Linguistic Genocide: Catalan becomes "LAPAO" in Aragon

They say that to speak with authority about a subject you must know it, have lived it, as otherwise you come to the wrong conclusions as a result of your ignorance. They also say the worst harm you can do to a person is to deprive them of their sense of belonging.

For you to understand what I want to explain, I need to explain my family’s history. I'm the son of an Aragonese mother and a Catalan father. My mother and grandmother originate from Teruel, specifically from Vallderoures, a small town on the banks of the river Mataranya, near Horta de Sant Joan, a town where Picasso used to live. In there, Catalan is spoken since forever. In fact the dialect of Catalan I speak is the the same one spoken by my grandmother and my mother in Vallderoures. The town which administers this entire region in Teruel is Alcañiz, a Spanish-speaking city. I know first hand that these towns where Catalan is spoken have always been frowned upon by other Spanish-speaking parts of Aragon, which include the vast majority of its territory. This historical rejection manifested itself in their constant denial that our language is Catalan, and specifically in this zone of ​​Aragon it was given the derogatory name of Chaporreao. They tried convince everyone that this is a strange language spoken with no rime or reason. Therefore, it is no wonder that now the Government of Aragon has taken out of their sleeve the term LAPAO (Aragonese Language Typical of the Oriental Area). If you notice, the term also ends with "ao" which makes you suspect it is not accidental.

It is a fact that the presence of the Catalan language in Aragon, apart from annoying the hell out of Spanish nationalists, is not recognized. I can give you another example. For professional reasons I make short trips to Zaragoza. I remember this time when I was on my way back to Catalonia, listening to Aragon Radio speaking about some literary competitions in a language called Eastern Aragonese Language from a town in Huesca, they never used the word "Catalan" to refer to the language they were speaking about during the 30-minute-long interview, neither by the speaker nor by the mayor of the town in question. But it was obvious that they were speaking about the Catalan of the Franja de Ponent and the whole conversation had a folkloric tone worthy of the worst programs produced during Franco's dictatorship.

For this reason, I can tell you that the decision by the Parliament of Aragon to call the Catalan spoken in the Franja as LAPAO, for me, it has been an attack to my origins. Although I was born in Reus, in Catalonia proper, the entire side of my mother's family is from that part of Aragon. Since forever, in the Franja, we have spoken Catalan. One does not need to invent strange new languages to cover it up and distort reality. I never understood this obsession from our brothers in Aragon. With such excluding attitudes, they are forgetting that they have a lot in common with the Catalan people, to the point that we share the same flag.

Lluís Casanovas Abella

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