2014/10/13

Barcelona hosts the first Gaudí World Congress


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Worldwide experts gather to discuss the Catalan architect's works

The first edition of the Gaudí World Congress is being held in Barcelona since October 6 and will end tomorrow. Seven biannual congresses have been scheduled until 2026 when Gaudí's Sagrada Familia is expected to be complete. Worldwide experts are discussing these days the Catalan architect's works and exchanging new studies, documents, works and materials.

This year 'The laboratory of the Genius and the origin of shapes. The Crypt of Colònia Güell' is the title of the congress, organized by Universitat de Barcelona and The Gaudí Research Institute. The meetingsa are held on the conference rooms of the university's historic Building, where the architect graduated in 1878.

This congress is the result of a long-time petition by the architect's specialists and aims to study Gaudí's values, solutions and how can those be applied to the 21st century problems.

More on Gaudí:


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2014/06/14

What Does a 36-Foot-Tall Human Tower Have to Do With Catalan Independence?


What Does a 36-Foot-Tall Human Tower Have to Do With Catalan Independence?
An eye-catching protest across Europe is steeped in cultural heritage says 

In the past few days, in the central squares of eight European capitals, Catalans from northeastern Spain launched an innovative, if quirky, publicity stunt. At noon on June 8, Barcelona-time—the region’s major city, they raised traditional human towers in a coordinated campaign dubbed: “Catalans want to vote. Human Towers for Democracy.” The movement also sparked a following and human towers rose up in more than 60 other towns and cities, including Montreal and Santiago in Chile.

The Catalans are actively seeking international support for a referendum on November 9th, allowing a vote to settle the question of an independent state for the region. The Spanish government maintains that the Catalans have no legal right to pose this question, but most Catalans think that as members of European democracy, they can call for a non-binding plebiscite. The use of human towers to draw attention to the fact that they want their voices to be heard is a dramatic and intriguing display of a performance that was declared in 2010 by UNESCO as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.”

The Catalan struggle for independence has its roots in culture as much as it does in economics and politics. Catalans speak a unique Romance language, distinct from the French and Spanish spoken in the region, and Catalonia’s political identity dates to the 12th century. Catalonia became part of unified Spain, when King Phillip V abolished its local laws in the first decades of the 18th century.

For centuries, the region maintained its separate identity while under Spanish rule, but by the 1930s, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who held a particular contempt for Catalonia, enforced a series of measures to stamp out its distinctive language and culture. The Catalan language was not taught in schools or generally used in public, and Catalan versions of names were not permitted on birth certificates or other public records.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, a vibrant independence movement led by a number of strong civic organizations promotes and advocates for this distinctly Catalan culture. Barcelona’s Palace of Catalan Music in Barcelona, often considered a modernist masterpiece, was designed and built by Gaudí’s teacher, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, for the Orfeó Català, a choral music group that sought to provide a broad public access to Catalan music. The current government in Madrid permits the use of the Catalan language, but teaching Catalan in schools continues to be hotly debated. Catalans often also point out that the central government levies more taxes in Catalonia than it reinvests in government services. In 1961, while Spain was still under Franco’s rule, five Catalan men formed Òmnium Cultural to promote Catalan culture and language. Their organization collaborated with the Coordinating Committee of Human Tower Teams of Catalonia to mount the recent performances in Berlin, Brussels, Geneva, Lisbon, London and Paris.

The human towers or castells, date to the 18th century, when people in the local town of Valls began to build these remarkable temporary structures at annual festivals. Since that time, local clubs have passed on the tradition, and the amateur teams compete each year at large festivals under the motto “strength, balance, courage, and seny”—a particularly Catalan value that mixes good sense and a calm demeanor and is often contrasted with rauxa, a sense of careless abandon.

The team members that mount the castells wear a simple uniform that includes white pants, a colored shirt, a bandana and a faixa, a sash up to 36-feet-long that provides back support and a handle for climbers. Ideally the castell rises and falls with a smooth and elegant ease. The towers are traditionally called by the number of stages and people per stage—it can have between one and five people per stage. So a castell with three people per stage and five stages is called a "3 by 5." The most ambitious human towers may contain ten stages, but only two human towers in the last 200 years have been assembled and disassembled with that claim to fame.

