National and state interests of Slovaks and Catalans: parallelism between Slovakia and Catalonia in the way to achieve national emancipation

The integration of European states within the European Union has been one of the basic attributes of political development in Europe since the end of World War II. Despite the ongoing process of this project, we notice a strengthening of separatist efforts within individual states. These trends have been most visible in recent years in Catalonia, which has already taken concrete political steps towards independence. In our contribution we look at the issue of Catalonia from a specific point of view, comparing it to the case of Slovakia. It has a similar historical experience with the accomplishment of emancipatory efforts in the last stage of the 20th century. Slovakia’s independence arose from the peaceful division of the original Czecho-Slovak state unit and represents a positive example for other states. Therefore, we decided to compare these two specific cases. In this context, the primary question arises from the extent to which the requirements of Catalonia are justified and whether it is possible to identify a certain parallelism with a set of internal and external factors characteristic of the creation of new states in the 1990s in Europe. Based on interviews with the direct political actors in this process in Slovakia, we have identified three key attributes that we consider to be important prerequisites in the process of fulfilling national interests in the form of a new state. Then, we compare them with the case of Catalonia. The predominant methods used in the article are those of qualitative analysis and comparison.