The historical instrumentalization of Lleida’s Catalan identity

Lleida – its official Catalan name – is part of the Catalan linguistic community and this has been instrumentalized for ulterior motives on various occasions. The most blatant example was the Franco regime’s attempt to prise Lérida – its official Spanish name – from the rest of Catalonia. Such events have conditioned the character and self-esteem of the inhabitants who also feel that the standardization of the Catalan language took little of their north-western dialect into account. Lleida has been subject to internal and external pressures which have given rise to lleidatanisme, a movement opposed to both leridanismo and catalanism, and whose echoes are still seen today. In this article, we examine the discourse on Catalan identity and Lleida’s place within it.