Dual identity in Autonomous Catalonia

Abstract

Both ambivalent state building and national formation in Spain's modern history explain the duality of the way in which citizens identify themselves, to a considerable degree. This concept of dual identity --or compound nationality-- concerns the way citizens identify themselves in sub-state communities within pluriethnic polities. It incorporates -- in variable proportions, individually or subjectively asserted-- the local/ethno-territorial self-ascribed identity and the state/national identity produced by political integration --or, rather, malintegration-- in the state-building process. As a result of this, citizens share their institutional loyalties at both levels of political legitimacy without any apparent fracture between them (Moreno, 1986, 1988).