Who are the Linguistic Nazis?

At the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 60s, under the dictatorship of General Franco, tens of thousands of of Spaniards from all the regions emigrated to several areas of Europe, where they hoped for a better life. One of the most important destinations for this Spanish emigration was Germany. The other was Catalonia, then a country defeated by Fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and made a simple region suffering harsh political, cultural and, above all, linguistic reprisals. Notwithstanding the difficulties, Catalonia resolutely resumed its long tradition of industrial activity.

With 80% Catalan-speakers in the 1930s, the population of Catalonia doubled between 1970 and 1980 with the influx of Spanish-speaking families from impoverished regions, finding themselves in a social environment where another language, Catalan, was spoken although forbidden in official and public use and excluded from education.

With the advent of democracy in 1979, Catalonia got a Statute of Autonomy with self-government reinstating the Catalan language, making it the vehicular language in schools. This was approved by a clear majority of the population, half of which was of Spanish origin and whose mother-tongue was Spanish.

The successive regulations of the status of the Catalan language has always had a broad consensus among the parties in the Catalan Parliament, proof of the non-existence of internal linguistic conflict and of the natural use and knowledge of Catalan by the waves of Spanish migrants first, and later of basically African and South American origin.

The Catalan language is seen by the citizens of the country as a common tool for integration and inclusion, of common opportunity to climb the social ladder, a common meeting point among cultures and not as a barrier for the newcomer. This multilingual, multi-ethnic, tolerant, open society that survived forty years of Fascist dictatorship has integrated an immigration that has double the original population without social conflict.

But this society is now qualified as “Nazi” by the centres of power in Madrid, obsessed by the idea of a monolithic Spain where only one language, considered superior, is spoken, and where one has a single nationality, considered superior. Which is the supremacist nationalism in this conflict?.

Read this article in italian

Carles Ribera
Assistant editor
El Punt Avui newspaper
@carles_ribera
http://blogs.elpunt.cat/carlesribera/