Sport and national identity: tha case of Catalonia (1880-1936)

di Xavier Pujadas Martì
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 27 (2008), p. 49

In Catalonia the diffusion of sport in the XIXth century took place at the same time the consolidation of political regionalist discourse. The claim for Catalan identity was based on the critique to the political and economic Spanish paralysis, on the desire for modernization and, also, on the cultural recovery. This demand found in the sport a peculiar instrument of identity: regenerationist, modernizing and adapted to the enterpreneurial Catalan society. In the first phase, between1880 and 1914, the impellers of the catalan regionalist sport elaborated a discourse that was identifying sport, modernity and pro-european desire. Between1914 and 1923, this ideas resulted in a political action and in international projects. After the Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923-1930) the Second Republic meant the emergence of a popular movement in sports, socially more radical, antifascist and with international contacts. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the sport as an identity built and complex phenomenon in Catalan case: his theoretical architecture and public activities.