In Spanish jokelore, Catalan people have traditionally appeared as targets of canned jokes built upon the scripts of canniness, stinginess and thriftiness (Moreno del Río, 2013). The role of Catalans in these texts is thus similar to that of Scots in many English-speaking societies (Davies, 1990) or Jews in several countries such as Russia (Castañar Rubio, 2021).

Davies observes that, in order to understand such jokes, ‘it is necessary to know in detail the highly particular historical circumstances in which the jokes are generated’ (2011: 67). There are historical reasons that account for the attribution of traits related to stinginess and craftiness to Catalans. Firstly, the early industrialisation of Catalonia in comparison with the rest of Spain. As Carr (2018: 34) points out, Catalonia experienced a significant industrial rebirth already in the 18th century, and in 1832 the first steam-driven power looms arrived in the region. The young Catalan bourgeoisie, as industrial as nationalist, became very influential in Madrid. Its constant search for protectionism was often interpreted as greedy by the media and some political sectors. Moreover, Catalan industrialists were frequently accused of having an agenda that did not necessarily match the interests of the Spanish central government (Carr, 2018: 327–329). Secondly, Catalonia was the home of Renaixença [Rebirth] during the 19th century. This movement was inspired by Romanticism and aimed at the cultural regeneration of the region, paying special attention to the recovery of the Catalan language (Segura i Mas and Barbé i Pou, 2011).

As Moreno del Río (2013: 25) argues, the attempts at nation building undertaken in Spain during the 18th and 19th centuries had limited success. The events of the 20th century, that included a civil war (1936–1939) and the dictatorship of Franco (1939–1975) might have created a resistance to centralising projects by peripheral nationalist forces such as the Basque and the Catalan (Preston, 2012). As a result of all these complex processes, today’s Spain is a “‘multinational nation’, which is, to some extent, an incongruity in itself”, and, as such, allows for a ludic and comic interpretation of its multiple identities (Moreno del Río, 2013: 25). In Spain, jokes about the people from different regions (Galicians, Catalans, Basques, Andalusians, etc.) is a common phenomenon (Rubio Hancock, 2022).

In many countries, ethnic humour is addressed to minorities usually placed in a geographical, economic, cultural or linguistic periphery (Davies, 1990, 2011). In the case of jokes of canniness, the targets are often seen as business-oriented people, whose motivations are driven only by economic gain. The Catalan people meet all these requirements: Catalonia is located next to the coast and France, away from Madrid, the epicentre of Spain’s political and economic life; it experienced an earlier economic development than the rest of the country, and it has a distinct linguistic feature, the Catalan language, which is used extensively together with Spanish, which also promotes the use of jokes based on the script of language distortion, common in ethnic humour (Raskin, 1985). Consequently, ethnic jokes about Catalans based on the script of canniness and thriftiness are frequent in Spain. The following can be taken as examples.

Such canned jokes were very popular in the pre-digital era (Davies, 2007; Krikmann, 2009, 2012), but they are not a trendy humour format anymore (Raskin, 2023; Rubio Hancock, 2022). However, ethnic humour is still popular as a genre. Its digitalisation has caused changes both in terms of target choice and form (Laineste and Fiadotava, 2017). As Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman (2015) observe, new forms in ethnic humour ‘introduce a wider variety of stances towards ethnic stereotypes’ that include ‘their reproduction in visual language’ (520), mostly memes.

Nevertheless, it must be also noted that ethnic humour is intricately connected to social reality (Davies, 1990, 1998, 2002 and 2011). Therefore, in order to study contemporary Spanish visual ethnic humour, we have chosen one political episode that has generated a lot of online humour about Catalans in Spain: the pro-independence movement that started in Catalonia in 2011, popularly known as El Procés [The Process]. As the Griale research group points out, humour was present from the very beginning of the self-determination process and the most viral instances took place on the social media platform X (Griale Observa, 2017).

