Talk:Enric Prat de la Riba

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the politics and government work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Spain

	Spain portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spain, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Spain on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpainWikipedia:WikiProject SpainTemplate:WikiProject SpainSpain articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Catalan-speaking countries

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Catalan-speaking countries, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the history, languages, and cultures of Catalan-speaking countries on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Catalan-speaking countriesWikipedia:WikiProject Catalan-speaking countriesTemplate:WikiProject Catalan-speaking countriesCatalan-speaking countries articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Catalan or Spanish?[edit]

We have had several changes between 'Catalan', 'Spanish' and 'Spanish Catalan' to describe Prat de la Riba.

The existence of Catalonia as a nation state during his lifetime should not be a deciding issue. He was active in the politics of Catalonia, so it is accurate to describe him as a Catalan politician, irrespective of the political status of Catalonia. He was a Catalan nationalist who presumably self-identified as Catalan, so it is appropriate to use this term for him.

My view of this is influenced by the practice used in biographies of British people, which often describe them as English, Northern Irish (or Irish), Scottish or Welsh, without this being interpreted as a rejection of a British or UK identity. A distinction is made between citizenship and nationality, see Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom. However, I know that the situation in Spain is different, and I am not seeking to impose a British solution.

We should aim for clarity and follow the Manual of Style. MOS:CONTEXTBIO says:

The opening paragraph should usually provide context for the activities that made the person notable. In most modern-day cases this will be the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, or if the person is notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable.

This gives us discretion to say 'Catalan', 'Spanish', or some combination of these.

Another issue is whether 'Catalan' is too obscure for general readers. With more specialised articles there is less need to explain what the terms mean, and we should expect readers of this article to know what Catalan means.

Please try to reach a consensus here and not make unilateral changes to this. Verbcatcher (talk) 04:21, 16 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]