Past Event

The Jean Monnet Chair “Democracy in the EU“ is pleased to host a lecture, “Spain and the Catalan Referendum: A Pyrrhic Victory” with André Lecours, University of Ottawa.

About the lecture: The choice of the Spanish government not to allow Catalans to vote on their political future prevents any possibility of secession in the short term, but at what cost? The rigid stance of the Spanish state towards claims for constitutional reform already led to Catalan nationalism making a turn from autonomism to secessionism between 2010 and 2012. The current position that no Catalan popular consultation on self-determination is legal has alienated many Catalans who historically felt as much Spanish as Catalan.

About the speaker: André Lecours is Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. His research interests include nationalism and federalism in Canada as well as Europe (with a focus on Quebec, Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia and the Basque country). He is the author of Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State (University of Nevada Press, 2007), and co-author (with Daniel Béland) of Nationalism and Social Policy: The Politics of Territorial Solidarity (Oxford University Press, 2008).

This event is sponsored by the Jean Monnet Chair “Democracy in the EU“ in the Centre for European Studies at Carleton University. For further CES events, see www.carleton.ca/ces

Jean Monnet Chair events are co-funded by a grant from the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.