Our goal in this article is to analyse and describe the scripts of ethnic humour that appear in a dataset consisting of 102 memes that react humorously to the pro-independence movement that started in Catalonia in 2011. We aim at determining if these scripts are old scripts of canniness, stinginess and thriftiness traditionally attached to Catalans in Spanish ethnic humour or if new scripts, created ad hoc during the conflict, were also used.

For many organisations in favour of self-determination such as Assemblea Nacional Catalana (2025), El Procés started symbolically on the 11th of September of 2012. The 11th of September is the National Day of Catalonia and until then had always been celebrated with a rally in Barcelona. Nevertheless, that year was different, because a massive demonstration took place in the city under the slogan ‘Catalonia, next state in Europe’. Later, in the regional elections of 2015, pro-independence parties won a majority in the regional Parliament of Catalonia. One of the moments of highest tension was the celebration of a referendum on self-determination on 1 October 2017, deemed illegal by the Spanish authorities and the central government. Ten days later, the then President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, and other regional leaders signed a unilateral declaration of independence, known by DUI, its acronym in Catalan and Spanish. It was, however, suspended almost immediately. Puigdemont declared that the declaration had been a symbolic move and that the real goal was to promote a dialogue with the central government (BBC, 2017).

As the Griale research group noticed (Griale Observa, 2017), internet users in Spain showed their fear and rejection of the referendum and the DUI through tweets and memes. Many of the examples made fun of the physical appearance of Puigdemont, but they also targeted Catalan traditions and language, presumably with the intention of weakening the image of an entire community, filling it with prejudices and clichés. The fact that the declaration of independence was almost immediately suspended also favoured the humorous reactions. One of the most famous memes of that moment was created with two pictures taken by Reuters photographer Iván Alvarado, that managed to capture both the euphoria that followed the declaration of independence and the disappointment after it was suspended seconds later (Figure 1).

However, not all the consequences were related to humour. During the celebration of the referendum, which had been previously declared illegal, Spanish police used force to confront demonstrators that wanted to exercise their right to vote. This intervention was considered excessive and received extensive media coverage (Human Rights Watch, 2017). Following the declaration of independence, the central government enforced Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, suspending regional rule in Catalonia and implementing direct rule by Spain. Carles Puigdemont fled to the Belgian town of Waterloo and became a fugitive of Spanish justice to avoid a prison sentence. Several members of the Catalan government were convicted of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds (BBC, 2019). Jail sentences ranged from 9 to 13 years. In 2021, the new progressive coalition governments granted the first pardons and in June 2024 a new amnesty law was passed. These legal blows were accompanied by a gradual decaying interest in the self-determination movement: in the last Catalan regional elections, pro-independence parties lost ground. The victory went to the non-independentist Socialists’ Party of Catalonia, the Catalan federation of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.

Although the situation in Catalonia seems to have calmed down lately, it still creates turmoil that is usually accompanied by humour. For example, in August 2024 Puigdemont briefly returned to Barcelona. As the new amnesty law had not been yet implemented, he was still considered an outlaw. Nevertheless, he managed to make a short public appearance in the Catalan capital and to escape afterwards, despite heavy police presence. The incapacity of the authorities to prevent his runaway provoked many humorous reactions in social media, as illustrated by Figure 2.

By looking at visual humorous reactions to El Procés, in this paper we aim at determining to what extent the traditional ethnic jokelore and the universal scripts of canniness, stinginess and thriftiness have an influence on the current online humorous production, and whether new scripts of ethnic joking – more local and less universal – are used.

This paper examines memes which appeared on the internet during the Catalan pro-independence movement. The analysis adopts qualitative linguistics research methods based on a thematic analysis. Our aim is to describe, on the one hand, the alleged characteristics attributed to Catalans in memes, and, on the second hand, to determine whether these characteristics belong to traditional joke scripts or are new features. The time frame chosen spans between 11 September 2012, the day the first overtly pro-independence demonstration was held in Barcelona, and 31 July 2024. Although the amnesty law was passed on the 10th of June 2024, it was preceded and followed by several acts of protest. Hence the need to enlarge the search and ensure the inclusion of memes created in the aftermath of the law’s approval.

