Catalan Identities : Language, Power and Political Pactism from a Historical Perspective

‘Pactism’ is the legal doctrine that grounds the ancient Catalan public law on political deals. In this chapter, we distinguish between three kinds of pactism — early, late and political pactism — to frame the construction of institutional identities in the Catalan culture from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. How is the lack of political power that has characterised contemporary Catalonia related to the engagement with language which characterises much of Catalan literature from the 20th century? This chapter links the answer to this question to the morphology of political pactism, the building of Spanish modern nation-state, and the ‘reverse nationalism’ adopted by many writers and political thinkers at the decline of Novecentism