At the base is the bulky pinya, the band of people who support the weight of the tower. Then climbers descend up the backs of the members of the base and onto their shoulders, locking arms, and stabilizing that stage. The next set of climbers repeat the action until the last stage is completed, but it is amazing to watch as there can be three or four people crawling up the outside of the human tower at once. Really tall castells include a central tower inside the outer ring to provide support, and that pillar stays in place until the rest of the tower is dismantled.

The last person up is usually a child wearing a safety helmet (the Coordinating Committee recently employed modern standards for safety), who stands at the top of the tower, sometimes on the shoulders of nine other people. This child traditionally holds up four fingers, a gesture that evokes the four red strips on the Catalan flag and turns this interesting human feat into an act of cultural nationalism. When Catalans reflect on tower building, they often stress the sense of “community, cooperation and integration—a metaphor or ideal of what many Catalans aspire for Catalonia to be one day,” as Catalan historian Meritxell Martin-Pardo explains.

The Catalans’ use of traditional culture to make a political statement is not unique, but what is remarkable here is how that they are using cultural performances as a tool to build support for their desire for self-determination. This strategic use of cultural and artistic expression is part of what some scholars are calling cultural democracy, the idea that people have the right to determine how their cultural life develops. Cultural democracy also embraces the idea that people use their cultural art forms as a tool to seek their own best interests and their cultural values to chart their course through the present and into the future. It reflects the basic human right to free expression as enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It honors and celebrates cultural diversity, and it nurtures active participation in the cultural life of communities. Like others engaged in cultural democracy around the world, the Catalans are using traditional culture to make a modern point about a very real and relevant issue of the day: They are building human towers for democracy.

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2014/06/10

#onthisday 88 years ago Gaudí died





Gaudí, the most original Catalan architect


Gaudí has been a cry for originality in his personal and genuine works, with a personal style that has deserved the title of key figure in the architecture of all time- and when we mention Modernism the name Gaudí is without a doubt always implicit in the word.

Gaudí was very well connected with the Catalan bourgeoisie, especially with Eusebi Güell, since under the shelter of his sponsorship the artist was able to realize his ideas. He was a profound and deeply religious man, and throughout his life he displayed a strict civic commitment and a great love for his land "Catalonia" read more...


Gaudí: Nature in Arquitecture

One hundred and fifty years after his birth and 76 after his death, the architect Antoni Gaudí has finally transcended the local and national sphere to become one of the identifying signs of the city of Barcelona, and a phenomenon of universal importance. However, this has not always been the case. In the past Gaudí and his work have been met with wide-scale incomprehension and even outright hostility. It is only with the passing of time that his work has become better recognised, due to its spectacular nature in form, and hence been analysed in depth. The result of this is that his position is now secured and his contribution to the art of the 20th century is at last understood as being fundamental read more...

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2014/02/22

Gaudí, the most original Catalan architect

Gaudí has been a cry for originality in his personal and genuine works, with a personal style that has deserved the title of key figure in the architecture of all time- and when we mention Modernism the name Gaudí is without a doubt always implicit in the word.
Gaudí was very well connected with the Catalan bourgeoisie, especially with Eusebi Güell, since under the shelter of his sponsorship the artist was able to realize his ideas. He was a profound and deeply religious man, and throughout his life he displayed a strict civic commitment and a great love for his land "Catalonia".
His architecture is inspired by the styles of the past such as Arabic, Gothic and Baroque, which he captures making them his own in a very original way. His creation never hesitates to plunge into the nature and the light of the Mediterranean in order to find his own inspiration.



