The Nation in Spain: An Instrument for Qualitative Inquiry into a Complex Question.

This paper is an innovative study about the territorial organisation of the Spanish State (TOSS) and how it is anchored and fits within definitions of nationhood. This is a technical contribution in the form of a codification protocol designed to measure changes in preferences regarding the TOSS and feelings of belonging to Spain and a given region in political discourse. Both social phenomena have experienced major changes in recent years; but in order to understand how these changes have occurred and how they have been legitimised by political elites, an instrument is needed to measure these changes systematically over time. A methodological framework is presented here that has been applied to a comparative study of five different Statutes of Autonomy and the reforms that they have undergone, together with a preliminary overview of the results produced by the protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]