Tobias J. Klee is a Project Doctoral Researcher at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (SCRIPTS) for the research Project “Gender, Borders, Memory”. He earned an MA degree in Global History from the Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg and an MA degree in Citizenship and Human Rights: Ethics and Politics from the Universitat de Barcelona. In his dissertation project he analyses the historical emergence of Catalan nationalism between 1898 and 1936 through the analytical category of gender.

Abstract: About 116 years ago, the Catalan intellectual Eugeni d'Ors raised demands that would fit well into the current political climate. Raging against immigrants coming to Barcelona from southern Spain, he advoacted for an "ad hominem protectionism", to protect public morality and hygiene. These immigrants threatened to disrupt the fabric of Catalan society by bringing their wicked lifestyle of flamenquisme. Catalan nationalism had just appeared on the stage of Spanish politics. Outside of linguistic differences, Catalans were still in the process of determining who they were as a people and what exactly differentiated them from Spaniards. Flamenquisme gave them a fixed point against which they could dissipate any uncertainty about themselves and establish a clear identitarian boundary.

In the early 1900s, flamenco became popular in working class establishments of Barcelona. They represented a new Gomorrah for the Catalan nationalist bourgeoisie: rife with drugs, filled with criminal anarchists, where women exhibited and offered their bodies, men dressed like women, and even romanced other men. Tthis over-indulgence in passion and excess seemed like clearest indicator for the degeneracy of the Spanish race. Any young Catalan exposing himself to these vices, would imperil his status as a healthy Catalan man or woman. In an environment, where Catalan nationalists sook to establish Catalonia as unaffected by Spanish decline, it was necessary to safeguard racial and moral purity to firmly cement Catalonia's place among the civilised nations of Europe.

I will use flamenquisme as an example of how Catalan nationalist differentiated themselves ethnically from Spain. I will ask: How do gender, class, and race come together as a tool of boundary drawing between Catalans and Spaniards? Dealing with this question will contribute two insights:

1. It will explain why some Catalans historically and contemporarily feel so strongly about their identity that they challenged the sovereignty of the Spanish state, seeking a new border regime.

2. This analysis of Catalonia, can enable comparisons with other (un)successful nationalist and separatist projects, where equally uncertain boundaries between two ethnic communities resulted in (attempts) of border drawing.