Secessionists vs. Unionists in Catalonia: Mood, Emotional Profiles and Beliefs about Secession Perspectives in Two Confronted Communities

Abstract

Political tensions created by Catalonian secessionism within Spain are unsettled one year after the failed proclamation of independence at 27 th October 2017. A big segment of citizens (38% -48% of the region population) supports secession, but there is another portion of citizenry, of similar size, that has resisted secessionist aspirations. Secessionism acquired forceful impetus along the last decade, wining consecutive regional elections and two (illegal) consultations about self-determination. A rise of activism, however, showed by unionists both at street demonstrations and at the last Regional election, consolidated a draw within a deeply polarized and divided society. We present an analysis of survey data that distinguish prevalent mood and emotion profiles among unionist vs. secessionist segments. Despite their protracted and unsuccessful venture, secessionists felt much less tired and confused than unionists, and they referred to be much less fearful and more hopeful about political and economic future. We link those distinctive feelings and disparate beliefs about current difficulties with a cognitive distortion noticeable only among secessionists, about the real magnitude of their force. We discuss these findings connecting such cognitive and affective profiles with features of a compounded ethno-cultural frontier based mainly on habitual language (Catalan vs. Spanish) and family-descent origins that have probably worked as the principal alignment vector. This social cleavage might function as a fracture line for extremist aggravations of a serious political conflict within the European Union.

Unveiling pathways for the fissure among secessionists and unionists in Catalonia: identities, family language, and media influence

“…Figures 3, 4 show that following Regional public media (TV and Radio) under control of Regional Government (both broadcasting in Catalan language, exclusively) correlated with a higher polarization around the issue of secession in the main language segments, family/mother language Catalan and family/ mother language Spanish, with some differences. Concerning the first group, the results are compatible with the hypothesis that a good number of people with family/mother language Catalan rely above all on the regional public media (Garcia, 2013;Tobeña, 2017;Oller et al, 2019aOller et al, , 2019b which additionally, broadcast exclusively in Catalan language. A good part of the segment with family/mother language Catalan follows political news through these regional public media (it accounts for approximately 21.5% of overall population, at the last survey) and they can become disseminators themselves through family/friends networks.…”

“…Close neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances and even friends and families who had shared feelings of belonging to both Catalonia and Spain (in different degrees), as a part of their values, are now divided on the issue of secession and must endure living together amid an unsolved tension (Amat, 2017; Barrio and Field, 2018;Coll et al, 2018;Elliott, 2018). National identity feelings ("sense of belonging") are a main mediator of the divide between secessionists and unionists (Oller et al, 2019a(Oller et al, , 2019b: the first ones declare an almost exclusive emotional/affective identity link with Catalonia, whereas unionists have various communal affects, with a dominant double attachment with Spain-Catalonia (Catspanish). The accentuation of affective features of identity around a specific political divide (accept/reject secession), can reproduce similar paths towards increasing animosity and ruthless partisanship that have characterized recent political struggle at several Western societies (Von Babel and Pereira, 2018).…”

“…This is mandatory since previous findings either from survey data or from electoral results had established the priority of this ethnolinguistic cleavage rooted on ascendancy origins (Cuadras-Morató and Rodon, 2018;Maza et al, 2019;Miley, 2007Miley, , 2013Oller et al, 2019aOller et al, , 2019b. Secondly, we will assess the evolving changes of sense of belonging depending on media following preferences-whether the official TV and Radio controlled by the Regional Government (broadcasting exclusively in Catalan language), vs. other TV and Radios, because in previous studies we and others had shown the importance of this variable (Garcia, 2013;Tobeña, 2017;Oller and Satorra, 2017;Oller et al, 2019aOller et al, , 2019b. Since media and language are closely interrelated within the region, our analysis will address an exciting issue, namely the language acting as a protective umbrella from propaganda from the other side.…”

Conflict in Catalonia: A Sociological Approximation

“…In our survey, just over two in five (40.6%) of Catalans answered yes to the question, "Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state?," compared with just over half (51.1%) who answered no, and 8.3% who either did not know or did not answer. 7 The term polarization has been used by some analysts to refer to the division between those who support and those who oppose independence, e.g., (Barrio and Field 2018;Barrio and Juan 2017;Bertomeus 2018;Elliott 2018;Llaneras 2017;Oller et al 2019a). Certainly, evidence of a polarized society would stand in accordance with the hypothesis of the continuing existence of Linz's three-cornered conflict.…”

The Emotional Attentional Blink as a Measure of Patriotism

“…On the one hand, we use flags with different meanings to participants for measuring the strength of EAB within a RSVP paradigm. In our autonomous community (Catalonia, Spain) there has recently been a significant rise in separatist feeling (Catalan nationalism) in approximately half the population, as opposed to the unionist sentiment (Spanish constitutionalism) of approximately the other half of the population (Oller et al, 2019; see also Tobeña, 2018). This division allows us to use flags as an emotionally laden symbol that represent each patriotic subgroup of participants.…”