Someone else’s crisis? UK press coverage of the failed 2017 Catalan declaration of independence

This chapter studies coverage of the Catalan crisis in the editorial columns of two of the most widely read British broadsheets, The Guardian/The Observer and The Telegraph, between September and December 2017. The analysis reveals consistent use of narrative structures as interpretative frames and, despite the differences in their general political stances, key agreements: on the illegality of the 1 October 2017 referendum; on the representation of the issue as a clash between two blocs; on the characterization of pro-independence parties and their claims as unrealistic and empty; on the portrayal of the Spanish Central Government and its reaction as inept and counterproductive; on their painstaking attempt not to take sides; and, following a dynamics of “domestication of the news”, on the use of the crisis to discuss internal British issues, more specifically Brexit and Scottish Nationalism.