Memes were manually extracted using search terms related to the different aspects of the pro-independence movement. The search was conducted in the Spanish language in social media using the available advanced search tools (Facebook, X) and the meme app Memedroid. Finally, an advanced search was made in Google with the same terms. The results redirected us to online versions of several newspapers and news outlets that are known for their anti-independences, right-wing stance, such as El Español, Intereconomía, La Vanguardia, Libertad Digital and OkDiario. The search terms are included in the following list with an English translation from Spanish in brackets.

The aim was to find humorous materials related to the Catalan pro-independence movement. Selection of the items obtained was carried out according three criteria: firstly, the selected materials must have a visual component; secondly, the selected materials refer explicitly to some aspect of the pro-independence Catalan movement, and thirdly, the selected materials contain one or more scripts typical of the humour targeting Catalans, or refer to aspects of the Catalan identity. The final corpus consisted of a collection of 102 items. The textual information from the posts was then inserted in Airtable for further analysis.

To analyse the collected data, we drew on multimodal approaches. Social media posts such as memes often resort to written and visual elements to convey messages, or as Kress and Van Leeuwen observe, data coming from these sources include ‘two modes of communication’ (2006: 79). Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; 2021) or TA is well suited to analyse our data for several reasons.

Firstly, TA can be applied to any type of qualitative data, including interviews, transcripts and visual material. Therefore, it is a suitable tool for the analysis of multimodal items such as memes. Secondly, it is an approach that allows researchers to delve deeply in the data to identify patterns of meaning or themes. As TA provides a step-by-step framework, themes can be then thoroughly analysed.

Within this systematic analytical framework, data underwent multiple readings to identify patterns that enabled a TA and the creation of ‘initial codes’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 87). The most frequent themes are presented in the following list.

This section provides examples from the data collected that show in which ways the Catalan people are represented visually in memes. It is subdivided in four sub-sections that match up with the main themes listed previously. Each theme is illustrated with one or two memes selected from the data.

During Carles Puigdemont’s presidency, the DUI was declared and cancelled. As a result, he became the most visible political leader of the self-determination process and an embodiment of the struggle for sovereignty. The consequences, his runaway to Belgium to avoid a prison sentence, and the immediate cancellation of the independence of Catalonia, had a humorous potential that was rapidly captured in many memes (Figure 3 and Figure 4).

In Figure 3, Puigdemont is presented as a contestant on the Spanish popular TV programme First Dates, that shows people on dates, none of whom have met each other before. The background is easily recognisable for anyone familiar with the programme. In it, a very brief profile of the participant is presented. The caption reads: ‘Carles, 54 years old. Independent, but not too much’.

In Figure 4, Puigdemont is presented as the leading character in Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal, about an Eastern European man (played by Tom Hanks) who is stuck in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport terminal when he is denied entry to the United States, but is unable to return to his native country because of a military coup. The caption, a textual parody of a film synopsis, reads ‘A man gets stuck in Brussels Airport. He cannot go home, because his republic does not exist’.

In both cases, the memes point humorously not only at Puigdemont’s but also at the Catalan people’s aspirations to independence. In Figure 3, the wordplay with two meanings of ‘independent’ (an autonomous human being and a sovereign nation) alludes to the declaration of independence by Puigdemont, which lasted only a few seconds. In Figure 4, the independence of Catalonia is presented as unfeasible. The DUI was ineffective and now the political leader cannot return to a republic that does not exist. It is also possible that the authors of the meme wanted to highlight the status of Catalonia, not recognised by Spain as a state. Similarly, in Spielberg’s film, the new government of Krakozhia, the country of origin of the leading role, is not recognised by the US.

These humorous items are constructed using scripts that present Catalans as unrealistic and chimerical. These are features that have not been attached traditionally to Catalans in Spanish ethnic humour.

