Introduction

The first chapter introduces the context and key events of the 2017 referendum crisis in Catalonia as well as the larger secessionist cycle of contention. I suggest that the key to understanding secessionist protest lies in studying its organizational dimension rather than describing it lopsidedly as either an elite‐driven or bottom‐up phenomenon. The chapter posits the key question of this book: How did the referendum crisis affect the organizational basis of secessionist protest? I present the main argument of the book and situate it within the existing scholarly literature on social movements and secessionism. Finally, I outline the mixed‐methods research design that provided the evidence for the book’s argument.