The Catalanist and Democrat Foundation (CatDem) has assumed the challenge of impelling the restructuration process of Catalanism. The contemporary world as it is, raises a whole new set of important challenges, to which the Catalanist thought has to be capable of giving adequate answers; for example, to the consequences of globalisation; to the increasing and unceasable diversity and pluralism that describe developed societies from a social, cultural, linguistic and religious point of view; to the emergence of new technologies and the impact of those in areas such as education or economy; the demand for new policies to face emerging needs; to the new geopolitical coordinates; to the new economic interdependency; to the regeneration of democracy; to the role of States and the distribution of sovereignty and political power in this new context. To sum up, Catalanism has to be competent enough so to provide some answers to anything that conditions economic development and the wellbeing of the citizenship.

What does the Catalanist thought has to offer to those new scenarios? Although from the end of the XIX century throughout the whole XX century the Catalanist thought has been capable of configurating a framework of reference for the Catalan society and has brought a space for coexistence, dialogue and identity along with a solid set of values; the old theories are no longer effective in the context of self-governance in a global world and are unable to impel the social and economic modernisation of our country without fractures; in this wanting to make it compatible with the need of preserving “Catalanhood”. For this reason, this new context of fast transformations requires a profound rethinking of the Catalanist thought as to assure that it will continue to be the framework of reference for Catalan citizenship in the XXI century.

The CatDem Foundation wants to make its contribution to this process by driving ideas to debates and propositions. This is open to the whole Catalan society with an acquired compromise with the essential values of catalanism and democracy; a debate that goes beyond the strictly political and partisan fragmentations. Basically, the Foundation offers a broader space – what we call Casa Gran – which opens to dialogue, participation and creativity; counting with professionals, intellectuals and technicians coming from different traditions of catalanism.

In order to structure the debates in an efficient way, the Foundation constituted three big areas of reflection and six work commissions. The objective is, from now on, to focus on the participation and contribution of more than a hundred people coming from the social, intellectual and academic world of Catalonia. The reflection areas have the objective of rethinking catalanism from the point of view of ideas. The work commissions offer the adequate framework to define concrete propositions and projects on more specific questions.

Contact persons : Marc Guerrero i Tarragó, mguerrero@catdem.org and Julie Cantalou, jcantalou@catdem.org