Political parties of Catalan nationalism in the last quarter of the 19th and the early 20th centuries

The purpose of the study is to analyze the activities of the first Catalan nationalist parties in the last quarter of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The author investigates the history, directions, forms, and peculiarities of the activities of early nationalist movements, groups, and parties. The novelty of the study consists in the analysis of the historical, political, and cultural contribution of the early organizational forms of Catalan nationalism to the development of Catalonism ideas in Spain during this period. The paper analyzes features of the activities of several early political parties, including the Catalan Center, Catalonia League, Catalan Union, Regionalist Union, and Regionalist League; the role of these groups in the development of political Catalonism; the contribution of the early Catalan parties to the development of the economic interests of Catalonia. It is shown that the activities of these parties and groups contributed to increasing the role of Catalonia in Spanish political contexts at the national level. It is assumed that the analyzed Catalan parties made a decisive contribution to the political modernization of Catalonia as a region and its transformation from an object into a subject of politics at the level of Spain as a state. The results of the study allow the author to suggest that the first nationalist parties of Catalonia during their history worked their way up from the regionalist organizations based on the values of language nationalism to the national movements of the Spanish level, promoting the principles and values of political, economic, and ethnic nationalism in the contexts of Spanish politics in general.