Gaudí's architecture recreates the use of curves and dynamic forms from the Gothic, which excelled by the application of artisan decorative techniques in stained glass and iron forges, as well as by the treatment of mosaics and colourful ceramic fragments.
When Gaudí was hit by a tram and died that afternoon of June 7th 1926 he was an architect known for his innovative creations. But he was not fully accepted, as detractors failed to understand the audacity of the artist's conception of his own art and the boldness of his technical construction.
What remains to note is that in this great artist's life there was a strong ideological commitment to nationhood in terms of Catalan identity. There are stories that are very typical of Gaudí and which are the proof of this stance such as
when Miguel de Unamuno visited the works of the Sagrada Família and he asked the poet Joan Maragall to be his interpreter in view of Gaudí's reluctance to speak Spanish.
Another example would be when the 11th September 1924, under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the architect was arrested for going to a mass held at the Church of St. Just in memory of the fallen patriots after the devastation of 1714. As the mass was being held in Catalan he was prevented from going into the church and he was forced to pay a fine of 50 pesetas.
He uttered these words after this incident, which prophesied a future in which unfortunately we still find ourselves: "when I remember what happened to me I worry that we're heading for a dead end, and ultimately a radical change will be necessary".
Gaudi died five years before 14th April 1931, day of the proclamation of the Catalan Republic.
This collection of experiences shows an artist with a strong ideological commitment to national identity.
Creatively, his work exudes Catalonia everywhere, from the projection of its buildings to the ornate details expressing a clearly Catalan aesthetic sense.

Montse Solé and Montse Olivé
@salmadonart
.

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2013/07/25

Second Symposium on Catalonia in Melbourne (Australia)



Barcelona, Gaudí, Dalí, Miró, Barça all have one thing in common: Catalonia. Catalonia is a nation currently facing a major challenge that could define its future as a country after the massive demonstrations on 11 September 2012. Over 1.5 million people filled the streets of Barcelona in favour of the right to a state of their own, independently from Spain.

In this timely moment, Melbourne University and Monash are jointly hosting the Second Symposium on Catalonia in Australia. The event will bring together, sixteen years after its first edition, the main researchers and research students from Catalonia in this continent.

The Symposium will be held at Melbourne University and has a varied programme, consisting of the following sessions: 'Catalans Abroad', 'Catalonia: Community, Commitment and Collective Action', 'Barcelona: The Great Enchantress' and 'Catalan Literature: Classic and Contemporary'. Experts such as Professor Alfredo Martínez Expósito, Professor of Hispanic Studies at University of Melbourne, Dr Stewart King, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Catalan Studies at Monash University, Dr Lilit Thwaites, Honorary Research Associate at La Trobe University, Dr Victòria Gras, President of Catalan Cultural Centre of Victoria, Peter Gerrand, Honorary Research Associate at Monash University, and many more will debate around these four themes.

The event, which is free, celebrates the resumption of the teaching of Catalan language and culture at an Australian University and is supported by the Catalan Centre of Victoria, the only organised Catalan community in Australia working to promote its culture.

Location
The University Of Melbourne
University Of Melbourne
230 Grattan StreetParkville Vic 3010
Jim Potter Room, Old Physics G-16.

Date
27/07/2013

Times
Sat: 9.15am – 6.30pm
The event includes four sessions. You can find the program in the following link: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/spanish-latin-american-studies/files/2013/07/Second-Symposium-on-Catalonia-in-Australia-program.pdf

Price
Free


Bookings
jeremy.taylor@unimelb.edu.au.

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2013/06/24

Gaudí: Nature in Arquitecture

One hundred and fifty years after his birth and 76 after his death, the architect Antoni Gaudí has finally transcended the local and national sphere to become one of the identifying signs of the city of Barcelona, and a phenomenon of universal importance. However, this has not always been the case. In the past Gaudí and his work have been met with wide-scale incomprehension and even outright hostility. It is only with the passing of time that his work has become better recognised, due to its spectacular nature in form, and hence been analysed in depth. The result of this is that his position is now secured and his contribution to the art of the 20th century is at last understood as being fundamental. 

There is something intrinsically bipartite about Gaudí: he is an artisan and an artist; he is a magician and a technician; he is a Modernista and an expressionist; he is archaic and modern; he is sacred and secular; he is a man of the 19th century and a man of the 20th. All of these seemingly oxymoronic descriptions are, in my view, those that generate a dialectical energy, the result of which is the forthrightness in the forms and concepts of this unusual genius, who has had dozens of books written about him, but who has hidden facets that are yet to be discovered. 

