Language policy in Catalonia

If you read newspaper articles or blogs in English about Catalonia, I am sure you will have come across the issue of language policy in Catalan schools.

Sadly, there is a lot of mis-information and urban myth around and the vast majority of these blogs have no credibility whatsoever, blinded as they are by their own cultural bias and narrow-minded prejudice.

Obviously, there are a few honourable exceptions out there, like Tom, George, Matthew and probably a few others I have missed.

For centuries, due to its geographical position, Catalonia has been a country where many people have come and settled. Being Catalan does not depend on your family origin or surname, let alone ethnic or cultural background. Everyone can be a Catalan, regardless of where you are from. The only unwritten rule, the only "requirement" is that you “care about” Catalonia, that you integrate socially and basically try to fit in and look for the common good. I think this is a pretty basic notion: everyone is welcome but please try to be one of us too.

We even have our own word for “immigrants”, which is a term rarely used. Instead in Catalan language we use “nouvinguts”, literally “newly arrived”. This word does not have the negative connotations of the word ‘immigrant’. I have travelled extensively around Europe and I don’t know many societies where joining in, becoming part of the host community, is so easy. Perhaps the US is the only similar society where becoming a native is so easy.

However, since the early 20^th century, a significant percentage of immigrants into Catalonia have failed or refused to “join in”. This problem was exacerbated during the fascist dictatorship of General Franco between 1939 and 1975. First, there was a huge number of immigrants from other areas of Spain settling into Catalonia. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, materially changing the demographic profile of Catalonia for ever. The issue was compounded by the fact that Catalan language has never had any legal parity with Spanish in Catalonia, and has been actively persecuted since 1715 until very recently. Due to historical and political reasons, the Spanish state has always sought to impose Spanish language in Catalonia, to the detriment of the legal and social status of Catalan. Over the centuries, this has resulted in Catalan culture being relegated to a second-class status, often aggressively persecuted, tolerated at best, in its own homeland.

The result is that the citizenry of Catalonia is made up of a nearly 50% of people whose family origins can be traced to other areas of Spain (mostly Andalucia and Extremadura) within one or two generations. Of these group, a significant number, mainly first generation immigrants arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, do not speak Catalan, particularly those living in the suburbs of Barcelona and sometimes even their children and grandchildren are still monolingual Spanish speakers. However, those immigrants that settled in less populated areas (Tortosa, Girona, Manresa, etc) were able to integrate more successfully than those who settled in Santa Coloma de Gramenet or in the Barcelona suburbs.

After the end of the dictatorship, the prohibition of Catalan language in official documents, media, education, public use, etc, was lifted. With the advent of the 1978 Constitution and the Estatut d’Autonomia 1979 (Estatut is the legal framework that sets out Catalan partially devolved self-government), Catalan language became co-official.

But becoming co-official does not mean that Catalan and Spanish have equivalent legal status. The Spanish 1978 Constitution states that “everyone has the obligation to know Spanish”. This “obligation” does not extend to the other cooficial languages. Instead, speakers of Catalan (Valencian), Basque and Galician have the “right” to use it.

This legal asymmetry (Spanish obligation for all, Catalan right for some) causes a problem.

A monolingual Spanish-speaker can live in a nominally bilingual region of Spain but does not have to learn the indigenous language of the area, ie: Catalan language. The reason is that the Spanish speaker can always use the argument that since “everybody has the obligation to know Spanish”, the Catalan-speaker should switch to Spanish if he does not speak Catalan. Remember: Spanish is mandatory for everybody, so all Catalan-speakers are bilingual. Thus, the Spanish speaker does not have any incentive to learn the co-official language.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the best way to resolve the problem would be to change the law so that there is absolutely the same legal equivalence between the two languages. Alas, this has never happened in Spain and I don’t think it ever will. Even now in 2010, Catalan members of Parliament are banned from speaking their own language in the Spanish parliament and the Spanish state refuses to make Catalan language an official working language in the EU, despite being the 12^th most spoken language.

