European Nationalism Case Study---Catalan During the development of Europe, Nationalism played an important role. Initially, in the 19th century, a wave of nationalism swept the whole continent of Europe from romantic nationalism to a variety of European countries .Subsequently, there were some new countries in the different ways to initialize their movement on nationalism, such as “the Romantic exaltation of "feeling" and "identity" and the Liberal requirement that a legitimate state be based on a "people" rather than, for example, a dynasty, God, or imperial domination.”(Paul Halsall, 1998). Since then, the concept of “nationalism” ascended to the historical stage. In this essay, the main research will be focused on the Catalan …show more content…

On one hand, they did help recover and construct the nationalist movement culturally, historically and economically. On the other hand, their discourse, in some aspect, disordered the legitimacy of current situation, and “they denounced the nation’s present situation within state and offer an alternative to it by promoting the conditions and processes of conflict.”( Guibernau,2000). Hence, the intellectuals are really considered as the founder of the nationalist ideology, nevertheless, many of them did gather and encourage people to set up the nationalist movement. Currently, “Catalonia, as a nationality, exercises its self-government constituted as an autonomous community in accordance with the Constitution and with this Estatut, which is its basic institutional law.”(Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, 2006). Physically, Catalonia is located in the northeast of Iberian peninsula and consists of four province: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona, among which Barcelona is the capital and largest city of Catalonia. This region is above 32,000 km² with more than seven million official populations. During the Catalan Nationalist movement, Catalonia developed its own language, Catalan. In addition, Catalonia has their own distinctive