Not long ago, the eminent architect, art historian and academic, Fernando Chueca Goitia, accurately described the place that Gaudí occupies in art and architecture. Chueca referred to Gaudí as the “the greatest Spanish artist between Goya and Picasso [...] about whom it is not easy to talk, as he was a very complex man and due to the circumstances surrounding his life”. He concluded that Gaudí is “both of and beyond architecture”, a statement that places Gaudí in his rightful position in the context of the history of modern art and which underlines Gaudí’s typical manner of doing things, a man who overstepped the traditional boundaries of architecture and designed with consideration to constructional processes and the habitability of the spaces, blending architecture with art and following an intuition that sprang from the fount of tradition but which led towards innovation. It was in all likelihood due to this that Elies Rogent, the principal at the School of Architecture in Barcelona, remarked to his colleagues when Gaudí graduated in 1878 that he did not know whether he had given a degree to “a madman or a genius”, in his perception that there was something extraordinary about the newly-qualified architect, then aged 26. 

It is clear that Gaudí’s early architecture was significantly imbued with the neo- Mudéjar style and Orientalism, and that it even included Neoclassical touches and later came to incorporate neo-Medieval elements. Even so, Gaudí stood out from his contemporaries because even when he was employing a familiar idiom, he devised solutions of his own and formulated original repertoires. Though it is common to place Gaudí amongst the great Modernistas –Catalan and European– of his times, there are also those who, due to the forthrightness of his forms, consider him to be closer to Expressionism. Chueca, however, goes further and defines him as the “sole architect of Spanish expressionism and one of the greatest in Europe”.


We cannot deny that Gaudí was immersed in the context of the Modernistas and that many of the formal elements of this movement also appear in his work, especially undulating and curvilinear forms, but it is not true to say that Gaudí was intrinsically an Art Nouveau architect in the mould of Hector Guimard, for example. Perhaps the most appropriate approach to take in order to situate Gaudí would be to follow the advice of Cèsar Martinell, Gaudí’s disciple and collaborator, and talk of Gaudinism as a style in its own right or as a singular 'ism', because he surpasses the definition and content of Modernisme. At the turn of the 19th century, Modernisme signified the change or transition from academic to a more modern architecture, though both were different to Gaudí’s concept of the architectural. In his work, he took the architectural styles of the past as his starting point and evolved from there, taking into account firstly the concept and then the constructional techniques and results of the experimentation he conducted throughout his life, because his ultimate true goal was to arrive at a “total work of art”, a work in which there was no distinction between the smallest ornamental detail and the most complex structural solution. 

Gaudí was interested in the past but always looked ahead towards the future, towards everything that he intuited would renew art and architecture. As a result, it is not surprising that Gaudí turned the most advanced style of his era, the Gothic, into the seed for research that would enable him to arrive at the definition of his own structural system, with equilibrated arches and without buttresses, a system that made it possible for him to build works as complex as the church at Colònia Güell and the Church of the Sagrada Família. 

Oriol Bohigas believes that Gaudí’s most important aspect is precisely his “total rupture with the styles of the past and the creation of a new plastic language”, which is revealed in the works of his mature period, including Palau Güell, Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera, Park Güell, the small building of the Temporary Schools at Sagrada Família and the church at Colònia Güell, and the Church of the Sagrada Família. 

