Few weeks ago, the Minister of Education and Culture of the Spanish Government in an official session in the Congress, declared his intention to do everything possible "to spanishize Catalan children"c. In his opinion Catalan schools have a lot to do with the current Catalan secessionist feeling; that is that children do not learn the history of Spain according to the conception of the Partido Popular. Bear in mind that Mr.Wert is the Minister of education and an advisor to the FAES, the Spanish neo-conservative think tank, and his view of the history of Spain is similar to an epic tale, more typical of totalitarian regimes. In Modern Society, history is based and requires strict accuracy. In 2010, at a conference of the FAES, Wert exposed that education “was not about democracy”, and therefore laws about education shouldn't be democratic.
Some weeks ago, after the regional elections (called due to the demonstration of September 11th), there was a surprising amendment to the draft of the "quality education law" (in Spain we’ve got at least one by government since 1980). This change contains, among other absurdities, children segregation in school based on language, and Spanish is imposed as main and unique language of instruction in secondary schools, with the original languages of the regions, relegated to folklore knowledge, as an “specialization”. The reason behind this is that the spanish national parties have the perception that the separatist feeling begins with the knowledge of our own language, both in Catalonia and the Basque Country. And so schools are a source of indoctrination.
First, this perception does not match reality, because it does not include all people that wants catalan independence, most of them have not gone to school in the spanish democratic era, either because they studied during the Franco dictatorship, or because they belong to one of the multiple waves of immigrants who arrived to Catalonia during the last 30 years from inside and outside of the spanish frontiers.If we take a wider view, we discover that this episode is not new. We can observe a process of assimilation and domination of Catalonia and other “non-speaking” Spanish territories, long way back. I am not the best person to lecture on historical facts but I would like to point out the following; please see the two maps from the peninsula below.
The first map, is from 1854 and the non castillian-speaking territories are marked as "territories to assimilate", in a very troubled period featured by struggle and corruption, during the reign of Isabel II. The second map is from 2008, the source of the data is the Spanish central government (the Generalitat of Catalonia has done its own calculations using other methods, obtaining even worse results for Catalonia that the ones displayed here), indicating fiscal deficits or surpluses. And yes, the territories are practically the same in both maps, with the exception of Madrid, Aragon and Murcia. Economists such as Xavier Sala i Martin provide a very comprehensive explanation about this economic fact. Nearly 160 years after the first map; there have been many internal conflicts, two terrible dictatorships and one civil war, and nothing has changed. That is not a coincidence.
Let's put Wert's actions into a context; a mediocre minister in the worst Spanish government in democracy (it is not only my personal opinion! but rather an opinion shared within the EU and worldwide), it is an awkward act, a war over internal politics of linguistic and cultural assimilation of Catalan, where the minister is not the only participant. There are presidents of autonomous regions, mayors and media groups influenced by political parties strongly supporting centralism, even over their own political ideas.
The obsession to centralise all the power in the capital, is preventing the country from achieving its full national plenitude (like nineteenth century nation-countries). And this obsession explains their commitment to destroying any vestige of any other nationalities and cultures different from the "official".The process of destruction of a language involves: downgrading it and reducing it to a simple "dialect"; becoming a secondary language. Then, children learn this in school as a reality. Speaking these “bad dialects” in public starts being considered a bad habit, only for ignorant people, and also it starts becoming banned inside the public administration. To replace these "bad language," everything must be in castillian, which adopted the name from Spain, and it gives the good qualities, is "the common language", "the cultured language" etc.. All these actions are aimed at reducing the scope and decreasing the use of languages different from the official; making them disappear. So, this modification on the education law, has the purpose to remove the use of catalan in the streets, to be only used at home, as an “ancient language”.
But Catalan has some features that distinguishes it from the rest, which are the number of speakers, the extent of his realm, and later, a powerful cultural industry that uses it. To the point that the Catalan language was "invited" to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007, despite being a stateless language.
This power requires a change in strategy with respect to the last 150 years, so the ideological construction of the FAES, as right hard core as the Spanish regime and the political force that provided the PP an absolute majority in the elections of 2011. Thus, the approach through the division of the different regions (generated to avoid the "historical" singularity of the communities status recognised by the Constitution, Catalonia, Vasque Country and Galician), changing the name of the language so that it will not be called Catalan. Moreover, the fact of attempting to call the language by its real name (accepted by philologists worldwide) is accused of imperialist and a thousand other bad names. Spanish is spoken outside their state (the “homeland”) and around the world. Catalan, however is only spoken in 600km, and is called after up to five different names, these names are determined by regional boundaries.
Once, the territories are divided and according to political majorities available, the attack happens in the areas of education and administration. For example, in Valencia, children are segregated according to language, and 125,000 families cannot exercise the right to educate their children in Catalan. The same maneuver failed completely in the Balearic Islands. But here in the Islands, the Partido Popular party in the government, has excluded the Catalan as a language of use inside public administration, leaving it as a second language.
And in Catalonia? What happened? For now, we resist. The official status of Catalan in 1979 was protected until the Autonomic Statute of 2006. The appeal of the Popular Party against several points, including the language, interrupted this dynamic; opening the way to break a pacefull bilingual coexistence. This appeal was made by various Spanish fundamentalists groups claiming the supremacy of the Spanish language (legally, politically and socially).
The subject of Wert's attack is "the Catalan language immersion school model". This model was agreed and supported by all parties in the Catalan government since the restoration of the Generalitat. This model tries to maintain a model of education recognized around the world; integrating children into the reality of the territory, enabling bilingualism rather than spanish monolingualism.Wert is the main author of the attack towards the linguistic and cultural coexistence model of Catalonia. They don’t care about laws and their rank, or attributions of the Government in education. They have found what they think is the weaknesses and they have decided to go for it using all kind of weapons. The unfortunate sentence of the Minister of Education took place after the demonstration of September the 11th, 2012; when the Catalans went out and claimed they had had enough of being spaniards, and expressed their wish to become the next new State in Europe.
Wert does not care about children, he cares about Spain and its outdated model of "One, large and free" (slogan comes from Franco). He doesn't want to save the children from “the misfortune”, he wants to destroy an educational system based on respect and equality. The lack of understanding of catalan reality (since ever), the precipitation of the recent events, and the advancement of elections in the Autonomic Government with the purpose of enabling catalan people to decide what they want to do, leaves him, however, literally no time to “do the job” of destroying the catalan education system. Wert uses children as weapons to destroy a language, a culture, and at the end, a nation. As a thought; if instead of raising the issue of language as a matter of national supremacy (more typical of imperialist colonialism), Spain tried an integration and enrichment of both cultures; Catalan and Spanish, Catalans would more likely get “hispanicized". And we would be proud to live in a country that respects and promotes the culture, and doesn't use judges, politicians and ministers to "hispanicised" anyone.
Unfortunately, this is not what has happened and it will certainly not happen. And all I can say regarding the "hispanization" of our children, is that we (the Catalans) have decided to follow our own path, to continue integrating newcomers and enriching ourselves from the mixture of cultures that globalization offers, not losing our identity as a Catalan. I hope we can achieve it, for our children, and of course, for all of catalan people that wishes the same.
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