Interest in oral literature in the Catalan-speaking lands emerged, as it did in other countries in Europe, in conjunction with Romanticism. In the Catalan case this Romantic interest was overlaid with a drive to cultural self-affirmation, in particular concerning the Catalan language, which had been ousted from administrative and elite usage.

This Romantically inflected cultural and linguistic self-affirmation, known as the Renaixença, affected the various territories (essentially Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencia region) in different degrees of intensity and at different peak moments during the second half of the 19th century. Intellectuals’ increasing interest in oral literature (tales, songs, legends, etc.) revolved around two axes: the Jocs Florals (“Floral Games”, reinstated in 1859) and countryside rambling (which developed in organized form from 1878 onwards).

Folklore scholars such as Francesc de Sales Maspons i Labrós and Francesc Pelai Briz successfully participated in Floral Games with texts based on traditional tales, songs and legends. Folklore also found publication opportunities in literary journals such as Lo Gay Saber (1868-69; 1878-83) and La Renaxensa (1871-93, renamed La Renaixensa in 1876). As to hiking and countryside rambling, hiking associations and their excursions provided an informal type of popular education. Excursions involved a scholarly interest documenting the points of interest of the chosen destination in terms of its folklore, archeology, geography and history, and recording it in drawings and photographs. The hiking associations also published their own journals reporting these activities. Over time, many of these journals actually started specific folklore sections that contained both theoretical articles and samples of oral literature collected by the hikers themselves. Among the most important journals published by hiking associations were Butlletí de l’Associació d’Excursions Catalana (1878-90) and the Butlletí del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya (1891-1938), both produced in Barcelona.

A considerable number of scholars were involved in the 19th-century salvaging of Catalan oral literature.

• In Catalonia the following can be noted: Manuel Milà i Fontanals (Observaciones sobre la poesia popular con muestras de romances catalanes inéditos, 1853; Romancerillo catalán: Canciones tradicionales; 1882); Francesc de Sales Maspons i Labrós (noted above, 1840–1901; Lo Rondallayre, 1871–74; Jocs d’infants, 1874; Tradicions del Vallès, 1876); Mª del Pilar Maspons i Labrós (1841–1907, writing under the pseudonym Maria de Bell-lloch; Narracions i llegendes, 1875); the poet Joaquima Santamaria (pseudonym: Anna de Valldaura, 1854–1930; Tradicions religioses de Catalunya, 1877); Francesc Pelagi Briz i Fernández (Cançons de la terra, 1866-77); the poet Pau Bertran i Bros (1853–1891; Cansons i follies populars, 1885; Lo rondallari català, 1909); Sebastià Farnés (1854–1934; Narraciones populares catalanas, 1893); Cels Gomis (1841–1915; Lo llamp i els temporals, 1884; Meteorologia i agricultura popular, 1888; Botànica popular, 1891); Jacint Verdaguer (Rondalles, published posthumously in 1905).
• On the Balearic Islands, Marià Aguiló’s Romancer popular de la terra catalana: Cançons feudals i cavalleresques appeared in 1893; followed by the Rondaies de Mallorca (1895), compiled by Archduke Louis Salvador of Austria-Tuscany (1847–1915). Antoni Mª Alcover published Aplec de rondaies mallorquines d’en Jordi d’es Racó from 1896 onwards; a popular edition in 24 volumes appeared between 1936 and 1972).
• In the Valencian Country, following the work of the priest Joaquim Martí i Gadea (1837–1920), Francesc Martínez i Martínez (1866–1946) published Còses de la meua terra (la Marina) (1912-47). Adolf Salvà’s (1885–1941) Entre la marina i la muntanya, written in the 1930s, remained unpublished until 1988.
• The priest and folklorist Esteve Caseponce (1850–1932) published Contes vallespirenchs (1907), Rondalles (1914-15) and Rondalles del Vallespir (1915-19) from Catalan-speaking French Roussillon. Some work was also done in the 1880s on Catalan traditions in Sardinia.

One of the most ambitious projects of the period was Miscelánea Folklórica (1887), a collective work instigated in 1884 by the folklore section of the Associació d’Excursions Catalana (“Catalan Hiking Association”). The group made an appeal for fieldwork collection of material with methodic guidelines. The publication is accordingly rigorously researched and scientific rather than literary.

Culturally invested hiking activities continued during the first decades of the 20th century and inspired new institutions such as the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Institute of Catalan Studies, 1907), whose founding members all had ties to the hiking movement. In these years, folklore and oral literature, while maintaining their ties with the Floral Games and the hiking movement, evolved in a more academic direction as a result of this new institutional interest. Rossend Serra i Pagès (1863–1929), for instance, taught folklore courses at the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, the Club Muntanyenc de Catalunya (Mountaineering Club of Catalonia), the Institut de Cultura i Biblioteca Popular per a la Dona (Women’s Cultural Institute and Popular Library) and the Escola d’Institutrius i altres Carreres per a la Dona (Women’s School for Teaching and Other Careers, from which emanated collections such as Mercè Ventosa’s Ulisses i Polifem en la rondallística catalana, 1911, and Sara Llorens’s Cançoner de Pineda, 1931). Serra i Pagès also founded, in conjunction with the University of Barcelona, the Arxiu d’Etnografia i Folklore de Catalunya (“Catalan Ethnographic and Folklore Archive”); in addition, he collaborated with the Institució Patxot as the director of the “Llegendari Català” and was involved in the publication series of the Arxiu de Tradicions Populars.

The most ambitious project in the early 20th century was the Obra del Cançoner Popular de Catalunya (1922-35), a collaboration between the choral society Orfeó Català, the Centre Excursionista, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and the Arxiu d’Etnografia i Folklore de Catalunya. The aim was to collect, methodically and reliably, songs and popular music from the Catalan-speaking lands, with accurate notation of the melodies and documentation of contextual and performance metadata of each song. Though interrupted by the Spanish Civil War, the Obra amassed an important collection of data, and work was resumed in the later decades of the 20th century; 21 volumes of material were published between 1991 and 2011.