These buildings are unquestionably individual, free, creative and experimental architecture, the result of a way of working that no longer bears any relation to post- Romanticism but is instead filled with the spirit of the Modern Movement. At this point, we should remember that Gaudí lived in an era of sweeping changes in science and technology that also affected him and his work. Nevertheless, Gaudí’s analytical and pragmatic sense must be attributed to two factors, as he himself acknowledged in declarations he made. The first of these influences was nature, which was closely linked to the landscape of his childhood in the region around Tarragona; and the second his artisanal background, as his father and both his grandfathers were boilermakers who used anvils to hammer and shape sheets of copper. From nature, Gaudí learnt that there are no straight lines in the organic world, that natural forms have no solution for continuity but an internal geometry. Artisanal labour, which gave him a taste for working with his hands, taught him the discipline of skilled crafts, the basic techniques of construction and above all the ability to translate a flat plane into three-dimensional space. “I have this ability to see space because I am the son, grandson and great-grandson of boilermakers [...], in other words, people of space and the situation”. His understanding of how to see space, of how to master its physical and sensorial aspects, meant that Gaudí did not restrict himself to forms but also worked the spaces that were to contain these forms. Gaudí moved to Barcelona to study architecture at an opportune moment. Firstly, the Provincial School of Architecture had just opened in Catalonia’s capital city. No longer incorporated as part of the Academy of the Fine Arts, which meant that its students and graduates enjoyed a superior status to the earlier master builders, the school had a spirit of renewal and paid special attention to the technical training of its architectural students. Secondly, the city was at one of its periodic peaks of splendour, due to the tremendous economic growth instigated by a bourgeoisie that was the equal of any other in Europe. The Eixample district of the city, then recently designed by Ildefons Cerdà, spread the city eastwards and in the direction of the mountains, resulting in a construction boom in which Modernisme was the referent and the work of Gaudí its culmination. The Güells, Vicenses, Calvets, Batllós, Milàs and others were great families who were moved by a desire to own a residence that would distinguish them from the rest and, attracted by the singularity of Gaudí’s designs, entrusted him with the construction of their homes.


As we can see, then, the setting was propitious for Gaudí. Even the jobs he did as a draughtsman in a number of renowned architects’ offices worked in his favour, as not only did they help him financially, but they also enabled him to establish and maintain a close relationship with ceramics workshops, forges and foundries, and with glassmakers, carpenters, plasterers and so forth. The first commissions he received in Barcelona were related to these crafts and their practitioners: the design of lampposts for Plaça Reial, which still stand in the square today; display cases for the Guanteria Comella glove shop; and a number of reliquaries and decorative objects. These were in the main pieces that harked back to the past, pieces charged with medieval, naturalistic or religious symbology, but with a special emphasis on their functional and constructional aspects, matters in which Gaudí was an expert. 

This capacity, which I would go so far as to describe as innate, for everything related to the arts and crafts was complemented by rigorous studies at the School of Architecture, where Gaudí learned differential and integral calculus, descriptive geometry, which proved essential in the later development of his ruled surfaces, and rational mechanics, etc. In addition, even though he was not officially registered as a student, he attended the classes in aesthetics taught by Manuel Milà i Fontanals and the philosophy classes taught by Francesc X. Llorens i Barba, the professor of metaphysics whose aim was to arrive at a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism, following the ‘common sense’ school and Kantian thinking. In short, Gaudí pursued an amalgam of disciplines which reveal that even in his youth he was quite clear in his own mind that art and technology went hand in hand with thinking, and that by basing himself on sensible intuition, reflection and empirical models, he would be able to approach the profession of an architect in a different way.


If it is true that art and technology are inseparable in his work, why is it that his popularity is so closely associated with the outer skin of his buildings? Gaudí’s architecture is evidently extremely artistic from the plastic as well as the morphological point of view. The art historian Alexandre Cirici asserted that Gaudí was an abstract painter though he remained unaware of it: “he died perhaps without ever realising the extraordinary fact that his creativity anticipated the non-figurative plastic arts”. The watercolours of Wassily Kandinsky, considered the father of abstraction, are later than Gaudí’s works, as are the sculptures of Pablo Gargallo and Juli González, antecedents for which are unquestionably visible in Gaudí’s wrought- iron pieces, in particular the railings of Casa Milà, which Eduardo Cirlot declared to be forms “anticipating modern plastic art”. Gaudí used collage, assemblage, trencadís (mosaic made up of fragments of ceramic or other material), dynamic forms, undulating surfaces, and fields of colour avant la lettre, before all these techniques were used by artists of the avant-garde movements. There are even some art historians who associate Gaudí with Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism or certain other artistic movements. It is, however, well known that his world was very remote from that of the Avant-garde, and that the sole point of similarity between Gaudí the architect and these artists is their determination to explore new modes of expression and to find new plastic solutions for their creative interests. Even so, we should avoid making the mistake of seeing Gaudí as a plastic artist, as his particular sense of beauty was always linked to functionality, practicality and cost. 

