It's time to redefine ourselves, to re-empower ourselves, to lay the foundations for our future on the shared identity with which we will face the present and design the future.
We have a future because we have a past.
The historic Congress of Catalan Culture (1975-1977) was an event with far-reaching impact. It contributed to designing the structures, institutions, and consensus through which we, as a society, have developed in recent decades. Click here to consult its history, objectives, and conclusions, in detail.
Fifty years later, the new Congress of Catalan Culture aims to be both an open forum wherein our collective self-esteem will be recovered, and also to be the seed to grow new zeal, new horizons, new spaces, and new leadership.
What kind of country do we want to have for the next 50 years? What challenges do we face as a society? What shared framework can we imagine to live together and prosper? How should we sustain ourselves, communicate, care, bond? Who even are "we"?
The global climate crisis confirms that we are living in a crucial moment. Now is the time to rediscover ourselves, redefine ourselves, and re-empower ourselves, focusing on the major challenges we face as a society and as a country-which will determine our future.
For these reasons, we call for your commitment and participation in designing the future without fear and reaching towards new horizons.
We are working to make the new Congress an explosion of creativity, ideas, and diverse voices: a collaborative project which will transform challenges into opportunities.
The historic Congress on Catalan Culture (1975-1977)
Foundation for the Congress on Catalan Culture
Why now?
We find ourselves at a pivotal moment as a community, calling upon the best among us to confront the myriad challenges that the contemporary world presents. The Congress of Catalan Culture aspires to take on these formidable challenges facing the Països Catalans (Catalan Countries), transforming them into opportunities.
It's a time for us to rediscover, redefine, and empower ourselves anew. We envision the new Congress as a grand, collective, and inspiring initiative-a burst of creativity, ideas, and diverse voices. Embracing plurality and diversity, we aim for it to be a vibrant and inclusive project.
Facing the looming threat of totalitarianism, censorship, and ideological repression; facing the incipient climate crisis and social and economic uncertainty; and facing the trivialization of culture and the erasure of our differences-now is the time time:
Let's rediscover ourselves.
- RE
- Connection with the past, a link to that which we are: an identity, a town, a country.
- DISCOVER
- Foresight and openmindedness, commitment to knowledge and culture. Simultaneously looking ahead, while interweaving our collective wisdom and history
- OURSELVES
- Ours is an identity in motion towards the future. However this future is only possible because of our past.
The Congress is structured around four areas of work:
How do we sustain ourselves?
- Structure and balance the territory with an integrated, equitable, and global vision.
- Confront the climate crisis.
- Empower opportunities for youth and encourage their development.
- Address the vulnerability of the territory and create instruments for security, care, and resilience in the face of global change.
- Reassess the role of businesses and encourage their commitment to society in order to generate positive impact.
- Identify areas of excellence in the economy with potential for innovation, individualization, and the creation of value.
- Generate innovative, efficient, and popular strategies in public administration.
- Tackle the energy transition headon.
- Cultivate a new culture of consumption.
- Promote new dietary habits through local production and the regeneration of the primary sector.
How do we communicate?
- Empower the social use of the language and normalize it in all sectors and territories.
- Strengthen the connection between the common language and collective identity as a salient cohesive element of the Països Catalans.
- Reverse the dynamics of language marginalization and reclaim the value of Catalan for individuals as a marker of inclusion in our community.
- Address the impact of new forms of cultural dissemination (particularly that of digital platforms) on language use and increase the presence of the Catalan language.
- Expand registers and spaces for language use, especially in new informal environments created by social media.
- Enhance the linguistic proficiency of the population-particularly the youth-and increase the prestige of the language.
- Generate new strategies and media with an integrated perspective of the entire Països Catalans to overcome communicative segmentation.
- Confront the new challenges of communication, particularly regarding various forms of censorship, manipulation, and trivialization of public discourse.
- Address challenges related to intellectual property in a context that facilitates the reproduction, alteration, and reuse of cultural products.
- Tackle cultural and linguistic homogenization in the globalized world and design reinforcement strategies for indigenous cultures and languages.
How do we care for ourselves?
- Ensure access to knowledge as a means to individual and collective empowerment.
- Address inequalities between men and women, recognizing, valuing, and redistributing domestic roles traditionally held by women.
- Protect individuals in vulnerable situations and provide them with tools to overcome adversity.
- Promote mindfulness surrounding the care of our community and our territory, particularly concerning the environment.
- Advance social inclusivity to guarantee effective enjoyment of rights for everyone.
- Develop a health culture based on adequately equipped and territorially balanced infrastructures and services.
- Emphasize equitable relationships through social and institutional awareness in order to create a culture of inclusivity.
- Advance in the creation and development of structures to protect individuals based on proximity and the preservation of community ties.
- Enhance the role of civil society as a generator of inclusivity through activism, volunteering, and collaboration with public authorities.
- Comprehensively address the basic needs of individuals in an equitable and inclusive manner.
How do we foster cohesion?
- Strengthen and rethink the concept of the Països Catalans as a plural and diverse community that generates a solid shared identity.
- Define institutional and informal strategies to overcome fragmentation and imbalances among the various territories of the Països Catalans.
- Promote grassroots and proximity-based collective action and create collaboration networks.
- Encourage a culture of innovation rooted in the territory, with the capacity to enhance common identity and generate inclusivity.
- Restore the normalcy of shared culture and reverse marginalization, folklorization, and fragmentation.
- Reposition Catalan culture in the international context, particularly by enhancing its European projection.
- Reinforce connection between cultural production and social and environmental issues, especially in the face of the climate emergency, tourist pressure, and socioeconomic inequalities.
- Reclaim a sense of history and acknowledge the importance of collective bonds and spiritual heritage in a context where immediacy leads to isolation, disorientation, and distress.
- Highlight cultural heritage (both material and immaterial) as a means of cohesion and social inclusion.
- Affirm the connection between territory and culture, particularly by revaluing the landscape, urban planning, and, in general, the physical environment.
Donate
Your support is critical to make the new Congress possible. If you give, you will receive all the information and can participate in work sessions. You will also enjoy advantages in engaging with our cultural programming.
