"Our language has never been imposed,
but it has always been a
language of encounter.
Nobody was ever forced to speak Spanish.
The various
peoples freely choose to speak the language of Cervantes."
This part of a speech by Spanish king
Juan Carlos I during the 2001 Cervantes Awards ceremony shows how Spanish
history has been given a fresh spin in recent years. His advisors either
completely ignore history or their degree of manipulation and cynicism is
extraordinary. Probably both things are true.
The
real events in history, however, are well documented. What follows is a short
non-comprehensive summary.
In 1712, heeding the general advice
given by Count-Duke Olivares in 1625, Phillip V secretly instructed his
representatives in Catalonia, stressing that “you will try to introduce the
Spanish language, and with that purpose you will give disguised orders so that
you get the required results without being noticed.”
He ratified this instruction in 1714,
"to try to introduce the Spanish language in those villages than do not
speak it ("villages" as equivalent to nationality, not towns or
cities).”
Therefore, since Catalonia was annexed,
Castile promoted illiteracy in Spanish in order to turn Catalonia into
something that had never been before: a territory under the sovereignty of the
Crown of Castile. In fact, bilingualism was the first step of the process to
replace the language. This desire, which begins, explicitly, in the 17th
century, continued through the 19th and 20th centuries and is still going on.
More specifically, I’d like to give
examples by areas where strict regulation with no precedent was enforced to
eradicate the Catalan language. According to Jesús Tusón, a reputated linguist,
“(the notion of) one country, one language is thus one of the most destructive
ideas on human diversity, an aberration that threatens the natural and historic
diversity of our species.”
EDUCATION
XVIII Century
1715 - Consultation to the Council of
Castile: In
the classroom there should be no books in Catalan; this language will not be
used in speaking or writing and the Christian doctrine will be taught and
learned in Spanish.
1780 - Royal provision enacted by the count of Floridablanca: Requires all schools to teach the
grammar of the Spanish Royal Academy.
XIX Century
1821 - Quintana Plan obliges to use Spanish in the school system.
1837 - Royal regulation included bodily and defamatory punishments for
children who speak Catalan at school.
1837 - Instruction by the government of the Balearic Islands obliges to punish students who speak
Catalan, who were detected thanks to the information provided by other
students.
1857 - Moyano Act confirms the prohibition of
Catalan in public education. It is considered the act which contributed the
most to the Catalan children being illiterate in their own language, as it was
since the second half of the XIX century when primary education was widespread
in Spain.
XX Century
1923 - Edict that imposes teaching of Spanish during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship.
However, this is not the only one, as I show below.
1924 - General Losada imposes teaching of Spanish at schools. A Royal Order punishes
teachers who teach in Catalan. That very year, 1924, Antoni Gaudí himself was
arrested and beaten for speaking in Catalan to some police officers.
1926 - Royal decree that punishes teachers who speak Catalan by transferring them.
1938 - Act of April 9th abolishes the Statute of Catalonia and
prohibits Catalan.
1939 - Prohibition to speak or write in Catalan in all public or private schools.
BACKGROUND
In fact, the story of the persecution of
the Catalan language is similar to a story dating back to the 16th century,
when the Andalusian population was subjected to a fierce political, cultural,
religious, and linguistic repression. A surprising regulation of persecution
against this people was established: they were forbidden to wear their
Andalusian clothes and to speak Arabic. The words that are heard still nowadays
when somebody want to forbid someone else from speaking Catalan, “speak in
Christian” originate from this time. If there was a wedding in a Moorish
family, all doors and windows of the house had to be open so that people on the
street could hear whether songs in Arabic were sung inside or whether Arabic
dances took place. These people were sent to Castile, and the children were
separated from their parents. Then the children were adopted by Catholic
families to give them a Christian education. This system of semi-slavery of the
children was denounced in the book “El Lazarillo de Tormes”, whose authorship
is still debated
LAW
1716 - Nova Planta Decree: “The proceedings before the “Real Audiencia” will be
conducted in Spanish.”
1768 - Royal Order of Aranjuez: Carlos III de Borbón ratifies the
imposition of Spanish throughout the administration of justice, in all public
schools and in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Catalonia as well.
1838 - The epitaphs in cemeteries are prohibited in Catalan.
1862 - Notaries Act prohibits the use of Catalan in notary deeds.
1870 - Civil Register Act prohibits the use of Catalan in the Civil Registry.
1881 Civil Procedure Act which prohibits the use of Catalan in courts.
RELIGION
In
1755 the Decree of the religious organization “Escolapios” states that all
church members are required to speak only in Spanish and Latin, among
themselves and with the rest of the population. And includes a penalty
consisting of being fed exclusively with bread and water, in case of
uncompliance.
1902 - Royal decree of Romanones prohibited teaching the catechism in
Catalan.
ENTERTAINMENT
1799 - Royal order prohibits “acting, singing, dancing and any performance unless it is in
Spanish.”
1801 - "Instructions" by Manuel de Godoy on theaters prohibit any language other
than Spanish.
1837 - Elizabeth II, via Royal Order confirmed prohibition of Catalan in
theaters and theatrical performances, and those works written in Catalan were
not even admitted for review by the censor. As per the order, that prohibition
was a response to the large number of works written in Catalan that were
presented to the censor.
COMMERCIAL COMMUNICATIONS
1772 - Royal Instruction: forced to write the accounting books
in Spanish under the following paragraph: "Royal Order of his grace by
virtue of which it is required to all merchants and traders at wholesale and at
retail in my Realm, being local or foreigners, to write their books in Spanish
in accordance with the law of the new compilation.”
1886 – General Management of Post and Telegraph prohibits speaking Catalan on the
phone.
