Politics of Catalonia

Catalonia is a Spanish Autonomous Community with a high-level of self-government. Politics of Catalonia are primarily related to the autonomous Parliament of Catalonia and the Generalitat institutional system.

Catalan politics also influences Spanish politics as a whole due to the presence of Catalan nationalist parties in the Spanish Parliament, whose political support is often required by any given winner of the Spanish general elections to form majorities. Catalan politics is also noted, to a lesser extent, for the influence exerted by the Catalan Socialist Party on its sister major party, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

19th and 20th centuries

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Catalonia was one of the main centres of Spanish industrialisation. During these years, the struggle between the Barcelonan conservative industrial bourgeoisie and the working class dominated Catalan politics, as it did elsewhere in Europe during the industrialisation process. In Catalonia this situation was nuanced by the fact that immigrants from the rest of the Spain were an increasing portion of the workers, since the local workforce was not enough to cover the demands of a rising economy.

Catalan nationalist and federalist movements arose in the nineteenth century, and when the Second Republic was declared in 1931, Catalonia became an autonomous region. Following the fall of the Second Republic after the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, the dictatorship of General Francisco......
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