The Catalan Digital Republic: Between Nation Branding and Nation Building

ABSTRACT

This article empirically studies the Catalan Digital Republic, that is the set of practises, narratives, institutions, and infrastructures mobilised by a stateless nation to reposition itself in the international arena. The article has a two-sided objective. First, to analyse how nation branding and nation building strategies intersect with digital technologies and technopolitical narratives. Second, to examine how stateless nations are making use of such technologies and strategies in order to find their way in the international arena. To satisfy these objectives we have empirically studied the case of Catalonia, a stateless nation which in the last years has developed an ambitious technopolitical strategy rebranding itself as the southern European technological hub. To do so we have relied on a triangular methodological strategy combining (1) critical discourse analysis; (2) in-depth interviews with high-profile actors coming from the political, academic, and civil society landscape, and (3) a thorough documentary analysis. The first part of the article explores the concept of digital nation and its relationship with the notion of nation branding. In the second part of the text, we present the methodology and the objectives. We continue the paper by outlining the results of the interviewing process and the critical analysis of the findings. The article concludes with a critical recapitulation of the research results.

1. Introduction

During the last 10 years digital technologies have entered intranational and international politics, starring heated debates and scandals, and becoming indispensable for understanding new phenomena affecting peace and conflict. The Ukrainian invasion (2022) at the hands of the Russian federation was a sad example of it. The hybrid war that affected millions was fought in multiple dimensions, encompassing classic battlefields, social networks, the deep and the crypto web, and complex cyberwarfare’s scenarios. The first Tik Tok war (Chayka, 2022) stressed how the line between normal relations among countries and armed conflicts has been blurred in the digital sphere. As it was reported in the media, the armed offensive was preceded by a massive wave of disinformation campaign, online manipulations, and widespread censorship. Moreover, the decision of Facebook-meta to allow hate speech against Russians soldiers and politicians for their users in selected countries (Mac et al., 2022) flagged the attention over the role to be played by private actors in new warfare scenarios. However, the emerging influence of digital technologies over international relations and national politics is not limited to warfare. For instance, in 2017 the European Commission fined Google €2.4 for breaching EU competition laws (EU Commission, 2022), this was one of the many high-profile antitrust cases against big tech (Jiménez & Oleson, 2022). That was not the first conflictual encounter between the regional authority and a Silicon Valley giant, but one of multiple clashes polluting the relations between the two polities. The then president of the United States Donald Trump declared on Twitter: ‘I told you so! The European Union just slapped a Five Billion Dollar fine on one of our great companies, Google. They truly have taken advantage of the U.S., but not for long!’ (Rushe, 2018). Some have defined this mobilisation of material, political, economic, and cultural resources for producing state power in the cybernetic sphere as digital nationalism.

In this context, and not exempt from criticism, the concept of nation branding is transforming the way in which countries manage their international reputation. The nations apply marketing and communication techniques within a process in which the images of the nations can be created, monitored, evaluated, and proactively managed (Fan, 2006, p. 9). The nation is built narratively and the attention is put on distinguishing aspects that can provide competitive advantage (Anholt, 2008). In this paper, we focus on the relationship between technological governance and its ability to position and differentiate nations. While the notion of digital nationalism, or put it in other words, the transplant of nationalistic discourses from the physical to the digital sphere has become a subfield in its own right (Ahmad, 2022; Schneider, 2018), the question of how national digital identities are shaped remains largely obscure. As we further argue, technology has become not only a tool reinforcing previous discourses of identity and nation, but instrumental to what here we coin as the national production of the digital self. As opposed to the digital culturalist turn (for instance Felix Stalder, 2018) we argue here that the digital condition is not only causing a profound impact on traditional physical material relations, but it has become a genuine space for the production of national identities. Nations across the world are rebranding themselves at the light of their technological developments and their digital infrastructures, producing a new form of identity shaped by digital technologies. For instance, Estonia has become tantamount with the concept of e-state, ‘We have built a digital society and we can show you how’ claims the Estonian government at their website (Estonia, n.d.). What started as a digital branding strategy ended up transforming the entire Estonian state’s architecture. Of course, this is not an isolated case.

In one of the first speeches after being elected the EU commissioner Ursula Von Der Leyen set technology as one of its top priorities (Von der Leyen, 2019). It was trying to turn the previous failed digital single market policy into a soft-power strategy aimed at placing the European Union as a global arbiter. The European Union has successfully branded itself as the global digital rights advocate becoming a lawmaker superpower. Under the Brussel Effect EU’s Regulatory instruments such as the General Data Protection Regulation or the incoming Digital Markets Act and the AI Regulation are shaping the universal standards of technological regulatory instruments, expanding EU’s influence way beyond its jurisdiction (Bradford, 2020). China for its part has used its capacity to generate endogenous technological developments as means for strengthening the country within and beyond its borders. Internally China has presented its technological achievements and infrastructural developments as evidence of success and good governance (Cancela & Jimenez, 2022). These advancements have been presented as an excuse to expand and multiply the technified surveillance apparatus pioneered by the Chinese government, who defend the surveillance of entire communities such as the Uighurs as necessary for further economic developments and for security reasons (Beydoun, 2022). The technopolitical developmentist discourse has also been used as means to legitimise the questioned interventions in the conflicted autonomous areas of Tibet and Xinjiang where huge infrastructural developments ranging from transportation to mining and the deployment of surveillance dispositives are taking place. At the international level, China has used its aura of technological success for undertaking a determined questioning of the Global North hegemony over technological standards and regime of protocols and patents. It has also established a parallel technological diplomacy with developing countries in South America, Africa, and Asia. El Salvador is another example of tech inspired diplomacy. In 2021 Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele passed the Bitcoin law, classifying the cryptocurrency as a legal currency in the country. That was part of a wider (unsuccessful) strategy seeking to turn El Salvador into a crypto paradise that would attract investors (Silverman & McKenzie, 2022).