To correct and remedy this legal and social inequality, and unable to change the Spanish Constitution to implement legal parity between the two languages, a consensus was formed in 1980 amongst all Catalan parties (except the Catalan branch of the Partido Popular) that education policy will be used to ensure that every child in Catalonia has the best chance possible of becoming bilingual in both Spanish and Catalan.

This was implemented by making Catalan the “vehicular language” in Catalan schools.

There are two objectives with this policy:

1) to correct the social imbalance of language use and knowledge caused by Franco’s dictatorship and mass migration, on top of centuries of persecution;

2) to prevent the formation of separate educational systems based on language and ensuring all children, regardless of background, studied and played together. Catalan society should not be divided because of language and family background.

The latter point is paramount to understand why all the mainstream parties, even the Catalan branch of the Spanish PSOE, support this policy, and why opponents of the policy can’t attain any significant electoral support. (Even the PP is stuck at c15% in Catalan elections).

Many immigrants from other areas of Spain do not speak Catalan, But this is not always because they don’t want to, but because they never had the opportunity to learn it and the chance to use it socially. When they started a new life in Barcelona, Catalan was banned from public and official use. Public usage could lead to problems with the authorities and it often did for thousands of people who dared to confront the regime and ended up beaten up in prison or worse. On top of that, many immigrants were manual labourers with a very basic education in any case. Most of these families settled in the Barcelona area.

It was the mass vote of these families for the PSC-PSOE in the 1980s and 90s, and not for the more Spanish nationalistic PP, that made this Catalan-first educational policy possible in the early ‘80s.

Most people in their 30s whose parents are originally from outside Catalonia will recognise this picture:

Both my parents’ families are originally from outside Catalonia. My father’s family are from Fuencaliente, in the province of Ciudad Real. My mother’s side of the family are from Cadiz. Both arrived to Catalonia in their late teens, in the ‘60s, in abject poverty and with no education. They could hardly read and write and they had nothing to their name.

The majority of immigrants from other areas of Spain, particularly from the south, arrived in similar circumstances.

When this generation of parents (those arrived in the 50s and 60s) were able to choose how they wanted their children (those born in the 70s) to be educated, (when they had a chance to vote in democratic elections in the early 80s) they agreed on one thing:

+ They did not want their children and their neighbour’s (ie Catalan) children to be taught separately in different schools.

The overwhelming consensus was that children born in Catalonia, whether from a Catalan-speaking family or a Spanish-speaking family, should study together and play together. The idea of having an educational system divided along language lines was anathema to the vast majority of my parents’ generation: they wanted their children to have equality of opportunity. And they have voted accordingly ever since until today.

Having seen the impact of a dual educational system in Scotland, I can safely say that the social problems caused by such a divisive framework is hugely detrimental to social cohesion.

Of course, the consensus was not total –it never is. There has always been people in Catalonia who object to their children being taught in Catalan. This has always been the case and is not a recent event. But they, as the electoral results evidence, are in the minority and their argumentative logic is unsustainable as I will expose below.

So we know that educational policy in Catalonia is that the vehicular language for tuition is Catalan. Although this is the official policy, it is not always the case –law adherence is a funny business in Spain. Schools often apply a flexible interpretation depending on the teacher’s fluency in Catalan language and the social mix of the school intake. Moreover, schools run a system of personalised support for those pupils who require further help, for example newly arrived immigrants’ children, are given specialised support.

Since the 1980s until today, the consensus amongst the mainstream Catalan parties and wider society is that this is the best system to ensure that as many pupils as possible become bilingual by the time they leave school. And the consensus is also that any other system in which Catalan language is not given prominence would result in even more children leaving school as monolingual Spanish speakers, just like their parents.

This not only would hinder their employment prospects, like it did for their parents who could not work in the professions or join the civil service once Catalan language was no longer banned from public use; but it would also cripple Catalan society with a mass of school-leavers unable to master the indigenous language of Catalonia.

