*1.1. Antecedents*

While initial interpretations of the upsurge of Catalonian secessionism linked the appearance of the wave of social discontent to resentment over economic grievances against the Spanish state, during the extensive downturn of the 2008–2012 world financial crisis, recent analyses have discarded those interpretation. Applying di fferent statistical methods, both (Bel et al. 2019; Romero-Vidal 2019) established the inability of important contextual factors to explain the surge and maintenance of the Catalonian secessionist push: Neither the impact of the economic crisis in 2008–2013 or the evolution of preferences for governance options within the region, along the whole period 1991–2018, were able to convincingly explain the appearance of intense and sustained demands for full sovereignty. Cohering with that, (Maza et al. 2019) multivariate analysis of voting behaviour at the last regional elections (21 December 2017), showed a clear priority of family ascendancy origins over economic factors to explain the electoral results. The authors (Cuadras-Morató and Rodon 2019) obtained fully concordant findings as well. The authors (Borrell and Llorach 2015) and others (Bosch and Espasa 2014; Sánchez Cartas 2015) had already shown that the attempts to justify the secessionist challenge as a response to the chronic maltreatment by a parasitic Spanish state acting with extractive procedures towards the Catalonian economy were devoid of substance and worked only as propaganda weapons to nourish the conflict.

In a systematiclongitudinal analysis, (Oller et al. 2019a, 2019b) showed that familylanguage/ascendancy origins and the biased influence of regional media were crucial and unavoidable factors of the ongoing division between secessionists and unionists. Those two factors influenced important realignments on both national identity feelings and support for secession. The same study offered hints about the potential relevance of economic segmentations as added factors for differential alignments. The relevance of some socioeconomic ingredients on preferences for secession was first highlighted by (Llaneras 2017) using data from CEO surveys near the crucial months of autumn 2017. Secession appealed mostly to native Catalans: It was higher among citizens born in Catalonia and with at least one parent born there, with a maximum (75%) for those with long native ascendancy. For citizens coming from abroad or from other Spanish regions, and for those born in the region from migrant parents, secession was not attractive at all (CEO barometer July 2017). The divide depended also on incomes: Citizens with highest incomes and those who responded "we live comfortably" were the ones that backed secession. On the contrary, people with low salaries and those disclosing "many economic difficulties" were against secession. These previous but partial findings demanded further study that might reveal the influence of economic factors on fragmentation tensions that have appeared, in different parts of Europe, during the last two decades (Sorens 2005, 2008; Serrano 2013; Muñoz and Tormos 2013, 2015; Bourne 2014; Muro and Vlaskamp 2016; Piketty 2019).

## *1.2. Plan of the Study*

Our main aim, in this paper, is to display a series of longitudinal findings that may shed light on the potential relevance that some economic factors played upon the surge of the fissure between Catalonian unionists and secessionists. By building upon the complete series of data from iterated official CEO polls (the Survey Agency of the Regional Government), including 85.538 respondents from 45 surveys, we will show the evolving changes along the period 2006–2019 of national identity feelings and political preferences on the issue of secession.

After displaying the di fferential geographical distribution of both electoral preferences and the degree of support for secession, we will explore, in detail, the role of various economic and social transitions that might have contributed to establishing the pattern of traits that currently characterize the division and entrenchment between secessionists and unionists. We will try to explore, afterwards, potential interactions between economic segmentations with variations of national identity feelings in the main two segments of Catalonian citizenry; those whose family language is Catalan vs. those whose family language is Spanish. This is mandatory since previous findings had established the priority of this ethnolinguistic cleavage rooted on ascendancy origins (Oller et al. 2019a, 2019b).

We expect that this longitudinal dissection of the relevance of socioeconomic ingredients upon the secessionist push in Catalonia will contribute to illuminating factors that may help not only to understand its origins and development, but to hopefully contribute as well to attenuating the more worrying consequences of such a crisis.