Furthermore, technological diplomacy has also been a fertile ground for the development of counterhegemonic strategies. For instance, since 2015, Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori data sovereignty network, has been defending the digital rights of Māori people. They recognise data as an essential tool for indigenous self-determination, and accordingly they have promoted non-colonial models of data sharing, data ownership, and data management, directly challenging the data colonialist and Anglo centred order imposed by Silicon Valley (Kukutai & Cormack, 2020). These campaigns have led to the negotiation with national, regional, and international authorities of guidelines and policies respectful with indigenous self-data governance. They have also actively worked in the development of programming tools that include Māori values within the coding language of software. Similar initiatives are taking place in the United States (United States Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network) or the Australian Maiamnayri Wingara Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Sovereignty Group (Carroll et al., 2019; Walter et al., 2021). These groups coincide in denouncing colonial practices of datafication and cultural assimilation while demanding endogenous innovation in a context of cooperation, reciprocity, and solidarity, deeply inscribed in internationalist practices of solidarity, respectful with indigenous languages and worldviews. As we have seen, digital politics have become an essential aspect of today’s international relations. The digital sphere is a relevant scenario where national, regional, and intranational actors interact, disputing political, economic, and cultural interests. The example of the European Union, China, and the Māori people stress how notions of self-determination, sovereignty, and nation branding have a profound projection into the digital world. Several questions then arise: How, are these processes taking place in scenarios where self-determination rights are contested by hegemonic actors? How is digital governance being used by stateless nations as a value proposition to gain a foothold in the international arena? How are these nations producing their digital self?

To answer these questions, we have structured our research around two key objectives. First to empirically analyse how nation branding and nation building strategies intersect with digital technologies and technopolitical narratives. Second, to study how stateless nations are making use of such technologies and strategies in order to find their way in the international arena. To meet these objectives, we have studied the case of Catalonia. We did so rely on a triangular methodological strategy combining discourse analysis, in-depth interviews, and documentary analysis. In the first part of the article, we deep in the theoretical framework of where contemporary digital nation branding stands. Thus, we study the concept of digital nation and its relationship with the notion of nation branding. The second part of the text delves on the empirical research of what has been labelled as digital Catalan republic, a set of practises, institutions, narratives, and infrastructure aimed at reinforcing Catalonia in the international arena. Finally, the paper ends with a critical account of the research results.

2. The Concept of Digital Nation and the Struggle for Digital Sovereignty

2.1. The Digitised Nation

The concept of digital nation was firstly coined to describe the ‘migration’ of social institutions into the digital sphere. The Internet was then still considered a reign separated from the physical world. A cyberspace disentangled from the material reality, yet to be defined, colonised, and populated. Digital institution meant then the copycat of the material ones, reflecting with it the avatar logic of cyberpunk and videogames. However, the Internet, thanks to the Smartphone revolution that was triggered that same year with the launch of the iPhone, was about to blur the boundaries between the digital and the physical sphere. Then Web 2.0 exploded (Jiménez, 2020). A new way of understanding and mediating the relation between humans and machines emerged from the widespread use of smartphones. The forms of communicating, organising, thinking, and producing emerged hand in hand with the increasing numbers of worldwide Internet users.

As the so-called Arab Springs and later the Occupy movements demonstrated, the digital sphere was not anymore, a place of fantasy for nerds and freaks but a political reality shaping and determining the material conditions of billions. This transformation of the technopolitical relations and political sensibilities towards digital technologies shifted the interpretation of the digital nation, now reframed under Barack Obama administration as ‘open government’ (Noveck, 2017). Digital political theorists and public officers such as Beth Simone Noveck (2009) hypothesised and implemented new forms of governance (wiki government, open government) based on digital technologies, in a trend with institutional and non-institutional reverberations across the world (Israel, Estonia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Catalonia). This ‘happy’ technopolitical moment promised new forms of shared postcapitalist economy, clean energy, and participatory democracy. New social networks such as Facebook and Twitter would nurture free speech and cheap communication from billions putting an end to the old fashion and dysfunctional media conglomerates. In just a decade (2010–2020) the promising Web 2.0 was redefined as platform, digital and surveillance capitalism, highlighting its worst exploitative, addictive, monopolistic, panoptical, and toxic features of Web.1.0 (Jiménez, 2020; Vaidhyanathan, 2018). However, as we will further analyse in the Catalan case the widespread usage of new technologies enabled new ways of political organisation and hopes for emancipation as well as new forms of digital repression (Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023). Anyhow, the digital nation was no longer considered as a disentangled cyberspace, neither a passive projection of the material reality, but a social, economic, political, administrative, and a securitarian site with its own rules and logics. A site of struggle where critical political questions and processes take place. The digital nation has become an inherent aspect of state’s sovereignty and herein a site of dispute for stateless nations aiming to build a place and brand themselves in the international community. Thus, this nation branding and nation building processes are not exempt from conflicts. First, stateless nations have to deal with a digitised public sphere controlled by powerful state and private actors (Cancela & Goikoetxea, 2023). Second, stateless nations frequently lack the means to control the physical infrastructures where the digital stands.

