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Modernisme (not to be confused with modernism) was the Catalan equivalent to a number of fin-de-siècle movements, such as Symbolism, Decadence and Art Nouveau / Jugendstil, from roughly 1888 to 1911. The modernisme movement was centred on the city of Barcelona, and its best-known exponent was the architect Antoni Gaudí.

Modernisme was a cultural movement led by deeply individualistic and anti-traditionalist intellectuals who, roughly from 1888 (the First International Exposition of Barcelona) to 1911 (the death of Joan Maragall, the most important Modernista poet), attempted to update Catalan arts and ideas so as to uplift Catalan culture to a par with other European cultures. Such renewal included a distinctive style of Art Nouveau in architecture and plastic arts, but also the introduction of Symbolism, Decadence, Nietzschean Vitalism, Parnassianism and other contemporaneous movements into Catalan literature and philosophy, a modernizing transformation of Catalan traditional music, and so forth.