Thats an interpretation And state and nation are inseparable under the Spanish constitution  that only accepts the term nation for Spain  Wanting to keep Spain united is legitimate but specially as this is done via denying the right of selfdetermination for minority nations such as the Basque one it clearly is Spanish nationalism Part of the problem may be that nationalist in Spanish has not the negative connotation that may have in English Instead patriotic does have a negative connotation in Spanish that doesnt seem to have in English They are sort of inverted in their shades But basically they mean the same thing after all  Nationalism is after all the ideology that supports the ambitions of certain nation nationstate stateless nation often at the expense of others Its not very different from patriotism actually but somehow people seem to feel differently about these terms and the feelings are opposed in English and Spanish In Spanish patria fatherland patriota and patritico are part of the language of the Army which is inherently associated to Francoism and other many military coups Franco and his partisans abused these terms mercilessly so Basque nationalists almost never call themselves patriotas in Spanish even if thats the literal translation of abertzale but nationalists On the other hand Spanish nationalists PP PSOE some minor parties dont use either term normally but talk about the unity of Spain and not being nationalist in the sense of stateless nations patriots  Also back to the PSOE they have a somewhat confuse discourse but outside of Catalonia they are clearly centralists Navarrese PSN is as antiBasque as UPN PP Western Basque PSEEE is despite its incorporation of the acronym EE at most very limitedly regionalist  Under PSOE governments transference of attributions as per the Gernika statute were frozen almost totally most of the time Their discourse may be somewhat confuse but they are clearly against Basque selfdetermination and selfrule beyond what is almost unavoidable to keep some appearence of social peace They are not as extremist or inflexible as PP maybe but that only makes them moderate Spanish nationalists but Spanish nationalists anyhow  PSOE is also strongly in the Jacobinist tradition that all panFrench parties have Yet the reality of Spain doesnt fit so well with those centralist premises and therefore an unstable arrangement had to be made It was nevertheless more impelled by the extinct UCD of Surez than by the PSOE itself And its understood by most that the coup of  was a whistle blow with the complicity of PSOE against excessive decentralization that Surez seemed willing to concede  Whatever the case the term unionist seems to avoid all this problematic and is a good English term I really cant find anything better My POV is Spanish nationalist as more precise term unionist is for me a linguistic compromise and also a step towards NPOV  Id really like to hear from Mountolive Hes not said a single word