Challenging Majority Nationalism:: the Renaming of Streets in Catalonia

Abstract

After the 2017 pro-independence referendum took place in Catalonia, many municipalities changed the names of the streets to commemorate the event. In order to do so, in some cases the names related to the central state were removed, such as those related to the constitution or the king. By performing a frame analysis, this article explores how the majority nationalist parties, which identify themselves with the state, assessed this initiative made by the pro-independence local authorities. The paper thus offers new evidence to the existing literature on majority nationalism, a subject poorly studied in comparison with the total amount of research devoted to peripheral nationalism. On the basis of street naming as a nation-building tool, two are the main empirical contributions: firstly, the representatives of majority nationalism defended the symbols linked to the state as neutral and representative of the whole citizenry, while those of the minority group were framed as partisan and deeply divisive. On the other hand, we stress the importance of the democratic transition and the 1978 constitution as relevant rhetoric resources of the national narrative in contemporary Spain.