The aim of this paper is to compare the appreciation of humor that a sample of citizens in Spain has expressed about two different types of ethnic humor produced by two successful television programs from two autonomous communities in Spain: the Basque Country and Catalonia. Both regions are well-known in the Spanish society for their specific cultural and political features, which are seen as different from the rest of the country. To some extent, their particular character is fixed in the Spanish collective imaginary by some particular stereotypes, represented in stupidity and canniness jokes, following the model investigated by Christie Davies. In contrast to these jokes, the present study focuses on the ethnic humor circulated in these two regions, a kind of humor that is based on their specific identity and where it is possible to combine elements of self-deprecating humor and elements of aggressive humor towards Spain. More specifically, this work tries to test if the political background that these two regions represent in Spain-societies that dares the cohesion of the Spanish identity, even fighting for nationalist recognitions of political rights-could influence or not in the appreciation that the Spanish citizens as a whole have of this ethnic humor that Basques and Catalans produce.

To analyse the Spanish national question requires considering the relationship between the idea of the nation and the phenomenon of nationalism on one side, and the question of political plurality on the other. The approval of the Constitutional text 40 years ago was achieved thanks to a delicate semantic balancing act concerning the concept of nation, whose interpretation remains open. Academic studies of public opinion, such as the famous Linz-Moreno Question—also known as Moreno Question—that measures the possible mixture of Spanish subjective national identity, are equally the object of wide controversy. The extent to which political plurinationality is a suitable concept for defining the country is not clear because, amongst other reasons, the political consequences that might derive from adopting the concept are unknown. This article sets out the thesis that Spain is a plurinational labyrinth since there is neither consensus nor are there discursive strategies that might help in forming an image of the country in national terms. The paradox of this labyrinth is that, since the approval of the Constitution in 1978, the political actors have accepted that nationality in Spain is insoluble without taking the plurinational idea into account. But, at the same time, it is not easy to assume such plurinationality in practical terms because the political cost to those actors that openly defend national plurality is very high. For this reason, political discourses in Spain on the national question offer a highly ambiguous scenario, where the actors seek windows of opportunity and are reluctant to take risks in order to solve this puzzle situation. The aim of this paper is to analyse which indicators are most efficient for testing how the different actors position themselves facing the phenomenon of the Spanish plurinational labyrinth. The clearest examples are what we refer to here as the concepts of (i) intersubjective national identity and (ii) plurinational governments.

Sentimientos hacia la política en el País Vasco . Variables explicativas, el efecto de la polarización afectiva y la importancia del contexto Feelings towards politics in the Basque Country .Explanatory variables, the effect of affective polarization and the relevance of context

The search for the idea of truth in politics has been conditioned both in theory and in practice by the old dilemma between the use of reason or feelings as its main source. The consequence of this binary strategy has been a misleading vision of what constitutes the central core of all political actions, which are mainly centered in the world of motivations and desires that citizens have when carrying out such actions. The objective of this article is to analyze two examples: on the one hand, the action starring by Donald Rumsfeld to justify the United States decision to go to war in Iraq in 2004; on the other hand, the reflection offered by Kant on the justification or not of a possible merciful lie to prevent someone's death. These two examples show a problematic relationship between reason and feelings, as it happens in most political actions. The text analyzes the extent to which this confrontation could not be completely eliminated, and that the best solution is usually the recognition that all political action is somehow erratic; that is, actions are guided to experiment in the search for solutions without knowing what might be their actual final result. A special example of erratic action is analyzed, namely, the phenomenon of self-deception in politics, to observe the advantages and disadvantages of the conative dimension of political action.

Cómo citar/Citation Moreno, C. (2017). Sobre trilemas y trileros. Por qué la ideología es cosa de tres y las emociones ayudan a gestionar las distintas opciones sobre la idea de igualdad.