‘We are Patriots, not Fascists:’ Spanish Nationalism in 2017

The 2017 Catalan Independence Referendum prompted a historic resurgence of Spanish ‘centre’ nationalism. Such resurgence is indicative of a change in Spanish national identity as overt nationalism and is connotationally related to the Franco regime. This research focuses on the power and dissemination of newspaper narratives in the promotion and descriptions of such nationalism. Newspapers are discursively analysed to understand the decreasing reticence towards ‘centre’ nationalism in Spain, as evidenced by nationalist rhetoric and symbolism, and the significance of this change for the Spanish transition to democracy. It is found that the Catalan referendum inspired a strong counter-reaction of dissociating centre-periphery relations suggestive of pre-democratic transition sentiments in the maintenance of the ‘centre’ as dominant and relegating the ‘periphery’ to its Franco-era ‘threat’ status. Newspapers facilitated this shift in the nationalist narrative through their descriptions of the independence movement and the use of references and allusions to Spain's history and ‘near past.’