The politics of Catalonia takes place within the framework of its Statute of Autonomy, which grants a degree of self-government to Catalonia and establish it as an autonomous community of Spain with the status of a nationality, operating as a parliamentary democracy. The Generalitat de Catalunya is the Catalan institution of self-government, which includes the Parliament of Catalonia, the President and the Executive Council. The Parliament of Catalonia is one of the oldest in the world.
Catalan politics also influence some aspects of Spanish politics due to the presence of Catalan nationalist parties in the Spanish Parliament, whose political support is often required by any given winner of the Spanish general elections to form a majority. The currently extinct Convergence and Union party had been described as being "long the region's dominant political party". Catalan politics is also noted, to a lesser extent, for the influence exerted by the Socialists' Party of Catalonia on its sister major party, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Recently, the constitutional status of Catalonia was subject to a dispute between the Government of Spain, which view it as an autonomous community within the Kingdom of Spain and the unilaterally declared Catalan Republic, which saw itself as an independent sovereign state.
19th and 20th centuries
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Catalonia was one of the main centres of Spanish industrialisation. During these years, the struggle between the Barcelona conservative industrial bourgeoisie and the working class dominated Catalan politics, as it did elsewhere in Europe during the industrialisation process. In Catalonia, this situation was nuanced by the fact that immigrants from the rest of Spain were an increasing portion of the workers, since the local workforce was not large enough to cover the demands of a rising economy.
Catalan nationalist and federalist movements arose in the nineteenth century, and when the Second Republic was declared in 1931, Catalonia became an autonomous region. Following the fall of the Second Republic after the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco annulled Catalonia's autonomy statute and prohibited any public usage, official promotion or recognition of the Catalan language. Its private everyday use was never officially proscribed by law but diminished because of the political situation, mostly in the major urban nuclei. During the last decade of Franco's rule, there was a resurgence of nationalist sentiment in Catalonia and other 'historic' regions of Spain, such as the Basque Country.
"Dual vote" and current affairs
Following Franco's death in 1975 and the restoration of democracy by 1978, Catalonia regained its autonomous status and became one of the autonomous communities within Spain. The Catalan conservative nationalist leader Jordi Pujol came to power in the first regional elections in 1980 and his two-party coalition, Convergence and Unity (CiU), won successive regional elections by absolute majority for 19 years and ruled the autonomous government for 23 consecutive years.
CiU's hegemony occurred in spite of the major cities (including Barcelona's) having been controlled by its main rival party, PSC. It was also in spite of what has been defined as the "dual vote". This refers to the fact that election results in Catalonia consistently vary depending on the election type. Thus, elections for the Catalan regional Parliament have historically been won by the conservative nationalist CiU (this trend persists, even though CiU lost the absolute majority in recent times). However, the social democrat non-nationalist PSC-PSOE has been, and continues to be, the winner of elections for the Spanish Parliament. This has been explained because of the abstention in the regional elections of those voters less concerned with identity questions, and the correspondent high turn out amongst more locally motivated nationalist voters. In addition to this, studies have shown that a number of voters consciously swing their votes from CiU to PSOE, depending on the type of election