ABSTRACT
The Catalan parliament approved a declaration recognizing the sovereignty of the Catalan people and the two main Catalan nationalist parties are Convergence and Union (CiU) and Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), which historically have been electoral and political rivals in Catalan politics. This chapter examines the role of CiU and the ERC in situating issue of Catalonia's constitutional relationship with the rest of Spain at the top of the Catalan and Spanish political agenda. It examines complex dynamics that have impacted on, and continue to shape, Catalan nationalist partie's positions on how Catalonia should be governed. The adoption of Catalan independence as its long-term goal aimed to challenge CiU's dominance of the nationalist electoral space. The chapter illustrates that there is scope for Stateless Nationalist and Regionalist Parties (SNRPs) strategies to be dynamic, in response to range of external and internal factors that lead parties to manipulate their positions on, and the degree of attention given to, different issue dimensions.