There is a rich and growing body of literature pinpointing how the rise of Web 2.0, with social networks such as the one belonging to the Meta conglomerate (Facebook-Instagram-WhatsApp) and TikTok, has impacted the way the public sphere is produced, governed, tensioned, and manipulated. For instance, Ariadna Matamoros (2017), Nicholas Suzor (2019), Christian Fuchs (2015), and Tarleton Gillespie (2017) among others have demonstrated how big platforms exert an overwhelming infrastructural dominance over the points of access, diffusion, and expression of information. They are no longer just carriers of information, but curators and creators, defining and framing what facts are to become knowledgeable, reaching billions, and what is to be hidden. While previous forms of hegemonic dominance over communications are not unknown, see for instance the global hegemony of conglomerates such as GE/Comcast, News, Disney, Viacom, and Time Warner, the new form of digital dominance enjoyed by digital platforms differs in at least three levels. In reach, digital corporations control access to information of billions of users. Depth, digital corporations have reached an extreme level of capillarity with thousands of data points from each user, and immediacy, they can hold instant and permanent communication (Couldry & Mejias, 2020). The power of digital platforms over information also differs from previous forms of mass communication. Their control over the architecture of the digital sphere, provides them with an asymmetrical power over critical aspects of the entire supply chain information process (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2019). The agenda setting power enjoyed by traditional media has been superseded by an entirely digitised public sphere; a privatised system of truth production that extends its power to all forms of cultural production (Netflix, Spotify, Google Scholar) herein defining the discourse formation sites in where political narratives are built. However, the influence of digital technologies over contemporary politics goes beyond the boundaries of information production (Poell et al., 2021).

The EU has considered the question of digital and technological sovereignty as a central aspect of its overarching strategy. For instance, in 2020 the EU Commissioner Ursula Von der Leyen stated that technological sovereignty ‘describes the capability that Europe must have to make its own choices, based on its own values, respecting its own rules’ (Von der Leyen, 2020). Similarly, a European Parliament report flagged that, ‘manufacturing and materials, life-science technologies, micro/nano-electronics and photonics, artificial intelligence, and security and connectivity technologies – are crucial for an interconnected, digitalised, resilient and healthier European society’ (STOA, 2021, p. 1). Acknowledging how digital technologies have permeated traditional sectors, becoming a critical aspect for its development and competitiveness. For instance, automation processes are a common token even in key sectors such as automobile production. Logistics and the transportation areas are also deeply intertwined with new developments in automation, data analytics, and IoT, with few companies (Amazon, Tesla, Tencent) reigning the future horizon of such strategic sectors. The same applies to retail, agriculture, and even hospitality. However, as the EU Parliament has admitted (STOA, 2021), the critical physical (semiconductors, data centres, cables, etc.) and digital (software, know-how) means necessary for the fourth industrial revolution are generally held by two powerful state actors (the United States and China) and a handful of enormous conglomerates creating a situation of technological dependence and vulnerability for the EU members, let alone peripheral countries in both the Global North and the Global South. In sum, the digital and technological spheres are now at the forefront of political, economic, and geopolitical affairs determining the course of actions to national and supranational polities.

2.2. Nation Branding: Threat and Opportunity

The concept of Nation Branding was early defined as ‘the systematic process of aligning the actions, behaviours, investments, innovations and communications of a country around a clear strategy for achieving a strengthened competitive identity’ (Anholt, 2008, p. 22). As a transplant from business practises, it received prompt critiques labelling for instance as a ‘form of governance via market imperatives’ (Volcic & Andrejevic, 2011) and as ‘an engine of neo-liberalism that explicitly embraces a reductive logic, which privileges market relations (market fundamentalism) in articulations of national identity’ (Jansen, 2008). Neoliberal or not, the concept of nation branding succeed, founding new fertile grounds in the digital era, something echoed by a growing body of literature. Despite the recent attention paid on how nation-states are using technological frameworks to fuel their national brands the same question remains understudied for stateless nations. As mentioned above this article aims to fill this gap in the field by studying the case of Catalonia, but first it is worth clarifying what we understand by nation branding and how it operates for stateless nations. Building on Bell’s (1976) division, Nadia Kaneva (2011) compiled the diversity of views to the topic into three approaches. Kaneva framed the first and perhaps more influential approach, as a technical-economic view equating nation branding with strategic business management. These influential set of contributions consider nation branding as an instrument of economic growth, enhancing the ‘competitive advantage of nations’ in a market-like international arena. The second approach, labelled as political, brought together studies cantered around the relationship between nation branding and public diplomacy. The third or ‘cultural’ approach stablished a critique of what was considered a neoliberal shaping of national and cultural identities.