Some football clubs have the capacity of representing national or regional identities (Giulianotti, 1999: 23). Football Club Barcelona is, according to Pulleiro Méndez (2022: 144) a good example of this, particularly regarding its respectful stance towards the Catalan pro-independence movement. Pulleiro Méndez concludes that this sports institution never positioned itself in favour of Catalonia’s sovereignty. Instead, it only supported ‘the celebration of a negotiated binding referendum as a democratic solution for Catalonia, encouraging the Catalan and Spanish government to establish a process of dialogue and negotiation in order to find a peaceful solution’ (Pulleiro Méndez, 2022: 153).

However, FC Barcelona was accused of supporting independence and of politicisation of sports (AEPD, 2017; La Vanguardia, 2016). At the same time, it was speculated that, if Catalonia were to become independent, FC Barcelona would join the Spanish football league, since a hypothetical Catalan league would be non-competitive. Moreover, Catalans would accept this situation, since they care more about football and FC Barcelona than about politics. This alleged relation of the sport club with the Catalan self-determination process, but also the institution’s supposed political influence and the irrational fondness of Catalans for FC Barcelona is depicted in many memes (Figure 5 and Figure 6).

Figure 5 shows Leo Messi, a former player of FC Barcelona, calling Carles Puigdemont. The caption reads ‘Puigi, call it off. I want to play on Saturday’. The fictitious nickname ‘Puigi’ –a short version of the surname Puigdemont– implies that the two men have a close relationship or that, at least, Carles Puigdemont is not in a hierarchically superior position. The verb ‘call off’ is followed by a pronoun and the object remains unspecified. Nevertheless, it may be presumed that it refers to any pro-independence political event. The meme highlights the alleged influence of FC Barcelona and its superplayers over political matters.

The meme in Figure 6 is based on the recurrent ‘Drake hotline bling template’ to express like and dislike. The two first pictures on the upper half show Drake in favour of the independence of Catalonia. His alleged favourable position is indicated with the presence of an ‘Estelada’ or unofficial flag of Catalan independence supporters. He expresses his distaste towards Spain, symbolised by its flag. On the lower row, Drake approves the Spanish league logo. It can be inferred that Catalan independence supporters want their team, i. e., FC Barcelona, to take part in the Spanish league. Indirectly, the meme also plays with more traditional money-related joke scripts: a hypothetical Catalan league would be poorer in comparison to the Spanish one, which is full of important teams that often compete successfully in international tournaments. It is implied that for Catalans political values are not as important as football and the economic aspects that it involves.

What makes these and other memes about FC Barcelona interesting is that they make an indirect use of traditional ethnic money-related joke scripts, but, most importantly, they add a new trait to the alleged Catalan identity in the humorous discourse: a limitless and irrational love for football, and particularly for FC Barcelona, that makes them put their political values aside, including their aspiration to independence.

Themes analysed so far refer to traits that have been added recently to the humorous image of Catalans, as a result of the upheaval caused by the pro-independence movement. However, traditional scripts of stinginess are also intertwined with political aspirations (Figure 7 and Figure 8).

In Figure 7 the ‘X all the Y’ meme template is used to stress Catalans’ stinginess, a trait that traditionally has been assigned to them in older ethnic jokes. In both memes the first questions are about identity and wishes. The caption reads:

The message is clear and it implies that Catalans’ stinginess is stronger than any longing for political sovereignty and that, faced with the need of spending money to achieve their political goal of an independent Catalonia, Catalans would rather stay in Spain. The only difference lies in the embodiment of the conflict. The first image shows Artur Mas, president of Catalonia in 2012, when the pro-independence movement was gaining momentum in Catalonia. As it happens with Puigdemont, many memes use this politician to refer to El Procés.

Figure 8 also makes use of metonymy. The two people seated in a car profusely decorated with pro-independence imagery are Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras. The latter is another political leader who was acting as Vice President of Catalonia when independence was declared. In 2019 he was sentenced to 13 years of prison, although he was pardoned in 2021. They address two prostitutes and inquire about the prices to hire their services. The women reply in Spanish and when Junqueras asks them to speak in Catalan, they change the answer and demand more money. Artur Mas then retorts: ‘We will fuck in Spanish, it’s me paying.’ As in the case of ‘X all the Y’ memes in Figure 7, here the ideological conviction of these two political leaders weakens when faced with the possibility of getting a deal that is economically not profitable.

