Comuns (a leftist party that supports the right to self-determination but not independence). De-nationalised understandings of Catalan independence are ideologically stressed in that extract, opposed to cultural nationalist understandings both inside and outside secessionist claims. Extract 2 shows how nations may be mobilised in very distinct forms, enabling commitments to progressive politics (Antonsich, 2020; Calhoun, 2017).

However, de-nationalised citizenship discourse does not necessarily mean a rejection of an ethnic-cultural conception of the nation. Extract 3 illustrates that there is a close interpenetration between de-nationalised civic independentist claims and constructions of Catalan ethno-cultural identity.

In Marcel’s interview, he presents himself as a tolerant person respecting different national feelings (Spanish, Majorcan, or Catalan). The language of feelings to legitimise nationalist claims is a common feature in nationalist discourses (Gellner, 1983; Kadianaki et al., 2018). In this account, the metaphor of divorce (Line 3) both captures the familiar idea of an emotional rupture and the common-sense notion that when an intimate relationship does not work, breaking up is a normal thing to do. This introduces a moral connotation in the argument for supporting Catalan independence, drawing a rhetorical continuity between respecting one’s feelings in the private sphere and being fair in the political arena: secession as a form of political divorce (a failed relationship) is grounded on inviolable feelings. Thus, Marcel is not only accounting for his ideological positioning using a rhetoric of civic values and rights (i.e., what it is just, what should be naturally respected, voting); he is also enacting his national identity as a matter of unalienable sentiments.

National feelings are interesting accounts as they do not need to be justified and they are difficult to challenge because they are inner, private, and unknown to others (Verkuyten & DeWolf, 2002). Spain is then presented as intolerant and oppressive because it is not being sensitive to differing national feelings and their “natural” political aspirations. Marcel claims that he must not hide nor be afraid of his feelings, suggesting that, in fact, he is being almost forced to do that because voting for independence is officially not permitted (Lines 3-5). By depicting Spain as not accepting the basic fact that different national feelings exist, the Catalan independentist movement is legitimised on the moral grounds of a political repression of the right to feel Catalan and to materialise this feeling in the form of a Catalan state.

Marcel’s account conveys citizenship matters in the form of rights recognised by the state, but these rights are grounded on feelings of national belonging. Marcel discursively “makes” his national identity by defending a democratic process of election, as he “wants to be Catalan” (Lines 2). Being Catalan necessarily implicates the act of voting: national identity is ontologically constructed here as the outcome of a civic achievement and a democratic right (the right to be oneself). This discourse blurs the boundaries between nationhood (as a matter of culture, tradition, and other ethnic identity markers) and citizenship practices (as a matter of rights recognised and safeguarded by states). This argument for Catalan independence links up citizenship and feelings of national belonging in a rhetorical relation that makes citizenship the essence of the recognition of national belonging, and vice versa.

The rhetorical use of citizenship constructions to oppose a nationalist project is also found in arguments against Catalan independence. In Extract 4, Juan is responding to an interview question about the possible differences between Catalan elections and the Referendum for independence:

Juan constructs a difference between ordinary elections and the self-determination referendum by reference to their legal status (Lines 1-2). The Referendum for independence is illegal, whereas “real” national elections meet legal democratic standards. Juan is warranting the nationalist defence of Spain’s unity on the grounds of the legal compliance with the rights of all Spanish people as citizens of a united Spain, rather than on the symbolic grounds of an ethnocultural notion of Spanishness. However, this civic reformulation of nationalist claims can only be rhetorically effective precisely because Spanish nationhood is banally taken for granted as the only (national) source of political legitimacy, political agency and, most of all, legality.

Juan’s version of Spanishness is that of a supranational category that transcends any internal regional division (Lines 4-7). Therefore, the illegitimacy attributed to Catalan independentist claims given their lack of legal acceptance, is grounded not on the breach of legality per se, but on the banal assumption that the legitimate legality is the Spanish one: the illegality of voting for independence depends on the denial or not of the democratic right of all the nationals (Spaniards) to decide about one of Spain’s territories (Catalonia), according to a legal frame that is applied to all (Spanish) citizens (of the Spanish nation, including Catalans).

The latter reveals a paradoxical functioning of citizenship. Citizenship acts have the potential to modify who fully belongs to a given political community not only by expanding rights (Isin, 2009), but also by constraining them (i.e., impeding voting for independence as a form of ensuring Spanish membership). In this sense, civic constructions of nationhood in a secessionist conflict may serve to essentialise (Kadianaki & Andreouli, 2017) who has right to make rights claims, excluding those people who may formally belong to the established nation-state but who do not recognise the national unity of the state.

As a final remark, one must note that Juan’s construction of Spain as the politically overarching social category and the hegemonic source of national belonging, inoculates him against possible accusations of nationalism (Gibson & Hamilton, 2011): by invoking legal respect to Spain’s democratic constitution (Line 3), he actually de-nationalises his opposition to the Catalan conflict as a Spaniard (Pinho dos Santos, 2021), whilst reinforcing the hegemonic construction of Spanishness as the overarching national category.

Redrawing Nationhood: The (De)Politicisation of National Identities

So far, we have shown that citizenship rhetoric in the Catalan independentist movement both overcomes and reproduces nationalist assumptions, by re-signifying them in terms of civic rights, demands and actions. In this section, the focus is on how national identities are re-drawn and overtly debated through invoking its banal or hot character (Billig, 1995; Fox, 2017).

