Towards the end of the last century a sea-change occurred in British and Irish Hispanism as a previously held fixation with literature gave way to interest in a broader range of creative production. The pioneering volume in this respect was Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction, compiled in 1995 by Helen Graham and Jo Labanyi; and the initiative prospered four years later with David Gies’ Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture and a further major compendium in 2000, Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies, edited by Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas. All these publications offer comprehensive accounts of the nature of this discipline and the value of the broader sweep it offers to an understanding of that country and its peculiarities. And, as such, there is no need to rehearse the merits and relevance of such a perspective here.

While all these volumes make a creditable effort not to exclude the contribution of Catalonia to major features of the cultural life of the state, this area of interest never quite manages to sit comfortably within the parameters established. On occasions, for example, the Catalan experience can find its way into mainstream deliberation only to disappear from view at other moments of equal significance. Elsewhere it tends to hang like an appendage which, despite the accuracy of the study, seems to be attached almost as an afterthought, vaguely confluent with the central thrust of the argument. Quite simply – and no specific reference to these helpful overviews is intended – the subject for consideration is simply too broad to fit compactly into the Spanish experience and, as a consequence, criteria for definition can often lack the necessary precision. Here and there, for example, movements that might reject the very epithet of Spanish (like the Nova Cançó) may find themselves considered central to the state-wide chorus whereas the response of others (like the influential Barcelona School in cinema) may be surprisingly absent from consideration.

To our way of thinking – and there is little censure intended in this criticism: in a field as understudied as Catalan any consideration of its creativity is to be applauded – such editorial discomfort and hesitancy is only natural. For it is our contention that these various items may best be assimilated within the limits of their own tradition.