What kind of people are we (since 2010)?
In many aspects, such as demographics, our country has become Europeanized.
BarcelonaThere are times when days seem like years, and other times when years seem like days.
Over the last fifteen years, Catalonia has experienced one of the most intense periods in its contemporary history. The current sense of a certain pause—imposed or real, depending on the interlocutor—is an exception in whose paradigm shift we have witnessed. The new order is pushing many actors to find a new strategy for relocating. In many aspects, such as demographics, our country has become Europeanized, reaching the same dilemmas that have long plagued neighboring countries. In others, such as the Catalan sovereignty issue, the pieces in the game are different.
The second demographic boom of the 21st century
In the last decade and a half, Catalonia has seen a net population growth of more than 650,000 people, surpassing the symbolic mark of 8 million. Although it had stabilized in early 2010, the arrival of people from other countries has continued to grow, especially since 2017. This flow shows no signs of slowing: according to Idescat, the figure is expected to reach 9 million inhabitants within 25 years, and the Catalan government already frequently speaks of the Catalonia of the .
The second demographic transition of the 21st century shows some distinctive features compared to the one that occurred before the 2008 economic crisis. In this second boom—in many parts of the country more significant than the first—newcomers are distributed almost throughout the country. The factors driving their arrival are diverse, such as those derived from political causes (such as the expulsion campaigns in the US). Furthermore, there is a considerable number ofexpats, people who live with us, receive a salary from another country, and generally pay little tax. The birth rate remains low (with a rate of 1.08 children per woman, one of the lowest in the EU), and the high demand for low-skilled employment in sectors such as tourism, construction, and care remains robust.
As in other contexts, the demographic issue—and its potential effects on public services and social cohesion—has leaped to the forefront of political debate. This is also true of linguistic issues: as the latest survey on language use showed, the increase in absolute numbers of Catalan speakers and the increased generational transmission of Catalan from parents to children have not halted the growing strength of Spanish. In 2023, less than a third of the population had Catalan as their first language.
Is the conservative wave coming to an end?
Over the past fifteen years, some common phenomena across Europe have crystallized in our country. First, the party landscape has fragmented. The conservative and social democratic families, who dominated the political scene for years, have lost their edge. The translation of this phenomenon to our country is that the current party system, compared to that of 2010, is completely different. The Trial, along with the 15-M and the recent conservative wave, have caused it to implode. More parties, more diverse, and often less durable.
Secondly, the far right has become normalized in the institutions. In the 2010 elections, Plataforma per Catalunya (Platform for Catalonia) was on the verge of entering the Parliament (winning more than 75,000 votes), which many considered at the time to be the last, failed attempt by the far right to gain a foothold in the institutions. Fifteen years later, Catalonia is no longer an exception. Vox and Aliança Catalana have entered the Catalan chamber with force, and current polls show a pattern of slow but steady growth for these parties.
Finally, all this has occurred in a context in which the ideology of a significant portion of society is shifting to the right, and in the Catalan case, toward Spanish nationalist positions. The country's core position is still that of a (rather moderate) Catalanist center-left, but a significant portion of the population embraces the right-wing ideological shift. This movement is particularly intense among young men, the most right-wing generation since the 1980s.
Pro-independence parties: how to rebuild without compromising power
The contemporary Catalan electoral world, characterized by the primacy of CiU and the PSC, bears no resemblance to that of the last decade, when "the impotence of Catalan identity," to put it in Gaziel's words, has been particularly evident. Since the 2024 elections, the Catalan independence movement has been in a minority, not only in the Parliament, but also in many of the country's municipalities. The pivotal capacity to extract concessions from the Spanish government is one of the few lights at the end of a tunnel of electoral and power decline that has been observed since 2017.
In recent years, the independence movement has suffered internal divisions and changes in strategy, having to navigate a context in which support for independence has fallen to 2012 levels, and a significant portion of its electorate has turned its back on it, either abstaining or trying other political options. A time of impasse in which calls for new discourses are making headway, waiting for, to put it in Thomas Kuhn's words, the truth to quickly emerge amidst the errors and confusion.