Art Nouveau in Catalonia

This architectural movement was closely related to Art Nouveau but its artistic expression was clearly distinct from the related European movements of this period. Modernisme was a widescale movement across all of the arts, not just architecture, which co-incided with the Catalan Renaissance taking place during the same period. As Catalonia grew in wealth and power around the mid-19th century, the region strove to re-establish its national identity, separate to Castilian Spain, firstly by restoring its language (after 150 years of oppression), but equally by a conscious injection of modern ideas designed to invigorate and lift Catalan society and culture as it approached the 20th Century. The Renaissance's main vehicle was Modernisme, which is simply the Catalan word for 'Modernism' and refers to the region's cultivating of fin-de-siecle ideas and trends from the Art Nouveau movement, which was already taking place in England, France, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. However i