La invención del agravio : Nacionalismo y crisis de la democracia española

Contemporary Spanish politics has been built on a fiction promoted by nationalists, legitimized by the left, and embraced by a right wing devoid of critical thinking: that Spain is an anti-democratic anomaly that has oppressed supposedly genuine nations like Catalonia and the Basque Country. This essay dismantles this fabrication and argues that the autonomous system, far from redressing a supposed age-old injustice, has fostered, through perverse incentives, territorial inequalities, class privileges, and a decline in democratic quality. According to Félix Ovejero, there is no "territorial problem," but rather a nationalist problem that has contaminated public debate and conditioned political action for decades. "The Invention of Grievance" dismantles the central myths of this narrative and argues that nationalism must be combated as justifications for racism and sexism were once: not by accepting its terms, but by demonstrating that the real problem lies in its ideological underpinnings. With particular attention to the delusional complicity of a left wing that, contradicting its egalitarian and democratic principles, has granted moral legitimacy to these theses, this book calls for institutions for a democracy of free and equal citizens and warns about the risks of continuing to legitimize a profoundly reactionary narrative.