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 9^th 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)