Can we still reach an understanding?

More than three decades after the return to democracy and the building of the State of Autonomous Regions, two of the principle actors in the transition from dictatorship to democracy review the evolution of the Spanish political system, the distribution of powers between the autonomous regions and the central government and in particular, the symbolic duality – economic, cultural and institutional as well – between Catalonia and Spain. The reflections on this evolution which began at the height of the Cold War and in a bi-polar world, leads necessarily to the new

context of a globalized economy and a multi-polar world where Europe, Spain and Catalonia are seeking their respective places and voices. The conversations, moderated by Lluis Bassets, cover the most polemical aspects of the redistribution of economic and political power, nationalist demands and sentiments, multi-cultural and multi-lingual societies today where people with a wide variety of origins need to coexist and the problems of governing and the sustainability of future social and productive models.