This body of authors highlighted the importance of nation branding’s symbolical and ideological dimensions by stressing the impact it has on economic, political, and reputational terms. Identity and nation branding are closely related, although it should be noted that identity and reputation are ‘something that a nation has’, while nation branding ‘is something that a nation does’. Public diplomacy would contribute to both of them (White & Kolesnicov, 2015, p. 325). Similarly, we argue that nation branding and nation building are two sides of the same coin. According to Jule Goikoetxea (2017) and Andrea Kathryn Talentino (2004) nation building combines identity-building and state-building; that is, the social construction of a community identity, and the creation and development of formal political institutions. The legitimacy of the state depends on its representation and is associated with identity, because the identity-building process aims to link citizens with the state through the nation (Goikoetxea, 2014, 2017). Likewise, nation branding is the narrative and discursive aspect legitimising nation building.

Ying Fan pointed out, the ‘brand’ of the nation exists, with or without conscious efforts in nation branding, as every country has a current image in the international audience, ‘whether strong or weak, clear or vague’ (Fan, 2006, p. 12). However, in the case of the stateless nations, perhaps not making efforts in this regard can directly mean ceasing to exist in this neoliberal and globalised age, as Moscovitz recently pointed out (2021) nation branding may have great importance in international symbolic recognition. This raises some problems, for instance as has Kaneva stressed, the nation brand could lead to the depolitisation of national movements as the emerging national identities are adjusted to satisfy the international landscape (Kaneva, 2017). Still, as any other ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 2006) stateless nations require legitimising their national identity as a way of challenging hegemonic practices of assimilation of nation-states. Our empirical research was aimed precisely at analysing to what extend Catalonia was reinforcing its national identity and its international projection via new digital nation branding strategies.

2.3. Catalonia: Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding in a Stateless Nation

Catalonia’s efforts to project itself internationally are not new (Narotzky, 2009; Xifra & McKie, 2012). Since the nineteenth century, but particularly after the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), Catalan nationalism has been concerned with the construction, development, and expression of an image of the nation, both for internal and external consumption. Catalonia wanted to project itself to the world as a nation, not as a region, highlighting its cultural, social, and economic differences with Spain. The idea of technological competence, modernity, and Mediterranean creativity were already present in this incipient era as shown by the numerous institutional campaigns promoted by the Catalan government in the 1980s (Narotzky, 2009, p. 66). However, the Catalan national construction gained momentum in the political period later known as the procés (Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023). The Diada (The Day of Catalonia) of 11 September 2012, marks the beginning of this period, characterised by the increase in support for the independence programme at the hands of successful mobilisations organised by activists in both the physical (Pradillo-Caimari & Tarditti, 2022, p. 64) and the digital realms (Poblet, 2018). Moreover, the contribution of political parties and institutions were also relevant; the Catalan Government (Generalitat), for example, played a key role in the spread of the independence bid (Zambelli, 2015). The unapologetic support of Catalan authorities to a referendum process considered by the central authorities as unconstitutional and seditious, crystallised in the prohibition of the referendum in October and the subsequent repression and the suspension of Catalan autonomy, including the closure of the Catalan Public Diplomacy Council (Diplocat) after six years of activity (Alexander & Royo i Marine, 2020; Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023).

The Catalan public diplomacy is by no means an unknown phenomenon. Several researchers have highlighted its importance and impact (Aldecoa & Keating, 1999; García, 2021; Johnson, 2018; Torras-Vila & Fernández-Cavia, 2018; Vela, & Xifra, 2015; Xifra, 2009). These studies stress the blurry boundaries between public diplomacy and nation branding. For example, Johnson (2018) has studied and compared the government's use of social networks in diplomatic affairs and national branding (Johnson, 2018) by the Catalan, Basque, and Scottish authorities, as an example of how nations without state communicate to the world an image of themselves. Drawing on an analysis of websites, Johnson concluded that these governments portrayed their nations as culturally differentiated, in an attempt to challenge the homogenising effects of globalisation. Although the websites focused on values such as creativity and culture, institutional pages also emphasised ideals such as innovation, collaboration, justice, and sustainability (Johnson, 2018). For its part, Vela and Xifra (2015) analysed the relationship between cultural diplomacy, nation building, and nation branding in Catalonia. Their work pointed out the institutional need to project a common brand between Barcelona and Catalonia and to achieve distinction from Spain. Indeed, the ‘Spain Brand’ has a bad reputation, since it has been ‘historically used to suppress political dissent and social protest, to disallow recognition of national and cultural plurality and to prohibit campaigns against corruption or political processes of democratic reform’ (Rius Ulldemolins & Zamorano, 2015, p. 15).

