A Bit More Detail

Catalonia's declaration of independence today is certainly the sort of event that may have longer-term consequences. Me being a Canadian, I was reminded about something I wrote on Quora about the possible long-term future of Barcelona and Catalonia within Spain. Barcelona may be the capital of Catalonia, but it has also been a traditional economic centre for all of Spain, based on Catalonia's early industrialization and continued prosperity relative to the rest of the Iberian peninsula. Already, though, there have been signs that some businesses are relocated, CaixaBank for instance moving to adjacent Valencia, one of more than a thousand businesses seeking to preserve their positions within Spain if the split becomes real. If separatism remains a major unsettled force for years, is there a possibility of Barcelona losing this position, perhaps to Madrid, as Montréal likewise lost its position to Toronto in Canada?

Now, even before the rise of Québec nationalism and separatism in the 1960s, Montréal had been declining relative to Toronto. As Jane Jacobs had noted in her provocative 1980 book The Question of Separatism, by the mid-20th century Toronto had been demonstrating greater potential for growth than Montréal, Toronto being part of a wider metropolitan area of prosperous industrial cities that was lacking in a Montréal confined to the island of Montréal and migrants from across Canada making their way to Toronto in volumes that were simply not present in Montréal. The metropolis of a province distinguished from others by its distinctive culture and language, Montréal was becoming a regional centre. The slower pattern of growth in Montréal as compared to Toronto is visible on the below chart.



What is also visible, I think, is how the advent of separatism, raising the possibility that Québec might become a new nation-state independent from Canada, taking its metropolis of Montréal with it, accelerated this divergence. Companies, including financial institutions, which were headquartered in Montréal and of national scope shifted their seats of administration to locations safely within any plausible Canada as quickly as possible. Looking at the skyline of Toronto, for instance, the white marbled-clad tower of First Canadian Place stands out even in the context of the city’s condo boom, in this picture featuring just left of the centre.

First Canadian Place was built to house the bulk of the administration of the Bank of Montreal. A shift west to Toronto may have been inevitable, given Toronto’s growing lead over Montréal, but the prospect of Montréal leaving Canada altogether made it essential for the Bank of Montreal to establish its administration firmly outside of a Québec that might secede at any moment.

The legal headquarters of the Bank of Montreal remains in Montréal, on St. James' Square.

The bulk of the activity of this bank, however, remains in the Toronto where it was transplanted to almost four decades ago. The Bank of Montreal was not alone in moving west: other financial institutions, and other companies, also shifted their headquarters and centers of productions to locations more securely located in Canada.

This shift did have a negative effect on Montréal, but the effect was concentrated particularly among the Anglophones of Montréal. Due to a variety of complex historical reasons, including a class structure where Francophones were concentrated more towards the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, the relatively greater concern of Québec’s Francophones with the affairs of their own province rather than with wider English Canada, and the substantial post-Quiet Revolution boom in industry and living standards among Francophones, it’s not clear to me that the decline of Montréal as a Canadian economic centre was much noticed by Francophones in Montréal and Québec. So what if the Bank of Montreal moved the bulk of its activities to Toronto if it was replaced by local businesses? The big entrepreneurial boom of "Quebec Inc" that first became notable in the 1980s was able to fill much of the gap left by departing national businesses in earlier years. If Montréal has become more firmly a regional centre within Canada, or perhaps a national centre for Québec alone, I'm not sure that many in Québec necessarily mind this.



The big problem for Barcelona is that, unlike Montréal and the Francophones of Québec, Barcelona and the Catalans are deeply integrated into the rest of Spain. As best as I can tell, from my reading of secondary sources, ethnic boundaries are less significant in Catalonia and between Catalonia and the rest of Spain than between English and French Canadians. There is little to no equivalent of the language-linked class divide that allowed Francophones to be relatively disinterested in the shift of Canada-focused businesses west to Toronto. If anything, the prosperity of Barcelona and wider Catalonia has been deeply linked to wider Spain. Especially if there are protracted problems--an independence achieved but unrecognized and at least initially outside of the EU? prolonged instability in a Catalonia remaining inside Spain--Barcelona in coming decades may well fare much worse than Montréal did. A firmly Spanish Madrid may well prosper, as might other Spanish cities, but that would be sore comfort.