ABSTRACT
Over the next hundred years, there are repeated crises of the Spanish political system. Spain remained trapped in a cycle of decline, falling further behind the major European powers. Though 1714 had seemed to represent the permanent defeat of Catalonia, by the later nineteenth century, Catalonia had increasingly become the most dynamic part of Spain. Economic differentiation in Catalonia would be key in contributing to a distinctive political tradition in the modern period. Over the nineteenth century, we find a process of Catalan cultural and literary revival that, later in the century, will form a political expression. Industrialisation also brought with it vast social change and contributed to the emergence of the Catalan labour movement. Periods of repression and secrecy alternated with those of legality and the expansion of workers societies. Catalonia was in the vanguard of union organisation throughout the peninsula. For much of this period, Catalonia experiences violence and conflict from a variety of sources. This process culminates in the developments of the 1930s and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
