Contrary to the currently prevailing view, Canals advances a thesis that the modern Catalan identity was forged as part of traditional Christian response to competitive universalist concepts gaining ground since the late 17th century and usually imported from the other side of the Pyrenees. Starting with the anti-Borbonic war of 1705-1714 - the theory goes - the Catalan political self was being built; the process gained pace and in fact was most dramatically expressed in a series of 7 counter-revolutionary wars, fought by the Catalans between 1794 and 1876: Guerra Gran, the War of Independence, , , the First Carlist War, Guerra dels Matiners and the Third Carlist War. Within the perspective offered, advances of the bourgeoisie-driven Liberalism gave rise to a new concept of Catalanism, which in fact is de-construction rather than re-construction of a Catalan self. Being a local copy of European nationalisms, it reportedly discards constitutive features of Catalan identity and leads to "Cataluña sin alma y sin vida".