Figure 7 and Figure 8 present an interesting combination of new scripts attached to Catalans during El Procés (rampant nationalism, unwillingness to speak in Spanish) to more traditional ethnic scripts of stinginess.

Many of the memes in our data refer to Catalan politicians and Catalan institutions. However, there is a significant number of memes that also identify the Catalans as a people with a penchant for authoritarianism (Figure 9 and Figure 10).

The caption in Spanish in Figure 9 translates as ‘Things have gone too far in Catalonia’. Figure 10 reads ‘The Catanazism of the Generalitat’. The latter term is the name that the regional government receives in Catalonia. Both figures point at the alleged political and ideological extremism that seized Catalonia during the most active years of El Procés that included the indoctrination of children. In these items new traits are also attached to Catalans: those of radical people, blinded by their ideology.

The aim of this paper is to undertake a qualitative analysis of memes to determine how Catalans have been humorously visualised during the Catalan self-determination process. When doing so, the focus is on the scripts that have been used: are they old ethnic scripts, that have been traditionally used in Spanish ethnic humour about Catalans, or are they new ethnic scripts created on purpose in the context of the political turmoil created by the pro-independence movement?

The data analysed show that ethnic humour about Catalans during El Procés resorts frequently to metonymy, i.e., the use of images of political leaders (Oriol Junqueras, Artur Mas or Carles Puigdemont) whose role in the pro-independence movement was significant, and who embody the conflict. In all cases, negative characteristics are attached to them. For instance, Carles Puigdemont is presented as a ridiculous figure because he cancelled the highly symbolic declaration of independence after only a few seconds. Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras are included in memes that do not only focus on the political aspect of the conflict. In Figure 8, they are hiring the services of two prostitutes, which also implies that their behaviour is not only politically but morally reprehensible.

Some memes in our data include traits of Catalan people that have not been used traditionally in Spanish ethnic humour and can be considered new ethnic scripts. Many of the items highlight the importance of FC Barcelona in pro-independence Catalanism. It is suggested that the sports institution is so influential that it can modify the political agenda or challenge political values. However, in these memes the presence of traditional money-related scripts can also be found. Figure 6 suggests that independentist options can be left aside if that meant that FC Barcelona would be excluded from the Spanish professional league, because the result would be the need to play in a less competitive hypothetical Catalan league, less international projection and, in consequence, a reduction in income.

Similarly, other memes attach to Catalans negative traits that are not found in more traditional jokelore. Catalan people are presented as fanatics who are blinded by their extremist, Nazi-like ideology and capable of indoctrinating the younger section of the population to achieve their goals (Figure 9 and Figure 10). However, ethnic scripts of stinginess are also included occasionally (Figure 7), challenging the supposed radicalism of pro-independence Catalans: when faced with an expenditure, Catalans gladly agree to remain as a part of Spain.

Although these conflicting characterisation of Catalans may appear contradictory (radical defenders of independence on the one hand, and compliant people because of their stinginess on the other), the visual narrative of these memes is understood better if ethnic humour is not considered benign and conventional, but as an act of aggression. As Takovski (2025: 3) remarks on ethnic humour, ‘What makes these scripts, and the humour based on them, authentically ethnic is that these local scripts are comprehensible and offensive to one ethnic group, reflect one type of inter-ethnic tension, and cannot transcend ethnic boundaries’. The humour elements contained in the analysed data show that the creators of these memes use their contextual knowledge to ridicule and attack a people and a political movement that they interpret as antagonistic from their unionist, pro-Spain stance. These memes are specially designed for a target using locally based ethnic humour, and therefore are close to the concept of ‘authentically ethnic’ humour joking as defined by Takovski (2025).