3. Objectives and Methodology

This paper has two key objectives. First, it aims at analysing technological narratives as a value proposition for a stateless nation trying to find a niche at the international level. Second, the article aims to analyse how the narrative on national sovereignty intertwines with the discourses and practices of technological sovereignty. For this purpose, we have studied the case of Catalonia. Catalonia has become a relevant field of experimentation of both, sovereignty and self-determination claims and techno political solutions, which have resulted in a still unresolved conflict with the Spanish state. As we further elaborate, nation branding practices have become a significant element of the Catalan’s nation building overarching strategy. More concretely, Catalonia is underscoring its sovereignty practices by branding itself as democratic, cooperative, and participatory nation, as opposed to the backwardness and repressive Spanish political traditions. These discourses are echoed in the technological sphere, both at infrastructural and discursive levels. In other words, Catalonia displays itself as a creative nation, mimicking Israel’s start-up nation rhetoric in order to project and solidify itself in the international arena. In addition to the Spanish-Catalan dichotomy, the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona, is aiming to position itself as the Southern European cultural and technological hub. This research stands on a triangular qualitative methodology, integrating three methodological tools: discourse analysis, in-depth interviews, and documentary analysis and reports on public policies. The triangular method provides greater scientific verification compared to the use of a single method in qualitative studies of this nature (Oppermann, 2000). As Kaneva (2011) exposes, a qualitative research methodology is more likely to reveal factors that have not been investigated in the previous country brand research.

Regarding discourse analysis, after a previous validation test, we search for the following tags: ‘Catalonia digital sovereignty’; ‘Catalonia digital nation’; ‘Digital Catalan Republic’, in general searchers, newspaper archives and university databases. The results detected the examples and cases of public policies and speeches pointing in the direction of another concept not initially included: digital sovereignty. In addition to this digital archival research, we also have analysed related reports and public documents published by the prolific Catalan government. Likewise, we conducted in-depth interviews with high digital profile figures coming from different professional backgrounds: academia, digital cyber activism, and the Catalan diplomacy council. In the academic field, the interviewee is Marta Poblet, a renowned researcher in the emerging field of technopolitics and digital citizenship. In the area of cyberactivism we interviewed Jordi Baylina, a computer engineer and programmer, white hat hacker, blockchain developer (and world leader in this sector), and member of Tsunami Democràtic, the platform that led the mobilisations against the Spanish online censoring measures. The last two interviewees were Laura Foraster and Jordi Arrufat, General Secretary, and the Project Manager respectively of Diplocat, the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia, a public–private consortium dedicated to promoting Catalonia in the world.

4. Results: Digital Nation Building and Branding in the Catalan Sovereignty Procés

4.1. The Catalan Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding

Catalonia has become a relevant field of experimentation of both, sovereignty and self-determination claims and techno political solutions (Lynch, 2020; Ververis et al., 2021), which have resulted in a still unresolved conflict with the Spanish state (Cancela & Goikoetxea, 2023; Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023). As we further elaborate, nation branding practices have become a significant element of the Catalan’s nation building overarching strategy. More concretely, Catalonia is underscoring its sovereignty practices by branding itself as democratic, cooperative, and participatory nation (García, 2021; Poblet, 2018), as opposed to the backwardness and repressiveness of post-fascist Spanish political traditions (Bernat & Whyte, 2020). These discourses are echoed in the technological sphere, both at infrastructural and discursive levels (Generalitat, 2019a, 2019b). In other words, Catalonia displays itself as a creative nation, mimicking Israel’s start-up nation rhetoric in order to project and solidify itself in the international arena.

In this regard, it is worth highlighting the Diplomatic Council of Catalonia (Diplocat), a public–private consortium promoting Catalan international relations at every level. Diplocat was preceded by the Patronat Catalunya Món (2007) and previously the Patronat Català Pro Europa (1982), a pioneering entity managing Catalan relations with the EU. In that previous period, their work was oriented towards branding and even creating ‘a working group for the Catalonia Brand with different actors from Catalan society’. As of 2012, the mission was transformed towards public diplomacy and for it was renamed as the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalunya or Diplocat. Then the Catalunya Brand strategy was left aside (Laura Foraster, in-depth interview, 2022). As of this date, the management of the country brand passed to the Generalitat. Jordi Arrufat describes the transition in this way (Arrufat, in-depth interview, 2022):

We are fully aware that public diplomacy and nation branding sometimes and very often go hand in hand. But, in our case, in 2012 it was decided that the management of branding would be left to the Department of the Presidency of the Generalitat and the track was lost. Personally, every year I ask my contacts about it and I get the impression, it would be necessary to confirm it, but my impression is that Generalitat is doing nothing right now under the Catalan brand.

These statements point out a lack of planning and strategic action to manage the Catalan brand. Likewise, there is great confusion about the function of Diplocat. Its purpose, as the article 2 of its statute states:

One of the objectives of the Government of Catalonia is to promote initiatives which allow for a direct knowledge of Catalonia in the international field. The PCM—DIPLOCAT must contribute to this objective furthering the image, reputation, and international promotion of Catalonia via the exporting of the best knowledge of the reality of the country and its unique assets and values, so as to aid the internationalization of Catalonia. Fulfilling this objective offers direct repercussions such as an increased attraction of investments, knowledge, institutions, and people, and contributes to generating positive public opinion abroad and establishing relations of trust with the rest of the world. (Diplocat, n.d.)

Furthermore, in the words of the General Secretary, Diplocat focuses its work on:

The usual tools of public diplomacy, organising international visit programs and bringing people from abroad to see the country first-hand and get to know it, with activities to promote the values and assets of Catalonia. And in this last stage also “social listening”, collecting conversations from social networks. (Foraster, in-depth interview, 2022)

However, it has been generalised that the embassies that Catalonia has opened abroad depended on Diplocat, when they have always depended on the Government of Catalonia (Foraster, in-depth interview, 2022). With this oversizing, and in the context of the application of repressive measures, the Spanish Government ruled its closure and liquidation through Order AEC/1229/2017, of December 15 (BOE no. 305, of December 16).

