Department or Program
Politics
Abstract
Located in the northwesternmost pocket of Spain, the Autonomous Community of Galicia offers an interesting but understudied example of non-secessionist sub-state nationalist nationalism. In a region that has not seen any strong change in national identity, support for independence, or a broad range of social conditions linked to rising nationalism, the nationalist political party’s electoral success has risen sharply and suddenly. The vote share won by the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG; Galician Nationalist Bloc) quadrupled from 2016 to 2024 with no clear explanation. Drawing on the rational-actor model of parties as active contributors to the political climate, I examine the party’s own behavior as a potential fact in its rising vote share. Specifically, I analyze the images the party has tried to project to Galician voters through its public-facing rhetoric. Through the qualitative coding of 67 campaign advertisements and 22 candidate interviews, I identify what I term Three Pillars of the BNG’s 2024 rhetoric compared to 2016, including significant moderation of its portrayal of Spanish–Galician relations, its reframing of nationalist policies as justifiable only as pragmatic solutions to non-nationalist concerns rather than intrinsically moral, and its strategic retaining of just a few key national-identity issues. These sharp changes in the party’s public-facing rhetoric of itself were deliberate attempts to improve its vote share by targeting specific demographics, and they appear to have been successful at substantially shaping Galicians’ view of the party and the concept of Galician sub-state nationalism. The party’s rhetorical strategies offer political scientists new perspectives from which to study mass behavior, party strategy, and political theories of nationalism.
Level of Access
Open Access
First Advisor
Perez-Armendariz, Clarisa
Date of Graduation
5-2025
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Recommended Citation
Buescher, Maple, "“No Cause In The World Is Foreign To Us”: An Analysis of the Bloque Nacionalista Galego’s Public-Facing Rhetoric, 2016–2024" (2025). Honors Theses. 494.
https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/494
Number of Pages
205
