Faculty Publication: Assistant Professor of Spanish Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas
Sovereign Spaces: Law and Legitimacy in the Catalan Pro-Independence Struggle (2010-2019)
Author: Gozalo-Salellas, Ignasi
Source: , Vernon Press
Type of Publication: Chapter in a Book
Abstract: This essay provides a discussion of the dispute for sovereignty in the CatalanSpanish crisis of the last decade. I argue that this conflict juxtaposed, and opposed, two different arguments: law and legitimacy鈥攊n legal language, auctoritas and potestas鈥攂y the Spanish State and the Catalan proindependence movement respectively by using public space in different ways. The chapter studies the different modes of reclaiming power through the settling and appropriation of spaces, which resulted in an anxious struggle between a constituted power, the State, and an incipient form of 鈥渄estituent power,鈥 as Giorgio Agamben calls it, in the case of the secessionist movement. Finally, the essay proposes Henri Lefebvre鈥檚 spatial triad as the necessary ontological structure to achieve a successful new social space in the Catalan territory. It would imply going beyond the focus on both spatial practices (in the form of massive protests) and representational spaces (the space of citizens who produced a sense of belonging), and instead achieving a massive representation of space or, in other words, the building of hegemonic social space over society.