Catalan autonomist campaign of 1918–1919

The Catalan autonomist campaign of 1918–1919 was the first Catalanist movement in favor of the granting by the Spanish parliament of a Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia. It took place between November 1918 and February 1919, during the constitutional period of the reign of Alfonso XIII and in the context of the Restoration crisis. It was promoted by the Commonwealth of Catalonia —with the support of the hegemonic Regionalist League and the Catalan Republican nationalist parties— which presented a draft of bases for the autonomy of Catalonia to the government and the Cortes in Madrid at the end of November 1918.

The proposal was rejected in December, amid a strong anti-Catalanist campaign promoted by the Castilian deputations that made public a Message from Castile. In January 1919, at the same time that an extra-parliamentary commission appointed by the government of the Count of Romanones was dealing with the issue, a commission appointed by the Commonwealth elaborated the first draft statute of autonomy in Catalan history, which was again rejected. The resurgence of the years of lead in Barcelona in February relegated the autonomist demand to the background. The campaign for the "integral autonomy" of Catalonia, as historian Javier Moreno Luzón has emphasized, "shook the Spanish political scene to its foundations."