| Mar 9, 1990 | Police accuse the Catalan separatist movement Terra Lliure of setting four home made bombs. |
| Mar 21, 1990 | A suspected Terra Lliure member blows off his legs while trying to place a bomb outside a courthouse. |
| Mar 22, 1990 | Police clash with right wing youths and Catalan separatists in Barcelona. |
| Mar 23 - 26, 1990 | Terra Lliure sets fire, twice, to a replica of Columbus' ship. |
| Mar 25, 1990 | Convergence and Union (CiU), a Catalan nationalist party, wins 18 out of 350 seats in the lower house of the Spanish parliament. |
| Apr 1990 | Terra Lliure sets off several bombs. |
| Apr 21, 1990 | Police arrest a small group of Catalan separatist protesters who tell Spain's crown prince Felipe de Borbon to "go home" during a visit to the Catalan autonomous region. |
| Sep 12, 1990 | Demonstrators clash with police after a demonstration by more than 6,000 Catalan nationalists. |
| Jul 1991 | Terra Lliure announces that it is renouncing violence and will seek independence from Spain through democratic means. However, the group reserves the right to revert to violence if independence can not be attained democratically. |
| Mar 13, 1992 | In elections for the Catalan autonomous parliament the CiU wins 71 out of 135 seats. The pro-independence ERC doubles its support with 11 seats. The Catalan socialist party wins 39 seats. |
| May 25, 1992 | Terra Lliure in blamed for two bombings in Barcelona. |
| Jun 29, 1992 | Terra Lliure is blamed for three bombs. |
| Jun 6, 1993 | In national elections the CiU wins 17 out of 350 seats in the lower house of parliament. This gives it exactly enough seats to give the ruling socialist party a majority in parliament. The CiU has made it clear that it will not join a coalition unless the central government ceded 15% of the income tax revenues collected in the autonomous Catalan region to the Catalan government. This is a privilege already enjoyed by the Basque and Navarre regions. |
| Aug 28, 1993 | Spain's minority Socialist government agrees to allow all 17 autonomous regions to keep 15% of the tax revenues collected in their regions. |
| Oct 1993 | The CiU agrees to support the Socialist party budget due to the Socialist party's concessions on tax revenues. From this point to the end of the time period covered by this chronology, the CiU continues to support the Socialist government but does not formally join the governing coalition. |
| Nov 2, 1993 | Spanish speakers in Catalonia accuse the local government of forcing their children to learn the Catalan language. |
| Feb 9, 1994 | Catalan President Jordi Pujol calls for greater autonomy for his region including control over police and health. |
| Jun 12, 1994 | Spain's constitutional court decides to review a Catalan law which promotes teaching the Catalan language in Catalonia's schools. The court eventually rules the law constitutional. |
| Apr 1995 | Catalonia began an effort to restore its historical national archives to Barcelona. The archives had been moved to the city of Salamanca during the reign of Franco, who used the archives to gather information about the Catalans. The city wanted to maintain the archives as part of the larger collection of material assembled by Franco. (Guardian 4/4/95) |
| Jul 18, 1995 | The Catalan nationalist party CiU withdrew its support from the Spanish parliamentary government after years of support, citing the scandals faced by the Socialist Party (including allegations of wiretapping and misuse of government money to fund attempts to kill members of the Basque ETA organization) and the slow progress towards decentralization. The move meant that the governing coalition lost its majority in parliament, requiring new elections. (Financial Times 7/18/95) |
| Sep 11, 1995 | Police and young separatists clashed in the center of Barcelona, north-east Spain during celebrations to mark Catalonia's Diada national day. Two hundred youths waving the Catalan flag hurled objects and jeered at politicians from national parties as they laid memorial wreaths during the official ceremonies of the day. (United Press International 9/11/95) |
| Mar 3, 1996 | The conservative Popular Party won the Spanish parliamentary and Senate elections with 38.85% of the total vote. They won 156 parliamentary seats -- 20 short of an absolute majority. The two Catalan parties, the CiU and the Catalan separatist ERC party, won 4.61% (16 seats) and .67% (1 seat), respectively. The Popular Party had hoped to form a coalition with the CiU, but the Catalan people are traditionally distrustful of the Popular Party, which advocates centralization and the "unity of Spain." (AFX News 3/4/96 and The Irish Times 3/4/96) |
| Apr 10, 1996 | Leaders of both the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) (which holds 5 seats in Spain's parliament), and the Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union party (CiU) (which holds 16), met with Spain's King Juan Carlos and explained that they would not join a coalition with the People's Party without recognition from the party of Spain's cultural diversity and guarantees of greater autonomy. (Agence France Presse 4/10/96) |
| Apr 24, 1996 | The founder of the Popular Party and one of the authors of the Spanish constitution, Manuel Fraga, publicly declared that he felt the constitution should be rewritten to define the roles of the central government and Spain's 17 regional governments more carefully. (United Press International 4/24/96) |
