Contesting “Europe” during the Catalan crisis (2012 – 2017): a political debate analysis from a European perspective

During the last decade we have experienced an increasing Europeanisation of public spheres. This process has gone both ways: 1. European integration has played a role in national debates 2. National debates have reached European – scale attention. This is the case for the Catalan crisis: the polarized, tense and disrupted political debate that took place in Spanish public sphere around the topic of Catalan independence; this process can be dated from 2012, (when pro-independence opinion rose abruptly) until the constitutional crisis that took place in 2017. During these years, pro-independence and unionist leaders contested the concept of “Europe” by framing European integration in a way that fitted their particular position on Catalan independence. Concurrently, this issue received transnational attention, as Europeans felt that this debate concerned some of the basic political concepts that are also at stake in European – integration discussions: politicisation, citizen participation, sovereignty, rule of law, etc. My research is a political debate analysis that will account for the abovementioned dimensions of the Catalan crisis: firstly, I will analyse primary texts from national political leaders in order to establish how they frame EU integration and how this framing fits their particular position; afterwards, I will work on primary texts from other European actors who have been reflecting on the relation between the Catalan crisis and European Integration. I will adopt a critical perspective regarding the intentional communicative disruptions produced by political leaders, taking this debate, not only as a political crisis, but also as a communicative one. Methodology will be that of content analysis based on coding and interpretation.