4.2. Between Rights and Marketisation

The Catalan digital nation branding strategy has not been limited to the digitalisation of previous strategies. Campaigns such as the EU-funded Fibre Optic Network (UB, 2021), presents Catalonia to the world as a serious and competitive European partner with unbeatable digital infrastructures. The 2020 promotional video of the campaign pictures Catalonia as a confident nation, superseding the rural/urban divide through massive infrastructural digital investments (2020). Similarly in 2021 the Catalan government launched an evocative video titled ‘5G, more than a digital revolution’ speaking of a wide-reaching sociotechnical, economic, and political transformation at the verge of turning everything upside down, of course for the good. This characterisation of technology as the means to solve deep social problems is well present in the Catalan discourse. For instance, on 7 June 2022, Diplocat tweeted that:

@Google opens new headquarters in Barcelona, Catalonia! The tech company’s new office space will be focused on AI, cloud services & digital marketing, and will help Catalan society on its way to digital transformation.

In the same line in 2017 Catalonia deployed its Digital Health Strategy outlining an ambitious digitisation plan (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2017). The Digital Health Strategy is enhancing the externalisation of the Catalan Health information systems to companies such as Microsoft (2022). It is worth to note that academics and the civil society have largely denounced the accelerated neoliberalisation of the public sector in Catalonia, especially in the health and education sectors. But, as the not so surprising high-profile presence of Catalonia in the newly created Facebook Metaverse indicates, neoliberalism and the Catalan (digital) nation coexist peacefully in the digital sphere in a trend well described (by Cancela & Goikoetxea, 2023) in this issue as regards Spain.

Nevertheless, despite the overwhelmingly technosolutionist rhetoric, Catalonia is branding itself as the home of technological humanism and accordingly has adopted two relevant legal instruments, the ‘Catalan Charter for Digital Rights and Responsibilities’ (2021) and the ‘Artificial Intelligence Strategy of Catalonia’ (2019a). Both documents transplant to the Catalan context the latest European Union debates around highly controversial topics such as algorithmic transparency, automated decision systems, and digital rights, preceding any other regional or central administration dependent on the Spanish State. The highly political character of the ‘Catalan Charter for Digital Rights and Responsibilities’ is early made explicit in its explanatory memorandum. There, it is explained how, in the context of the 2017 Catalan referendum of independence the Spanish State imposed a digital siege on servers, webs and apps related to the democratic process as described (by Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023) in this issue. The Charter is stressed as the constitutional framework necessary to defend digital rights. In its own words:

Digital rights are, therefore, a fundamental right, and the Government of Catalonia wants to guarantee them through the elaboration of the first digital regulatory framework in Catalonia. Rights, on the other hand, that we as European citizens, companies, and institutions of the 21st century must have perfectly consolidated and guaranteed.

In fact, the language of the text refers to Catalonia as a country willing to find its way in the competitive international arena (p. 55). For its part, the AI Strategy for Catalonia is straightforward in its aims: situating Catalonia (with emphasis in Barcelona) as a global AI hub, that is both business friendly and ‘sustainable’, ‘respectful’, ‘human centred’ and ‘socially beneficious’ (p. 28). For that, the AI strategy pictures Catalonia as a nation with a thriving knowledge economy, with distinctive infrastructural, cultural, social, financial, political, and legal advantages.

4.3. In Between and Beyond Institutions: The Catalan Cryptoprocés

Beyond and in between institutional efforts, the ‘Catalan procés’ has been closely bound with technopolitics for a number of related and non-related reasons. First, the historically anarchic hacker Catalan ecosystem converged with demands for democratisation, helping to overcome the Spanish state impediments to the 2017 ‘illegal Catalan referendum’. They did so through individual and collective hacking actions, as well as with the production of democratic digital infrastructures (Poblet, 2018). Secondly, as several interviewees have highlighted, the process was based on a different way of doing things; that is with a belief that in the future Catalan Republic everything would be managed in a different way, more democratic, open, and respectful to diversity (Pradillo-Caimari & Tarditti, 2022). For many technologies could be the key to propel such a virtuous tomorrow. Jordi Baylina, one of the activist technologists involved in the process, narrates how the democratic demands of independentists converged with technoutopianism opening unexplored political spaces:

[T]here were two things that were part of me, but there comes a time when things come together, that’s when this (decentralised) technology really appears. That they can be used precisely to build, I don’t like to talk about nations, to build communities, to improve the human relationship between people. So as a Catalan fighter pro-independence and as a technologist it is very interesting, and since then this is what I have dedicated my life to. Because I can do both things at the same time, I am a programmer, but I have an extra motivation which is to work for my country. (Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022)

This resulted in a mass cyberpolitical organisation mobilised to respond to both, the closure of web pages and to achieve the prohibited self-determination referendum. In this second area, to avoid the prohibitions, the Catalan sovereignty movement used the then experimental decentralised technologies, practically embryonic at that time, ‘barely 3 years old’ (Poblet, in-depth interview, 2022; Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022). It was during this period when many of these technologies were first used, turning Catalonia into a privileged site of technopolitical experimentation.