In Gaudí’s view, the external appearance of things “must be nothing more than the reflection of the utilitarian, mechanical and constructional requirements”. For this reason, he studied geometry, the world of structures and construction methods in depth. Initially, he focussed on traditional materials and techniques such as brick and the ‘Catalan vault’, a world familiar to him that the Valencian Guastavino exported to the USA. In 1883, when he built the parabolic arches of wood in the Cooperativa La Obrera Mataronense workers co-operative, and in particular from the time of the experiments he conducted in order to build the church at Colònia Güell, Gaudí decided to move on from traditional construction types and instead to create new forms and to expand the repertoire of construction solutions.


Gaudí’s capacity for innovation was such that he surprised even his own collaborators, such as when he used pillars instead of walls, inclined columns, catenary models, equilibrated arches, intersecting vaults, etc., solutions that he justified by saying, “my structural and aesthetic ideas are indisputably logical”. It was because of this that he made the form match the structure, eliminating any kind of buttress or supporting walls, and basing himself fundamentally on connected ruled surfaces. 

Other not-to-be-passed-over remarks that Gaudí made include: “I am a geometrician, that is to say, I synthesise”; “I calculate everything”; “in the execution of surfaces, geometry does not complicate but simplifies the construction”; and “for an architectural work to be beautiful, all its elements must be appropriate in situation, dimension, form and colour”. If we analyse any of his chimneys, small edifices or detached buildings, we will discover that the powerful and expressionist morphology that characterises them masks a logic, a calculation, a sense of measure that fuses art and technology. 

This side of Gaudí, which is more demonstrative of a man of science than of an artist, is revealed to us in his workshop or studio on the site of the Sagrada Família, a temporary construction formed of warped surfaces that has changed over the course of the years. It was here, during the last 14 years of his life, that Gaudí conducted the most fascinating studies of his career. Thanks to the journal Gaseta de les Arts, an extensive photographic reportage has survived, showing us the interior and exterior of this workshop and helping us to understand the way Gaudí worked, which we would otherwise only know of from the notes left by his disciples and collaborators. Drawing boards, plans, three-dimensional geometrical models, maquettes of buildings, photographs, Venetian mosaics, ornamental details, moulds and counter- moulds of figures intended for the Nativity Façade of the Church of the Sagrada Família were all piled up in the tiny space of his workshop, demonstrating that nothing was improvised, that everything was studied and experimented with beforehand, to the extent that, as some who knew him recorded, the building that housed this laboratory had movable ceilings and windows to control the light entering in depending on the position of the sun or on the type of photograph he wanted to take. Gaudí would even, if the operational needs of the moment demanded it, have new windows cut into the walls or the ceilings raised. 

This is perhaps the facet of Gaudí that is least known, yet it is probably the one that most reveals the substratum of his rich morphology and is unquestionably the secret of his work, which was the result not of some arbitrary aesthetic impulse, but of a profound analysis of forms that brings the functional requirements into harmony with the aesthetic options.


It is this that we have been hoping to demonstrate through the various activities (exhibitions, congresses, routes, publications, university courses, workshops, etc.) that we have been holding over the course of 2002 and which provide an opportunity for a new encounter with Gaudí, so that the tremendous legend surrounding him will give way to a reflective and contemporary reading of his entire body of work. 




Daniel Giralt Miracle
Director of Arts at the Royal Academy of Science and Arts of Barcelona

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2013/06/08

A brief history of the repression of the Catalan language




                                                                                       "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 COMMUNICATIONS1772 - 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.
DENIALHowever, 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 DEMOCRACYIt 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)


 


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