The economic impact would be undesirable. It would result in a two-tier workforce: those who are bilingual and those who are not, in a region/country/nation (call it what you like) that is, at least officially, bilingual.

Obviously, ceteris paribus, employers will tend to hire the bilingual speaker, which will result in wages for bilingual speakers being higher. This applies more so in the public sector: taxpayer money would be wasted by recruiting monolingual speakers when there are plenty of bilingual speakers available to serve customers that could be monolingual or bilingual. However, more worrying would be the social consequences of such a development. Not only in terms of careers prospects, but in wealth and income inequality. And more importantly, in inequality of opportunity and social cohesion.

In a nutshell, this is the very same scenario that our parents generation wanted to avoid and that is why there is no real support whatsoever (apart from fringe groups) for a tiered educational system based on language. It would lead to social division and inequality of opportunity later in life.

Our parents’ generation understood this point a long time ago –and they did not have to travel to Scotland to see how damaging separate schooling networks, based on cultural markers, are to community’s cohesion.

Even with the current system, there is an alarming number of monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Catalonia who are not fluent in Catalan. However, there are hardly any children in Catalonia, if any at all I dare say, who are monolingual Catalan speakers.

This happens for two reasons:

Firstly, Catalan-speaking parents are always bilingual as we know that knowledge of Spanish is mandatory according to the Constitución. The social and legal presence of Spanish language in all areas of life means that by the time a child reaches adulthood, even in the most remote area of the Catalan countryside, the mix of education policy, social and legal pressure ensures that fluency in Spanish is achieved.

Secondly, however, the same cannot be said of some monolingual Spanish speakers.

Since the highest law in the land (the 1978 Constitución) does not force them to learn Catalan even if they live in Catalonia, some chose not to –and more worryingly object to their children being given the best chance possible of becoming bilingual.

So now it is time to pose a few questions:

1) Should the educational system be tinkered with to please a small percentage of the population who object to their children being given the best chance possible of becoming bilingual in a bilingual region?

The answer has to be no. If anything, I would question the suitability of parents who want their children to remain monolingual in a bilingual region. Are these parents looking after their best interest of their children by preventing their gaining fluency in the indigenous language of Catalonia? Or are the channellig their political frustrations, their cultural predudice through their children?

Additionally, if a concession is made on language policy, who is to say that creationism won’t be next? Or physical education or history lessons?

And a further question is:

2) Should migration flows change or dictate language and educational policy in a self-governing adminstration?

And before you answer, think carefully because if this principle is accepted, then surely it applies not only to Catalonia but to any other society in Europe where there has been massive migration flows from people from othoutise the host community.

Once you have thought about these issues, and considered the different options, there is only one question left:

3) Why would then these people object to current Catalan educational policy?

And the answer can only be anti-Catalan prejudice for most, particularly for the most strident Spanish nationalist groups. For others, and in this group one has to include the growing number of anglo-saxon immigrants, monolingual narrow-mindedness and ignorance about Catalonia play a significant part. Those who question the current consensual policy but are emotionally detached from the whole Spain/Catalonia settlement, should be aware that ultimately the sole objective of many Spaniards attacking the current framework is to erode further the social usage of Catalan language in Catalonia and set corrosive divisions in Catalan society based along language and cultural lines.

The silence that defines them

New Year, same old story. Spanish nationalist violence in Valencia is part of the landscape like the orange trees of the countryside or the palm trees in Alicante.

These incidents are widespread, pervasive and common-place. Spanish police (Policia Nacional or Cuerpo Nacional de Policia) treats Catalan-speakers with contempt at best; normally is threats and violence against anybody who does not yield to their proto-Francoist ideology.

Far-right Spanish nationalist groups operate in Valencia (and in Mallorca) not only with total impunity but with the complicit blind eye of the Spanish State and the operational cover granted by the Spanish Policia Nacional and Guardia Civil.

Picture the scene.

A member of the public on his bike is stopped by Police.

Said member of the public co-operates with Police enquiries and replies in Catalan language initially.