Before the referendum, the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) began to be used to manage:

censuses in a way that respects privacy, but at the same time is robust to censorship. So, these technologies were used to have copies of the censuses, for example, that could not be completely censored and, also, encryption to keep the census secret and preserve privacy. (Poblet, in-depth interview, 2022)

Despite the precautions the Spanish state managed to censor it ‘because the IPFS had a centralised Gateway, which was in an American company, and they censored the American company’ (Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022). This revealed that ‘there are many pieces of this technology that are not decentralised’ or, to put it another way, decentralised technologies often depend on super centralised infrastructures (Cancela & Goikoetxea, 2023; Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022). However, it was possible to avoid the censorship using external Wikileaks servers. These anti-censorship mechanisms based on hosting on foreign servers have been the same ones later used to host the Tsunami Democràtic page, which promoted the protests against the Spanish legal actions against the Catalan procés (Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023). Similarly, the Consell per la Republica page (Council for the Catalan Republic), was hosted on servers on the island of Nevis. The ‘Consell’ is a kind of government in exile led by former president Carles Puigdemont, which houses most of the Catalan politicians who went into exile, and which is committed to the unilateral path towards Catalan independence.

4.4. The Catalan Digital Republic

Among the initiatives of the Council for the Catalan Republic initiatives we find personal ‘sovereign digital identity’ a ‘Catalan Republican ID’. The Council for the Republic has stated that his action aligns with their overarching objective of articulating state structures. This digital identification has been projected to the analogic realm, a ‘sustainable and biodegradable’ bamboo card (El Periodico, 2021). In the words of the Consell, this identity is creating a ‘space of sovereignty and citizen empowerment’. Puignerò, Minister of Digital Policies and Public Administration, welcomed the initiative (La Vanguardia, 2021). However, as of the time of editing this article (September 2022) the Catalan Republican ID remains bound to its symbolic function with no legal recognition. The digital sphere has widened and amplified ongoing diplomatic trends, facilitating the dissemination of contents, forums, and direct communication with Catalan actors, and reinforcing the Catalan ‘brand’ as distinct from the Spanish state. For instance, Catalan public authorities have largely adopted the code top-level domain.cat as, something that other polities under Spanish sovereignty such as Navarre and Andalucía, both using the generic.es, have not. In this respect the Catalan Government considered the suffix as a ‘State structure of the digital republic’ (Pueyo Busquets, 2018, October 10).

Despite the difficulties, Catalonia is trying to position itself as the southern European cultural and technological hub, with Barcelona as the creative city of the future. Global events such as the World Mobile Forum, political alliances like the Barcelona-led ‘Cities for Digital Rights’, the public policies as the plan to promote Catalonia as a Mediterranean hub MedCat2030, or SmartCatalonia, the strategy to turn Catalonia into a smart country of international reference, along with the Barcelona Digital Strategy (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2016; Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2019) are aimed at placing Catalonia as the global epicentre of technological humanism (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2020), an allegedly progressive iteration of the Start-up nation promoted by Israel (Senor & Singer, 2011). As part of this digital national branding strategy, Catalonia has developed and promoted a series of policies, regulations, infrastructures, and cryptoplans, that, going beyond the traditional branding-marketed based strategies, are also setting the infrastructural grounds of the Catalan digital nation.

Institutional documents such as the Blockchain Strategy of Catalonia (2019) are aimed at depicting Catalonia as an Avant Garde nation, with authorities (and regulations) abreast of the latest technological developments, and more importantly, with a strong and welcoming market and human oriented tech ecosystem. The blockchain strategy is presented as the result of a public–private fruitful and peaceful dialog aimed at fostering innovation and the use of blockchain-based technologies in both the public and the private sectors. Precisely because of this strategy, in 2019 the Government of Catalonia presented IdentiCAT, a new decentralised digital identity model, based on DLT technology (Distributed ledger technology), a blockchain-based solution. With this technology, Catalan citizens would be the exclusive owners, managers, and custodians of their identity in any personal digital relationship activity, whether with the public or private sector. This strategy is currently being considered in several jurisdictions as a promise of a new, more decentralised form of governance. This represents a paradigm shift with respect to the digital identity models that have existed up to now and with the ways in which societies are organised. Jordi Baylina acknowledges that Blockchain technology still needs a lot of development, but that, sooner or later, it will offer the opportunity for a change in the management mode, where the authority and verification of processes and systems will be replaced by mathematical algorithms. In his opinion, this entails ‘a very different and much more democratic and inclusive mode of social organisation where different values and priorities can coexist without being hierarchical, a community of communities’ (Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022). An example of this is the Catalan DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organization), which in its manifesto specifies its founding proposal: ‘The CatalanDAO emerges as a Catalan digital nation open to the world’ and immediately afterwards he appeals to the Catalan idiosyncrasy and the cooperative tradition:

The CatalanDAO draws from a historical tradition of managing common-pool resources (commons) across the Catalan Countries, from mediaeval communal institutions such as “emprius” and “alous” to the Tribunal d’Aigües de València and the experiences of collectivization before the Francoist dictatorship. Today we are inspired by the cooperative movement, with thousands of companies, the Third Social Sector, which represents close to 10% of the GDP of Catalonia, and initiatives such as Guifi.net, the largest commons-based telecommunications network in the world. (Catalan DAO, 2022)

