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Spain in the 19th Century: Spanish Nation Building and Catalonia’s Attempt at Becoming an Iberian Prussia

by Hans-Ingo Radatz

Spain’s Nation Building in the 19th century came to an early start during the War of Independence, but the new idea of a “Spanish Nation” soon ran into major adversities, when Fernando VII reinstated his absolutist monarchy, most of the American colonies broke away and a series of civil wars turned Spain into a failed state for the greater part of the 19th century. During this period, an important segment of Catalonia’s buoyant bourgeoisie tried to emulate Prussia’s role in Germany and Piedmont’s in Italy and pushed for Catalonia to become the leader of a modernization process. Catalan aspirations were, however, frustrated, when in 1898 the last overseas colonies were lost and the Generación del 1898 rebooted the Spanish nation-building process - now as a European country with a clear-cut centralist and Castilian ideology behind it. Modern regional nationalism in Spain can only be understood against the background of these developments in the 19th century.

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