I was born in 1960, so I carry with me many old memories and, among them, the one as a 6 year old boy who every morning at the school playground had to sing the Cara al sol song, with my right arm extended, as in a game, while a red and yellow flag rose up the flagstaff. I recall an old photo of me from that time, a schoolboy sitting at a desk, with several books on it. You can see some trees in the background by a stream, and in the room there is a bust of Cervantes and a big map of Spain. It is a black and white picture poorly decorated with a few colored inks in the most old fashioned and depressing sort of way.
He who had to deal with imposed subjects such as Catholic Religion, centered on sin and guilt, and the so called FEN (formación del espíritu nacional—national sentiment indoctrination) aimed to awake us to an everlasting, proud Spanish nationalism, now listens to quite similar speeches given under the same quite flag—which has not now an imperial eagle on it, though its claws are equally sharp. That’s how this country, as imposed and fictional as ever, is going back to the black and white period, with some poor ink decorations, hand in hand with a minister of Education named Wert, “Yes, it is our aim, indeed, to Spanishize all Catalan students.”
As a Catalan schoolboy I certainly was Spanishized. My mum, who was born in Granada, married my dad, born in Zamora, and sometime after that I was born in the city of Badalona. The Catalan language was banished by Franco’s fascist dictatorship. At schools only Spanish was spoken, and the only authorized ideology was conveyed by those Alvarez encyclopedias which, despite everything, I can recall with some affection. Time would eventually take care of erasing all the lies, deceptions, and hatred we were taught. Fortunately, I was lucky to have some honest teachers, if not Catalan ones, and also to have a caring and clever mother who would ask our neighbors to please speak Catalan to me and my brother, and to have an Andalusian grandpa who was always a true republican.
But our Catalan neighbors spoke to us mainly in Spanish. Who knows how much of this was due to courtesy or fear. The only capital sin of them good people was that they were Catalan and that they spoke their own language in Catalonia. Can anyone think of forbidding Castilian (Spanish) language to someone in Castille (Spain)? It seems now that some people have a very short memory, since not only republicanism was prosecuted here, but also Catalans just for being Catalans. But some people soon decided to forget about it or just made up a different story.
I grew up in a country intent on Spanishizing all Catalan children. Although I could not speak Catalan back then, I had to get used to being called polaco (a derogatory term for Catalans used by Spaniards,) and at the age of twenty, when I was sent to Seville to do the military service, I took the opportunity to tentatively begin speaking Catalan to some other Catalan soldiers. So, when I came back home I started to learn more Catalan, despite the dictatorship, despite my Spainizing education, and despite those who kept calling me polaco, a word that perfectly shows Spain’s old hatred for everything that’s different—a word that stands for oppression and disdain.
So I started to speak Catalan because I freely decided to adopt it as my other first language, and because I wanted to live in this welcoming country that has been treated so unfairly to the point of not being seen for the nation it is. This recognition is not a thing against Spain, unless we think of that false idealized Spain dreamed by some living in central Spain. I am talking of a true different Spain, as welcoming as it is Catalonia, one really proud of its national diversity. This other Spain, however, will never become a reality.
That was maybe a suitable project for the wrongly called democratic transition. The political negotiations between the democratic parties and the Francoist side resulted in several concessions to the established oligarchy and a politically-charged army, and it all resulted in a mutually agreed Constitution that defined a new political framework. Just a few decades later, the subordination of the courts to political agendas has put this democratic dream to an end, as in the case of the Spanish Constitutional Court, with magistrates chosen with political criteria. This court would rule against a law that had been approved both by the Spanish Parliament and by the Catalan people in a referendum. Democracy? On September 11, 2012 nearly two million Catalans demonstrated in Barcelona, a gigantic crowd that showed the Catalan nation’s deep disappointment after three centuries of lack of understanding, a nation tired of the Spanish political involution and fed up of political corruption and bad management of the financial crisis. It is not money what’s making pro-independence flags multiply, but the disrespect towards our nation, something willingly ignored, day after day, by that ancient proud Castille, which today seems to equal Spain.
The answer from Madrid to Catalonia’s democratic aspirations is, once again, more insults and fearmongering. All they can think about is trying to eliminate our language, a sister romance language, showing again that stupid dog-eat-dog attitude which is constantly present in the history of this would-be Spain just turned into an uncomfortable Spanish state. Now they tell us that we are not a sovereign people, that we cannot decide by ourselves, that Catalans are not allowed to do so—all kinds of Catalans, without exception. Such is the Spanish democracy to my deep grief (I am writing this in Spanish,) and as I can only believe in true democracy, I keep wondering what the 15 million democrats in Spain are waiting for. What are all true democrats in Spain waiting to demonstrate against intransigence, uniformity, and hatred?
I teach Spanish in Barcelona. All my students can speak the two languages perfectly, they have the same competence in Spanish, even better, than most students have in Castille. I do not teach ideology in my Spanish lessons, we just think and debate things. They know Spanish is a rich, beautiful language, with a great literary tradition, much above all the political controversy of these times. My students do not need to be Spanishized by anyone, they just want to grow up as free democratic citizens and they expect to be accepted as human beings, not just as would-be voters. They are Catalan students within an integrating educational system in which Catalan is the main language just because they are all part of a country named Catalonia. A country that could have been part of the Spanish nation but is being forced to become a European nation, something it has always been, thank to this new pro-independence movement that has been awaken by intolerant powers from outside Catalonia.
It really is a shame to find so very little sympathy in the rest of Spain, such great difficulty in understanding a different people! On October 12th (Spain’s National Day) I will not celebrate such shameful lack of understanding. Being Catalan used to be a way, for many Catalans, of being Spanish. It is going to be now the only way Catalans have to be. I am no nationalist, I think that Wert or Rajoy are the true nationalists. I am just a Catalan, dear friends, my father was from Zamora and my mother was born in Granada. I am not going to jump in joy like mad nor will split myself up in two when independence comes. As Catalan I will vote for independence and I hope that maybe someday we all can become good friendly neighbors. After all, I teach Spanish, a language which we all still call Castilian.
Francisco Javier Cubero Egea was born in Badalona in 1960. He has a BA in Spanish from the Universitat de Barcelona, and is a graphic arts professional. He teaches the graduate program of design at a college attached to Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and also teaches Spanish language and literature at a high school in Barcelona. He is the author of several unpublished poetry books. Some of his poems have been published in several Spanish magazines as well as in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. He published El corazón de limo (Paralelo Sur Ediciones, 2007). He is the creator and webmaster of the website eldigoras.com.
Certainly a chapter for "What's Up, Catalonia", Volume 2.