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 Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) institutional system, including the Parliament of Catalonia, the President and the Executive Council.

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. Convergence and Union has been described as being "long the region's dominant political party". Catalan politics is also noted, to a lesser extent, for the influence exerted by the Socialists' Party of Catalonia on its sister major party, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

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 Franco annulled Catalonia's autonomy statute and prohibited any public usage, official promotion or recognition of the Catalan language. Its private everyday use was never officially proscribed by law but diminished because of the political situation, mostly in the major urban nuclei. During the last decade of Franco's rule, there was a resurgence of nationalist sentiment in Catalonia and other 'historic' regions of Spain such as the Basque country.

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