Spanish police then take offence and treat the former member of the public as a criminal and a suspect. Apparently speaking one’s language is a political act (if it is not Spanish). The policemen then threaten him to be careful what he write as they will be reading it.

This happens time and time again in Valencia and the Balearic Islands with total impunity. A few weeks ago, a guy was beaten up in the airport for daring to speak Catalan to the Guardia Civil. If this happened against any other social group, there would be international comdemnation for such incidents. It would no be tolerated in any other normal, democratic country. Can we imagine a Canadian policeman treating someone like a criminal for speaking in French in Quebec? Unfortunately, not much has changed since the Franco era for Catalan speakers outside the Principality of Catalonia.

The Spanish State allows this discrimination to be socially acceptable and legally enforceable. The Spanish media complicitly turns a blind eye. Thus, these incidents which occur regularly across the Catalan speaking areas of Spain go unreported by the mass media.

Where are now the advocates of individual rights? Where are those who shout loudest proclaiming the virtues of bilingualism? They make a lot of noise about language policy in Catalonia but their silence about the treatment of Catalan speakers in Valencia is conspicuous.

They remain silent because their concern is not about individual rights of any citizens or any concern about any Catalan children not being bilingual (the only ones that are not bilingual are Spanish-speaking pupils that do not speak Catalan for every Catalan-speaking child also speaks Spanish). Their only concern, their only true objective is to obliterate Catalan language from the territories where it has been historically spoken until recently. They have almost succeeded in Valencia (the language is all but gone in Alicante) and as I wrote about before, they will succeed in the Catalan-speaking counties of Aragon and the Balearic Islands before focusing on Catalonia.

In the meantime, anyone who is a Valencian-speaker is a second-class citizen in their own country –unless they accept they must switch to Spanish at any opportunity.

Pseudo-bilingualism only enshrines the supremacy of Spanish in law, and ensures the social decline of the indigenous language of the Catalan Countries. Linguistic genocide by any other name is taking place in Valencia but this never gets reported by the mass media or the "intelectual" lobby. Their silence reveals their twisted agenda of allowing the Spanish state to do the job that Franco, and others before him, could not finish. The Spanish state may be a democracy of sorts, but the same old agenda is still in place.

Links:

Racó Catalá [cat] – chronicle of the incident

L'informatiu [cat] - the victim himself

Fascist impunity, and more of the same.

DIY democracy

There has been quite decent international coverage of the popular referendums on independence in Catalonia. This will be enough to anger the Spanish nationalists who believe that Spanish unity and sovereign integrity is somehow God’s will and indestructible. Nothing angers the Spanish political classes more than the “internationalisation” of the national conflicts of the Basque Country and Catalonia with Spain.

Just to recap, given that the Spanish state does not allow the Catalan parliament to vote on the issue of organising a referendum to allow Catalans to decide their own constitutional future, community associations throughout Catalonia have endeavoured to set up their own vote.

Of course, these votes have not legally binding since they are organised separately, and with the opposition of the Spanish state. Spain is home to an interesting form of democracy which revels in preventing the use of the ballot box. As we all know, “Spain is different”.

Anyway, after the referendum in Arenys de Munt, near Barcelona, took place despite the presence of Spanish fascists Falange, many other villages and towns set out to organise their own. This happenned last weekend, and the results are quite remarkable.

With an average of 30% turnout, marginally below European elections, about 95% voted in favour of independence.

Now, nobody says that all those who abstain at European elections are anti-Europe... But, surprise, surprise, in this referendum, organised entirely by volunteers and against the threat of legal action by the Spanish state against local authorities, a referendum without the resources of the State and without the support of the official media, the Spanish press equates failing to vote with opposition to independence.

But if they are so sure about it, if they are so convinced that an official referendum would endorse Catalonia remaining part of Spain..... why do they try so hard to prevent an official, legally binding referendum taking place? What are they afraid of?

The State against

The last few weeks have seen a major controversy in Catalonia.