DENIAL
However, we must remember that the
Parliament of Cádiz was presented a proposal for the official use of Catalan.
The proposal was rejected by 120 votes against and 13 in favor. The Count of
Romanones, who responded to such nonsense, said, emphatically, that the co-official
status of Catalan was "unacceptable." But the question is the
following: wasn’t the Constitution of Cadiz based on equality before the law to
all Spanish citizens?
In addition to the imposition of Spanish
by all possible means, the next step was to deny the fact that Catalan had
never been an official language even in Catalonia. Thus, Menéndez Pidal
published in the newspaper “El Impartial” in Madrid the article "Bilingual
Catalonia,” in which he stated that Catalan was never official language at the
Catalan Parliament. And once the goal of a bilingual Catalonia was achiebed,
they began to deny that Catalan society had ever been monolingual. The report
by Jesús Patiño, head of the "Council of Justice and Government" in
1714 (the highest authority of the occupying state,) explained clearly the real
situation. This document confirmed the "peculiar" situation of
Catalan monolingualism when the troops of Phillip V arrived in 1714: "they
are so passionate for their homeland… and this passion is so excessive that
disrupts their thinking and they only speak in their native language."
FRANCO REGIME
The linguistic repression of Catalan
speakers had already become a top national objective when in 1939 one of the
most repressive periods against Catalan language began: Francoism. On that year
Franco stated: "We wish absolute national unity, with only one language,
the Spanish, and with a single way of being, the Spanish one.”
1939:
Prohibition to speak or write Catalan:
On the radio
Books
Theater, including the play “Els
Pastorets” (traditional Christmas play)
Any type of forms, including wedding
invitations and first communion cards
Signs and ads
Names
Films, until 1964
Factories
All public and private schools
Headstones on cemeteries and obituaries
Names
of hotels, restaurants, bars, trade names, trademarks and boats
Conferences and cultural events
Private correspondence, until January
1940
Records of Civil Registers
Public employees, between themselves and with
the public
Street names
We could add a huge list of local
regulations, military and civilian instructions, to the above. For example, in
the letter by Spanish Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer addressed to all Catalan
bishops: “New linguistic rules in the communication between the Church and the
pilgrims, until the Spanish language is understood by everyone (which will be
achieved through intensive work in schools).”
Another
example is the prisons’ regulation from 1956 which clearly states that
prisoners can only speak in Spanish.
TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY
It might be hard to believe that after
Franco's death, during the transition to democracy period, some laws which had
the objective to relegate Catalan to the back burner came into force. Although
the current organization into autonomies has led many people to believe that
repression against Catalan is something that belongs to the past, the reality
is quite different.
Between 1976 and 2008 at least 149 Royal
decrees and other regulations have been published to ensure the mandatory labeling
in Spanish of certain products such as food products and others. In Catalonia
there is only one regulation concerning labeling.
Patents
Act dated 1986 requires the documentation to be submitted in Spanish.
In 1989 the Royal Decree that approves
the regulations of the Commercial Register states that all registrations should
be only in Spanish.
In 1995 Act 30/1995 of Regulation and
Supervision of Private Insurance requires all policies to be written in
Spanish.
21st CENTURY
Despite
the historical persecution suffered by speakers of Catalan, exposed here very
briefly, Catalan is nowadays one of the languages in the EU with more users,
comparable to Swedish, Portuguese, and Greek, among others. However, the
Spanish government blocked the official recognition of Catalan in Europe, as
Martin Schulz, Chair of the European Parliament, said. Denial is still a
national matter.
2010 Constitutional Court ruling
regarding the Statute of Catalonia: Catalan is not the preferred language of
the government in Catalonia, nor the language that should be spoken in schools.
2011
The regional government began a persecution never seen before of the Catalan
language in the Balearic Islands. This led to a hunger strike by several
retirees in Mallorca. In Valencia, the regional government also persecutes the
normal use of the language, while ignoring over 100,000 families that keep
asking for schooling in Catalan.
2012
The High Court of Catalonia imposes mandatory schooling in Spanish for children
upon request from the parents, upon the request presented by a total of six
families.
2012
The High Court of Catalonia relegates Catalan to non-preferred language in the
Barcelona cown government.
2012
The Government of Aragon rebrands the language spoken in the border with Catalonia
as "Aragonese language of the eastern side." This is equivalent to
calling Austrian the German spoken in Austria.
2012
The High Court of Catalonia states Catalan should not be the language spoken in
schools in Catalonia.
2012
The Spanish Minister of Education presented a draft regulation by which the
Catalan language becomes optional and it is not a requirement to finalize
compulsory education. Apparently the second part has been revised.
The conclusion is that the legal
framework that protected the Catalan language, after centuries of relentless
persecution, is not guaranteed. In fact it is far from it.
Many
South-American citizens that live in our country are often surprised by Catalan
vitality, since many of their languages disappeared due to the colonial rule.
And they do not know half of it!
While it is true that languages are
always innocent and it is the men who use them as instruments of power and
submission, it is also true that, as J. Tusón says, "the death of a
language is never innocent, it is never due to the will of the speakers."
The Catalan case is not an exception. Estonian writer Sofi Oksana, in her novel
"Purge" - European prize for best novel in 2010 - tells with
extraordinary harshness and realism the occupation of her country by the Soviet
Union. In an interview about her work, the novelist explained that during
Soviet times when someone would go shopping and start a conversation in
Estonian the response was usually "speak a human language, please.” This
surprising situation lasted for only fifty years.
Back to J. Tusón, in "Natural
Heritage" he says: "and if we ask for respect for each human being,
it is also fair that we demand the survival of each of the languages that are
our breeding ground.”
Eugènia
de Pagès (Professor of History)