Extract 5 shows the tension between banal conceptions of Catalan national traditions and its hot nationalist forms. The interviewed participant gives the example of the castells – a collective celebration of people joining to build human towers – who have actively taken part in independentist demonstrations and events (see Vaczi, 2016).

Eloi talks about his involvement in one of the biggest colles castelleres – groups of people that build human towers – of Catalonia, who has been actively participating in different independentist demonstrations. At the beginning of the extract (Lines 1-4), castells are constructed as a banal cultural practice that is also enacted to support independence demands. Eloi constructs this political shift as something “logic and normal”, something that should almost be taken for granted.

However, he starts hesitating about the adequacy of this overt politicisation of castells (Lines 5-6), rhetorically navigating a sensitive topic (Potter, 1996). Eloi recognises (“it’s true that”) that there are “sectors” who do not agree with the support of castellers to independence (Line 7). The possibility that castells channel political demands is dilemmatic because it creates a divide within independentism: must Catalan cultural cornerstones become “hot” political symbols? This extract shows that politically flagging national traditions in secessionism is open to controversy and contestation.

Extract 6 more clearly illustrates an explicit denial of the politicisation of Catalan culture to support the independence movement.

In an interview context, Guillermo constructs the use of Catalan cultural icons (the National day, the human-towers) and identity symbols (the Senyera-flag, the anthem) in the independence movement as an ideological appropriation. This appropriation is presented as an illogical, even foolish, independentist strategy (Lines 3-5), as something abnormal (Potter, 1996), suggesting that national symbols are “naturally” non-political. Guillermo further argues that this appropriation of Catalan national symbols for political goals excludes non-independentist Catalans from the imagined community of the Catalan nation (as if they were less Catalan), deterring them from partaking in cultural events. His account is an attempt to de-politicise and re-banalise Catalan cultural traditions suggesting there was a pre-existing placid coexistence between Catalan tradition/identity and Spanishness (in their taken-for-granted and banal forms) before independentism grew.

When Guillermo is asked about his own attachment to those Catalan traditions, he reveals that he did not actually participate in Catalan traditions before independentism grew (Lines 11-12), but he invokes his national identification (liking his Senyera, saying he is Catalan, Line 12). This identification is “troubled” (Wetherell, 1998) by the emergence of independentism and its illegitimate appropriation of Catalan symbols and traditions. Guillermo exposes a shift in his territorial identification due to el Procés: he used to say that he was Catalan when he travelled to Spain but now, he has to say that he is from Barcelona (Lines 13-15) to avoid being “stigmatised with independentism”. The overtly political mobilisation of national symbols and practices in secessionist conflicts re-articulates national identifications. This re-articulation can be constructed as an illegitimate act of taking ownership of Catalanity. Which, in turn, is only possible if nations are previously constructed in banal and non-political understandings.

In contrast to the previous extracts in this section, the next extracts show how some participants overtly politicised the ethnocultural dimensions of national identity.

Extract 7 shows how national feelings can be constructed in ethnic terms (born/ancestry), either attached to political independentist or unionist identities. Marcel (also quoted in Extract 3) explains non-independentism as an expression of a Spanish ethnic attachment (Lines 5-6). He refers to having family or being born in Spain as the reason for not voting for independence. In his argument, there is a naturalisation of political identities rooted in a nativist conception of national belonging.

As a rhetorical implication of this line of argument, the solution to the opposition to independence is expecting that the Catalan born children may change and vote for independence as they would not have their parents’ territorial and emotional bonds with Spain (Line 12). Indeed, for Marcel this possibility of change is a source of hope: bringing these Catalan born people into the independence movement is desirable.

Constructing this ethnic-emotional-ideological association between Spanishness and unionism enables a construction of the unionist option as an affective one, not a political one. By implication (Durrheim et al., 2009), it assumes that any other anti-independence argument is difficult to sustain or is not sufficiently clear (Lines 1-3).

As we have shown, el Procés and the call for an independence Referendum foreground independentist and unionist positions, provoking an explicit politicisation of national identities. At the same time, the meanings of these politically loaded national identities are hotly contested. Extract 8 reflects those polarised associations and their contestation.

In Aria’s interview extract, she argues that there is a fundamental alliance between well-established ideological positions (left-right, progressive-fascist) and support or opposition to Catalan independence (Lines 2, 5-6), and she positions herself out of this schema (Line 4). Aria alludes to a common representation of Catalan nationalism according to which being left-wing means that one also supports independence (Line 2), and, in turn, being independentist suggests that one is also a leftist. When national identity comes to the fore, it is associated with right-left positions.

Aria’s account politicises national identities by locating them in the right-left ideological axis and indirectly contests the cultural assumption of the historical connection between Francoism and Spanish nationalism (Hernández Burgos, 2021), which equates Francoism to Spanishness and pro-independence with democratic values. This imaginary is countered when Aria defines herself as non-independentist leftist (Lines 4). At the end of the extract, she underlines the Spanish national-Francoist relation (Line 5-6) and her disagreeing with it (Line 8-9).

National identities can therefore work as the trigger for the ideological construction of opposing political orientations: being Spanish involves the suspicion of being right-winged and intolerant, whilst being Catalan carries the connotation of being a leftist and pro-independence citizen. National categories are saturated with opposing ideological projects that are troubling (c.f. Wetherell, 1998) for those who, like Aria, while feeling Spanish or Catalan, do not identify themselves with those prescribed ideological positions. Polarised political contexts left some positions outside the debate as they do not tune with dominant political articulations (Andreouli et al., 2020). In sum, when secessionism overtly politicises national identities, it also re-articulates the right-left ideological axis.