| Apr 27, 1996 | In order to gain the support of the CiU in the Spanish parliament, the incoming Prime Minister, Juan Aznar, agreed to several Catalan demands, including: the transfer of 30% of Catalan revenues raised by Madrid back to the region, the ceding of road traffic control to Catalonia's regional police, the end of the appointment of provincial "civil governors" by Madrid, and the abolition of military service in 2001. (The London Independent 4/27/96) |
| Oct 4, 1997 | 200 students from Barcelona's main university marched through the city to protest the wedding of Spain's Princess Cristina in the city. The students believed that the monarchy represented the repression of regional, and Catalan, identities. (Glasgow Herald 4/10/97) |
| Nov 24, 1997 | A decree by the minister of education to require a Spanish history curriculum that focused on the "unitary character of Spain's past" provoked an angry response by all regional governments, especially the Catalans. In the 1978 constitution, the Catalans and other groups gained the right to determine 45% of the school curricula in their regions, which allowed them to work a Catalan spin into history and other lessons. (The London Independent 11/24/97) |
| Dec 30, 1997 | The Catalan regional parliament passed a law requiring that Castilian (Spanish) and Catalan be given equal treatment in schools; that radio and television stations broadcast half their programs in Catalan; and that radio stations with government concessions play Catalan-language songs at least 25% of the time. Billboards and signs would have to be made using both languages, and companies or civil servants who exhibited animosity to clients because of their language would face penalties under the law. (Agence France Presse 12/30/97) |
| Mar 11, 1998 | Jordi Pujol, president of the autonomous Catalan region, declared that "there is something distinctly anti-Catalan in Spain," and complained that his peaceful region received less respect and attention than the Basques, who had recently announced a terrorist cease-fire. He later apologized for the comments. (Agence France Presse 3/11/98) |
| Oct 1998 | In light of the increased discussion of Basque autonomy since the ETA ceasefire, the Catalan government pressed for its own rights as well. The CiU stressed that any concessions made to the Basques should be made to the Catalans, the Catalan parliament approved a resolution stating that Catalans had a right to self-determination, and Catalan, Basque and Galician regionalists set up a joint parliamentary alliance to promote greater federalism in Spain. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 10/4/98) |
| Oct 14, 1998 | Jordi Pujol, head of the autonomous Catalan government in northeastern Spain, told Antenna 3 television that unlike Spain, his region was "a nation in its own right" and as such, had a right to self-determination. He added that if a referendum on Catalan independence were held, he did not think it would succeed. (Agence France Presse 10/14/98) |
| Oct 31, 1998 | In a statement issued at the end of a meeting in the Galician town of Santiago de Compostela, the nationalist Catalan, Basque and Galician parties called for "a new draft of the constitution which would guarantee legal and political recognition for our respective national identities, without ruling out constitutional reform." The "Santiago Agreement" was signed by the secretary-general of the Catalan Convergence and Union party, Pere Esteve; the president of the Basque Nationalist Party, Xabier Arzalluz; and the spokesman of the Galician National Block, Xose Manuel Beiras. Several members of the Socialist party expressed concern that nationalist parties were threatening Spanish unity. (Agence France Presse 10/31/98) |
| Jan 15, 1999 | Nineteen people were injured when police clashed with university protesters during a demonstration by a group of Catalan nationalist students who demanded independence for the region during Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's visit to the Autonomous University of Barcelona. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 1/15/99) |
| Oct 12, 1999 | Twenty people were arrested and three police officers were injured during a clash between Catalan pro-independence militants and Ricardo Saenz de Ynestrillas and his far right Alliance for National Unity, AUN. The AUN had declared the day an official "Day of Hispanity" in commemoration of Columbus's arrival in the New World, but many regions did not recognize the event. The counter-demonstrators included Catalan nationalists and anarchists, who constructed barricades and damaged several businesses, in particular banks and real estate offices. (Agence France Presse 10/12/99) |
| Oct 17, 1999 | In Catalan regional elections, the incumbent CiU nationalist party received 56 seats in the 135 seat assembly, while the Socialist party got 52. The Socialists had in fact beaten the nationalists 37.91 percent to 37.65 percent, but gained fewer seats because they were underrepresented in key areas like Barcelona. The election had been marred by the detonation of five petrol bombs in banks and party headquarters the night before. (BBC 10/17/99 and Agence France Presse 10/18/99) |
