Damaging clichés – The understanding of Spanish democracy and the Catalan separatist conflict in France.

Abstract

The recurring separatist conflict in Catalonia,

which has been growing and turning out quite

worrying over the past few years, became by the

end of 2017, at the very least, a controversial issue

in the current European and international affairs,

thus going beyond the mere Spanish domestic

scene. Such a situation first triggers off a series of

questions whose answers are not all that easy to

find: can and must Catalonia become an

independent State? Has Spain strong reasons to

refuse to let go a part of its territory? What would

the unionist Catalans become if Catalonia broke

away from the rest of the country and carried out

the plans drawn by the separatist leaders?

Nevertheless, beyond those unanswered serious

questions, some major debates arise regarding the

definition of democracy itself, secession as a human

right, the configuration of a legitimate and valid

electoral body or the categorization of several

felonies. Above all, such a conflict hinders our

understanding, as European citizens in general and

French citizens in particular, of the current reality

in Spain and Catalonia as well as their history and

their deepest essence. Consequently, we shall

analyse this representation (which is often quite

clichéd) basing our theory on the short speech that

was given on that subject by a French famous

essayist and thinker, Emmanuel Todd, during a radio interview.