Why are we arguing about who is Catalan?

The repeated public debates about who is Catalan, or what it means to be Catalan, have little to do with wanting to understand Catalan society. These are discussions that arise from political confrontations, in which each participant uses their definition to define themselves and distance themselves from the adversary. Therefore, nothing can be known about Catalans and their nation, and all the interest lies in how we are used to further the respective political projects. These are debates that occur intermittently in all nations, but here they are endemic.

That it is about imposing political narratives rather than understanding reality is proven by their imprecision. Sometimes they try to define atavistic essences, often they refer to subjective and fickle wills, and in other cases they simply reaffirm almost colonial administrative frameworks, in the style of "What does your ID card say?Also, on some occasions, the intention is not to assert any factual reality, but rather to have an aspirational dimension. That is to say, they suggest an ideal, such as: "For us, the nation is something alive, full of meaning and looking towards the future, and race is something dead, poor in content and based on the past. [...] For us, the outsiders who come to Catalonia are as Catalan in our futuristic interpretation of the nation as we are ourselves. We make absolutely no distinction." He says it: it is a "futuristic interpretation" of the nation.

And this is how I have always understood President Jordi Pujol: "A Catalan is someone who lives and works in Catalonia," a phrase that ceases to be ambiguous if it is complete: "[...] and who, with their work, with their effort. We must only add: that they make Catalonia their home, that is to say, that in one way or another they become part of it, recognize it, embrace it, and are not hostile to it." And further: "Except for those who come with anti-Catalan prejudices, immigrants are, in principle, Catalans," based on the principles of national reconstruction. The same can be said of the other famous phrase, "Catalonia, one people," attributed to Josep Benet—and endorsed by Paco Candel—no less aspirational than the former.

To properly interpret these aspirations, their political and demographic contexts cannot be ignored. But above all, they are betrayed when they are transformed into essentialist definitions and disconnected from the project of national reconstruction. It is in this sense that twenty years ago I wrote that, given the long tradition of immigration, it would have been advisable for Catalan nationalism to have gone a step further and considered the migratory phenomenon, in Pierre Nora's terms, as a "site of national memory" ("Memory of immigration in Catalan nationalism", IJIS(18-1, 2005).

In short, behind every stance taken regarding identities lies a whole political program dressed up—or disguised—as an analysis of reality. There exists, explicitly or implicitly, a conception of what the fully realized Catalan nation, the Països Catalans, is or could be. Or perhaps only of the current autonomous territory. And one can also interpret it as a renunciation of the nation-building project. But, in all cases, the aforementioned debates identity-based These are power struggles, about who can define who you are and what you are, or who we are and what we are.

These debates, moreover, trapped in essences, subjective individual wills, or administrative coercion, often overlook phenomena far more complex than the simple "top-down" labeling of who is what. Let me give you an example. It can be argued whether it's a small or large number that 272,645 non-Spanish foreigners joined Catalonia in 2023. But, meanwhile—and this only considers administratively registered movements—we overlook the fact that, adding those who arrived and those who left, both from abroad and from the rest of Spain, the total movement of people was 529,263, almost twice as many. Or that by January 1, 2025, those born outside Catalonia—and registered—already made up four out of every ten.

In other words: what seems most significant to me right now for the future of the nation is the question of social, political, and cultural bonds and belonging, not who is or isn't Catalan. However, praise for diversity, or for homogeneity, and identity debates are either heavenly songs. Or hellish ones.