Press, Politics and National Identities in Catalonia

A presentation by Pol Dalmau, Humboldt Postdoctoral fellow, Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Germany.

For more than three generations, the members of the Godó family controlled Barcelona's top-selling newspaper La Vanguardia, navigating it through the country's turbulent 20th century. Whether under the corrupt politics of the Bourbon Restoration, the takeover of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, or the radical transformations of the Second Republic, La Vanguardia remained Barcelona's journalistic benchmark.

Central to this success was the Godó family's capacity to turn their newspaper into an active mouthpiece for Catalan interests in the rest of the Spain. In parallel, ownership of the newspaper allowed the family members to expand their interests into other fields, such as politics, business, and colonial rule in Cuba and Morocco.

This presentation by Pol Dalmau, Humboldt Postdoctoral fellow, Leibniz Institute of European History, will use the case of this renowned family in Barcelona to examine the changing relations between press and politics during the crisis of Liberalism in Europe.

While contemporaries often noted the powerful influence that newspapers exerted over public affairs, historians have not systematically examined the role of press owners as "political actors". Additionally, La Vanguardia provides a unique gateway to examine the role of civil society in the shaping of national identity/identities, as well as the emergence of Spanish nationalism in Catalonia.