Raquel Zardoya Iglesias has estudied the process of formation of the autonomy of Catalonia during the Second Republic and the role of the Republican Generalitat as a rebuilder of national identity during the Second Republic.
The objective of this work is to reflect the struggle of the Provisional Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya for the reconstruction of the identity of its people, once the Second Spanish Republic has been proclaimed. I have to say that this work presents the novelty of analyzing, in a systematic way, both journals the Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes Constituyentes and the Parlament de Catalunya one.
In conclusion I can say that: the path of the provisional Government of the Generalitat to get recognition of the differential elements of its people was not easy. The first disappointment came with the Estatut de Núria, voted unanimously by the people of Catalonia and deeply mutilated when presented to the Cortes Constituyentes, thus becoming, in the Statute of 1932, a Statute that had nothing to do with the yearnings of the Catalan town. In fact, the Estatut de Núria was intended for a Federal Republic and, on the other hand, the Republic that proclaimed the Constitution of the Spanish Republic was an Integral Republic, in which Catalonia could never achieve its desire to be an autonomous state within state Spanish.
As for the Constitution of the Spanish Republic, it must be said in general terms, that in its discussion you can clearly see the obsession of the Spanish deputies for the Catalan problem. In fact, there were deputies, such as Mr. Villanova or M. Iglesias, who denounced in their interventions that the discussion of the Constitution was conditioned by a Statute, Catalan, which had not yet been discussed. And it is that, mainly, the majority of the Spanish deputies saw as a threat to the unity of Spain the autonomist will defended by Catalonia; for them, that will was synonymous with secession, which the Catalan deputies demonstrated with their statements that it was not so. They only wanted more autonomy, more freedom of action for their people without harming Spain.
The discussion of the entire Constitution project, centered on the national organization, highlights the presentation of the project by the president of the Commission, Mr. Jiménez de Asúa, who, among other things, firmly defended the Integral State model, rejecting thus, both the federalist and the unitary model. But, on the other hand, the discussion of the preliminary Titles and the entry on this topic, highlights the intervention of Mr. Torres Barberà, representative of Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña, who opined, unlike Mr. Jiménez de Asúa, that the The project had a marked unitary character and asked, like other deputies, a federalist Constitution so that, not only Catalonia but also the rest of the peoples of Spain, could achieve their political freedoms. Deputies like Mr. Arauz or Cordero Pérez saw, on the other hand, a federation spirit to the Constitution. In any case, it must be said that the Commission did not use the federal term in its draft for distrust of this term.
Finally, I would also like to emphasize that, in the discussion of these Titles on national organization, there was a majority idea, on the part of a large number of Spanish deputies, to refuse to solve the Catalan problem from the terrain of nationalisms, since they did not accept the term nationalism for a region considering that there was only one Nation, the Spanish one. As well as they rejected the granting of the powers of sovereignty and education in the regions, considering them exclusive powers of the State.