In this regards, Marta Poblet considers:

If the DAO evolves or concentrates on linguistic, cultural and other aspects, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me, but if it echoes this tradition of cooperativism, horizontal cooperation, with historical examples, as in other countries such as the Basque Country that is the same. So, it seems to me a good idea to take these traditions and mention them as an excuse to get to know them better. (…). (Poblet, in-depth interview, 2022)

It is precisely at this stage, when technopolitics and digital sovereignty encounter analogic struggles for sovereignty and national construction through technologically enhanced forms of ‘more democratic forms of organisation’ (Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022; Poblet, in-depth interview, 2022). Jordi Puigneró, Catalan Government’s Vice President and Minister of Digital Policies and Territory, declared that their objective is to: ‘digitally train and empower citizens so that they can develop with full confidence and security in the digital society of the 21st century’ (Molins, 2019, April 7). [1] In this regard, Baylina added that this technopolitical strategy was not aimed at giving more power to Catalan institutions, but instead to empower citizens (Baylina, in-depth interview, 2022). Independently of its applicability and stage of development, the facts probe that nationalistic technopolitics entered the mainstream political arena, something that raised the concerns of the Spanish Government who rapidly approved a decree trying to stop the ‘Catalan digital republic’ (Roqueta-Fernández & Cozzo, 2023). The Spanish President at the time, social democrat Pedro Sanchez declared that:

They are using the data for that digital republic, to try to violate the State from the online world. We are going to put an end to it. We are going to show that the State is going to be just as forceful in the digital world as in the real world. We are going to anticipate it.

Catalan Minister Puigneró promptly catalogued the Spanish decree as ‘a digital coup d'état’ (Díez et al., 2019, April 7).

5. Conclusions

Catalonia, a European stateless nation with a pro-independent parliamentary majority, is unequivocally an interesting object of study. For years, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and legal scholars, have been trying to unpack the complexities and overlapping dynamics of the Catalan independentist process(es). This article is a humble contribution to a yet uncharted region in between nation branding and nation building. A field that has nonetheless widened since the rise of digital technologies and the nearly endless possibilities this has brought to stateless nations, from establishing communication channels with the international community, to the production of digital state infrastructures, such as e-IDs or e-democracy tools. As we have demonstrated, Catalan institutional, civil society actors as well as the private sector have made wide use of the tools available to build a parallel digital structure disentangled from the Spanish State. Legal and policy initiatives such as the AI, Blockchain, and Optic fibre strategies stress the economic and political dimensions of the digital economy. For its part, the innovative Catalan Charter for Digital Rights shows how new constitutionalism projects itself to the digital word. The reverse side of this acknowledgement of the materiality of the digital, comes from the Spanish political establishment, at the right and at the left, reaction; An unprecedented massive online blackout, censorship campaigns, cybersurveillance, not to mention the governmental decrees combating the ‘Catalan Digital Republic’ thoroughly described in this Special Section´s two other articles. This points at two interesting conclusions.

First, the digital and the analogic spheres, for years, considered as separated and distinguishable elements, are now fused, encroached, and overlapped. This speaks not only to the widely known phenomenon of disinformation and fake news, but to the new struggles for digital nation and technological sovereignty, now global trends. Just as the digital economy has ended predating the rest of the economic system, something perceptible by the degree of capillarity over other industries of companies such as Amazon and Tencent, digital technologies are now present in nearly governmental capabilities. As we have shown, some of its decentralised features could be used by stateless nations to project themselves as functional States before the international community. Second, two traditionally separated concepts are now collapsing. Nation branding, a notion that arose out of the field of marketing, describing the corporate-like projection of countries in order to produce a favourable and legitimate image of themselves, is becoming entangled with nation building, that is the production of the symbolic, social, and physical infrastructure in which States build. When a stateless nation adopts an online domain (such as.cat) different to the contested hegemonic one (.es) is that a symbolic nation branding performance, or a legitimate nation building task asserting the existence of a different polity? What about the case of the digital embassies in the Metaverse, or more relevantly, the investment in digital IDs tools and infrastructures, enhancing for instance a nearly unstoppable electoral process? The unquestionable existence of a digital reality with a meaningful impact in mainstream politics and economy, let alone the everyday life of citizens (think of a certification allowing users to fill taxes or to vote) is diffusing the fracture between the symbolic and the real, for in the digital everything is code. This represents without doubt new possibilities for the empowerment of stateless nations, but as the case of the Spanish digital repression testifies it could also operate on the opposite side. Time will tell if decentralised technologies will enhance highly democratic digital republics or reinforce on the contrary the status quo.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with a minor change. This change does not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (CE200100005).

Notes on contributors

Aitor Jiménez

Aitor Jiménez is a sociologist, lawyer and activist. He is currently a research fellow at the University of Melbourne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). He is also a member of the BIBA Research Group (Bilbao-Barcelona Critical Theory).

Estitxu Garai-Artetxe

Estitxu Garai-Artetxe is PhD in audiovisual communication with a degree in advertising and public relations. He is a senior lecturer in the department of audiovisual communication and advertising (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU). Estitxu is a lead researcher of the Nik Research Group and of the LBrand research project funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. He is a member of the BIBA Research Group (Bilbao-Barcelona Critical Theory).