Beyond the Minotaur: The construction of a benign state in three Catalan cultural products

Abstract

Since the late 2000s, creators of cultural products have imagined a future Catalonia with its independent institutions as the result of a collective effort driven by the citizens, rather than just the elites. In this article, I posit that the representation of the Catalan republic as benign, horizontal and modern shows tensions and omissions in aspects such as coercion, economic freedom, social protection, bureaucracy, language policies and the handling of immigration. This articulation is exemplified in the journalistic fiction Crònica de la independència (2009) by Patrícia Gabancho, the documentary L’endemà (2014a) by Isona Passola and the essay La República possible (2017) by Antonio Baños. The unproblematic and contradictory depiction of the state reveals latent fears derived from the historical difficulty to fit this political institution into the complex reality of the nation. Moreover, the cultural products analysed show the need to stabilize the new meanings related to the signifiers state and republic in Catalan culture.