The heirs of Agustí Centelles have sold his legacy to the Spanish Estate for a reported €700,000. The Generalitat de Catalunya could only bid €500,000.

The original negatives and the photo archive will now be transferred to the city of Salamanca.

[Link]

That this will be the fate of Centelles’ lifework is a travesty of history but more than anything is a clear example of the precarious situation of Catalonia at all levels, politically, economically and culturally.

In the past, Franco and his fascists troops stole this kind of stuff so that it would be archived in the Archivo Nacional in Salamanca. Now, the Spanish state buys it off with the money they have pillaged from Catalonia thanks to a fiscal framework that starves Catalonia of resources to look after its infrastructure and public services, including museums.

It was ever thus. [BBC News]

Bring it on

In the end, it became an embarrassment.
After having the nation(s) worked up in a frenzy about the presence of Nick Griffin MEP, leader of the British National Party, in Question Time, it turns out that he is a political lightweight, a lame-duck panellist unwilling or unable to convey his views with any sincerity or even conviction. It was revealing in more than one way.

First, the decision to invite him to the program by the BBC.

It is understandable that many people were oppose to his appearance. It gives the BNP a platform to peddle their message of hatred and ignorant racism. However, whether we like it or not, the BNP has a number of councillors in England, and achieved 6% of the UK vote at the last European elections, resulting in two BNP MEPs being elected.
On that basis, the BBC did the right thing.

The lesson perhaps for militant anti-fascist campaigners is that we should not be afraid of giving people like the BNP a platform. Mr Griffin got challenged last night in a way he has not been challenged so far in his other BBC appearances on his own. By trying to prevent the BNP being invited to the BBC, the Left (whatever this means nowadays) gives ammunition to the sense of grievance and persecution that feeds the BNP at local, grassroots level.

Last night’s performance by Griffin was an embarrassment to his party and to himself.
There is nothing to be afraid of. Cambridge degrees are over-rated. Now, when are the Greens getting invited to Question Time?

What the anti-fascist movement and in general the Left, far-left or whatever we want to call it has to do is to challenge the BNP in local communities –and get elected representatives. It speaks volumes of the inability of the socialist/communists parties that the BNP can achieve 20% of the vote in some local communities, and even 6% at UK level, but the Left parties have no representation whatsoever, not even after a banking-induced crisis. And in Scotland, where the SSP managed to get 6 MSPs out of 135, they immolated themselves in typical Left fashion and now they have 1.

The performance
Nick Griffin lost his composure very quickly. He was unable to answer any question with any conviction or sincerity. When he was offered total judicial immunity by Jack Straw, Home Secretary, to explain his views on the Holocaust, he bottled it.

When it came to forced repatriation, something that is a key message of the BNP, he bottled it again.

Even when asked about what does he mean by “indigenous peoples”, he also crumbled, unable to muster any kind of coherent response. Well, I have no such qualms and I dare say that the “indigenous” peoples he means are white folk of British or Irish stock. Well, at least some progress is being made: now the Irish are in.

Throughout the programme, it appeared to me that he was just trying to explain what his party really stands for, and thus he failed to answer most questions. If I was a BNP supporter, I would be furious that such a precious opportunity has been wasted.

The others
Particularly, when the panel was nothing to write home about.
Bonnie Greer, admittedly someone I find slightly annoying, could not be bothered. She was like a car in second gear. I understand that for someone of mixed race sitting next to Mr Griffin must be quite repulsive but this should not be an excuse for ambivalence. That she managed to unnerve Mr Griffin saying so little and in such an half-arsed manner reveals how weak and feeble the BNP really is.

Jack Straw was in professional politico mode -a total turn-off. Failed to answer the question on immigration he was asked and failed to recognise that immigration is a problem for some communities, and that the Labour government has let these communities down by first failing to control immigration, failing to invest in these deprived areas, and failing to put a stop to the myths progagated by the BNP about immigrants’ benefits, rights and so on.

