Wikipedia as Space for a Memorial Confrontation between Catalan and Spanish Historical Memory

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the perception of Catalan nationalism in the Catalan and Spanish ver-sions of Wikipedia as modern space for the development and actualization of collective historical memory and national identities. The author analyzes how agents of historical politics in Catalonia and Castile, using the vir-tual space of Wikipedia, construct various images of the history of Catalan nationalism and its political deriva-tives. The novelty of the research consists in the analysis of the virtual space of Wikipedia as a sphere of actual-ization of different versions of collective historical memory for Catalonia and Spain. The author analyzes: the perception of Catalan nationalism experience in the Catalan and Spanish sections of Wikipedia; various points of view on the history of Catalan nationalism presented in the virtual space; the perception of the history of Cat-alan nationalism as space of memory wars and memorial confrontations. The study also shows that the virtual-ization of collective memory has become a factor stimulating various and mutually exclusive ways of perceiv-ing the historical past, as presented in articles in the Catalan and Spanish sections of Wikipedia focused on the history of Catalan nationalism. It is assumed that the virtual space of the Catalan and Spanish versions of Wik-ipedia are just as susceptible to politicization as the academic environment of the regional historiographies of Spain. The results of the study suggest that the trends of memory virtualization will contribute to the Catalan-Spanish memorial confrontation.