A New History of Catalonia with Andrew Dowling

Andrew Dowling joins Alan to discuss his latest book A New History Of Catalonia (2022, Routledge) Andrew Dowling is Reader in Spanish History at Cardiff University and researches the history and politics of Catalonia. He has previously published The Rise of Catalan Independence: Spain’s Territorial Crisis with Routledge in 2018 and Catalonia since the Spanish Civil War: Reconstructing the Nation (Sussex Academic Press, 2012). Catalonia: A New History revises many traditional and romantic conceptions in the historiography of a small nation. This book engages with the scholarship of the past decade and separates nationalist myth-history from real historical processes. It is thus able to provide the reader with an analytical account, situating each historical period within its temporal context. Catalonia emerges as a territory where complex social forces interact, where revolts and rebellions are frequent. This is a contested terrain where political ideologies have sought to impose their interpretation of Catalan reality. This book situates Catalonia within the wider currents of European and Spanish history, from pre-history to the contemporary independence movement, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of nation-making. Get it here from the publisher's website.