Baroness Varsi (I never thought I would see an Asian Tory peer, the world is changing really fast...) was also in professional politician mode. Her quote of “rights and responsibilities” made me cringe. Typical “compassionate Conservative” tone and discourse. How she can live amongst the Tories is beyond me.

Chris Humne for the Lib Dems was perhaps the most convincing (or least unconvincing) of the other panellist. He would have made a fine LibDem leader and I am not sure why he was not elected to the post.

The aftermath
In the aftermath of the debate, BNP supporters have come out in force and denounced the “lynching” or “witch hunt” to which Mr Griffin was a victim of.

And for what? For being given a rough time. For being challenged. Well, Blair was given a rough time too when he was called a war criminal and he put up with it and did not cry like a big blouse.
It just shows how feeble is the BNP threat that the scrutiny of a mediocre panel and amateurish audience is enough to send them home crying “foul”. It is a bit rich coming from the BNP to use words like mob or lynching –they irony seems to have been lost on them however.

Now he is demanding a repeat of the programme, and also a one-on-one debates with Jack Straw and also with Cameron. No less.

The problem is that Mr Griffin has already had a chance at the big time –and blew it. It did not make good television, and it did not show him up in a good light. Why asking for more punishment?

Because this is how the BNP thrives. By playing victim to a "far-left BBC conspiracy" (has he not read Mrs Flanders?) it is easier to go door-to-door in the deprived, working class neighbourhoods in England and point out how the establishment are protecting immigrants against the white English. The BNP will keep getting councillors elected, and probably will get another MEP next time. But that should not worry us too much. Are we naïve enough to think only 10% of the electorate in this country are racist?

BBC Links:

BBC News – Key extracts

BBC News – Mr Griffin complaints about a “lynch mob”

BBC News – voters’ reaction in Dagenham, London

BBC News – media reaction summary

BBC News - The BNP and the white working class

Best of the rest:

The Herald – 8m tune in,

The Times – writers’ review summary

The Independent – Outrage and not debate confronted Griffin, choked on publicity

The Daily Telegraph – his wife is right, the Italian models in the BNP’s leaflet

The Guardian – sympathy for the underdog, frontpage slideshow, facts,

Wikileaks closed down?

I am trying to access WikiLeaks but it is not working.

Anyone out there is able to connect to http://wikileaks.org or http://www.wikileaks.org

Yesterday, The Guardian had an editorial in praise of it…. could this be the death-knell for Wikileaks?

If I do a PING, it comes up with this result:

Update: 1900h: well, I don't know what happen but Wikileaks.org was down for about 2-4 hours between 2-5pm at least. It is now up and running. I am going to check up if I have any neighbours, currently or in the immediate future, in the BNP.

The uselessness of foreign correspondents

Apart from Robert Fisk, that is.

Today it was the final straw: foreign journalists covering Spain are quite a useless lot. Do they spend their time teaching Spanish part-time to make ends meet?

I understand that news are provided for a British readership but to accept that argument after the news coverage today is to accept that readers of British broadsheets are as braindead as tabloid readers.

Of all the things that have happened in Spain in recent weeks, the only one that got significant coverage in the UK press was the decision by the Catalan parliament to abolish “happy hour” and “irresponsible” drink promotions.

The Independent

The Guardian

The Telegraph

BBC News

Note: I will await until The Times’ journo catches up.

What about?

+ The corruption cases involving the PP in Mallorca and Valencia.

+ The independence referendums in Catalonia

+ The arrests of Basque politicians whose only crime was to meet up.

+ The banking crisis

But no, our collection of rent-a-word ex-pats decide to write back to their editors about some minor legislation about drinking. Dumbing down indeed.

Fascist inmpunity

One again, another Fascist aggression in Valencia by Spanish nationalists.

As ever, the Spanish Fascist gangs operate with total impunity in Valencia.

The Spanish authorities look the other way -as do many bloggers and Spain-based foreign journos.

I guess it is ok for some to beat the shit out of a Catalan activist in the name of Spain.

Racó Català [cat]