There was a time when the BBC was not solely inhabited by individuals who spoke with plummy, public-school accents which located their upbringing as having been in an anonymous and mysterious cloistered environment that was never actually revealed. That was because it didn't physically exist. It was (still is) an intangible attribute of birthright, deployed to distinguish its users from the riff-raff and to mark themselves out as superior beings.
Nevertheless, there were those who dared to differentiate themselves along identifiably regional lines. Numbered among them were Eamonn Andrews, Jimmy Clitheroe, John Arlott and Ted Moult. But they all - more or less - still spoke the Queen's English. The BBC was able to tolerate little else unless there was some comedic value attached. Even as the modern world, aka permissiveness, passed through the portal of Broadcasting House, the requirement barely shifted. If you ever have the chance, listen to John Peel circa 1967. The slow, "really nice", public-school drawl is unrecognisable with what it became once he discovered punk.
It may well have been punk which shifted the BBC spoken axis as much as it had launched a broadside against predominantly public-school prog rock (e.g. Genesis). But whatever and whenever it was, the BBC started to become what it is now - all things to all men, women and children, however and whatever they speak. Which is exactly how it should be: a reflection of society rather than being a self-appointed arbiter, which it was when the insistence was on the Queen's English and, prior to the Queen, the King.
Along the way, however, there have been major assaults on standards of grammar. There is no better an example than what one might call Football English. Identifying the culprit for this is not easy, but I'm tempted to finger Ron Atkinson. It was Big Ron, it seems to me, who popularised the footballing use of the present perfect tense. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it goes something like: "The boy's gone down the line, he's crossed the ball, and the big fella's stuck it in the back of the net."
Grammatically there is a problem with this structure, and it lies with its application. It is after the event, used to describe something that has happened and has been completed. The present perfect is therefore incorrect. The past tense is required: "the boy went down the line, etc." But does it matter? Not really. It grates - well it does with me - but if the application becomes as pervasive as it has, it acquires the status of common usage.
Such is the flexibility of language, English in particular. It is highly organic, a function, in no small part, of there being no standard-setter. English doesn't have academies as French and Spanish have to issue decrees as to standards. It is left to evolve, and one of its formerly de facto standard-setters, the BBC, is perfectly willing to allow it to.
There is a splendid article* on the BBC's website which looks at how the self-appointed arbiters have railed against supposedly bad English, be it grammar, punctuation, syntax or vocabulary. They range from Jonathan Swift in the early eighteenth century to a George Quinn in 2004. He suggested that someone who started a sentence with a conjunction should have been “appropriately beaten in grammar class”. For what it's worth, there is no "rule" barring the use of a conjunction at the start of sentence, though it shouldn't automatically be followed by a comma: conjunctions don't take one.
The article reveals the snobbery of these arbiters. For instance, Henry Watson Fowler, he of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, referred to "barbaric" usages. Lynne Truss had her "moral weaklings". Correctness equates therefore to "moral propriety". Lack of correctness permits vulgarisms and barbarisms. Strewth!
It's not as though I'm wholly liberal on the subject. I have just used an exclamation mark, which I rarely do. So misused has it become that it appears to be an optional alternative to a full stop. Other beefs concern Americanisms. There again, American usage is a further indication of the inherent flexibility of English. Far from barbaric, language evolution is natural, a consequence in particular of internationalisation.
Which leads me to Spanish. There are all manner of Spanish words which have passed either directly or indirectly into English. Fiesta is an example of the former; potato of the latter. I advocate another, one which is commonly used in English here in Mallorca: "reform". The Spanish "reforma" means as it does in English when one talks, for example, of legislative reform. But English doesn't use reform for building work. One can re-form with a hyphen by changing a shape, but one cannot reform a kitchen or a whole building. I'm tempted to think that one should be able to, as it makes perfect sense. Reforming language; it never stands still.
* http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170301-why-all-english-speakers-worry-about-slipping-up
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Educating Mallorca: It's Not Just Language
The Balearic government is the first regional authority in Spain to lodge a challenge to the implementation of provisions under Madrid's law for the improvement of the quality of education (Lomce). Specifically for aspects as they apply at secondary and Baccalaureate levels, the regional education minister, Martí March, has described the curriculum as "highly elitist, segregating and taking us back to Franco's times".
One of the main objections that March has is to the introduction of external testing. While not opposed to tests as such, he fears that they will undermine and marginalise a greater emphasis on continuous assessment and thus be sole determinants of a pupil's progress. He isn't the only education minister to query the use of testing. For example in Castile and Leon, where the government is run by the Partido Popular, its minister has voiced concerns.
March believes that Lomce and its tests do not answer the needs of current-day society, and he may well be right in believing this, but the problem he has is in convincing society in the Balearics that he has a better solution to the problems that exist in the islands' system of public education. If he has, he might begin by establishing what the "needs" actually are.
Education, fundamental though it is, is an issue which is usually too dry to attract a great deal of public attention. Debates over curriculum can seem too removed. When educational affairs become more explosive, as happened with the trilingual teaching rumpus and the subsequent teachers' strike, they come firmly into the public domain. Otherwise, parents and society in general issue a collective sigh that expresses their ennui with the issue and with politicians endlessly kicking it around.
So even when March alludes to "needs", a constant enough word in any politician's lexicon, the reaction is firmly in neutral. No one much listens because no one is much interested. What might these needs be? Good education? Better education? As a teacher might request - define and discuss. And more to the point, seek to quantify. Increased percentages for this or that. Defined higher numbers going to university. Defined lower numbers dropping out. Defined higher numbers attaining higher scores in languages, maths and science. Target-setting, in other words, and performance measures - pupils, teachers and schools - plus testing. Where have we heard all that before?
People should of course listen and should of course be interested, and not only parents. And of these parents, in Mallorca there are significant numbers who are foreign. Not all can afford private schooling, so the kids go to the public schools and into a public education system that has constantly underperformed. It does perform in other regions of Spain, but the Balearics is one of the worst.
Might there be mitigating circumstances for the repeatedly low attainment in core skills and subjects, and might one of them be the foreign pupil quotient? The Balearics as a whole has the highest foreign population percentage among all the Spanish regions. It also has the highest percentage of foreign pupils, albeit this is not evenly distributed. According to data for 2012, foreign pupils accounted for 11.9% of the primary school population but 18.7% at secondary level, which is where international comparisons are made that indicate the underperformance in key areas.
But what these figures don't reveal is how many of these pupils are Spanish (and/or Catalan) speakers or the age at which they entered the local education system. (The greatest numbers of foreign pupils across the country are of Moroccan and Romanian origin.) Intuitively one has to accept that the age of entrance and native language may prove disadvantageous (and that almost seven per cent difference between primary and secondary might be considered to be very revealing). However, even allowing for this there is now information from the Balearic government itself which reveals failings in key areas, one of them being language.
The government's own institute for education system quality assessment reports that four out of ten 13-year-olds fail to reach required levels in both Catalan and Castellano. Moreover, this situation has been getting worse. For maths, the figure climbs to almost 60%. Such underachievement cannot possibly be explained by a foreign-pupil population.
The inabilities when it comes to the two official languages should be very concerning for March and his ministry. In other regions with two languages, such as the Basque Country where educational performance is vastly superior, there aren't weaknesses.
It might be tempting to consider government policies on language and the way they change to be at the heart of Balearic underperformance, but even these cannot provide a full explanation. The question, therefore, is what does. March can attack Lomce and may be right in doing so, but that, as was also the case with the trilingual teaching row, shouldn't divert attention from an underlying malaise, its identification and remedy. Those are the needs.
One of the main objections that March has is to the introduction of external testing. While not opposed to tests as such, he fears that they will undermine and marginalise a greater emphasis on continuous assessment and thus be sole determinants of a pupil's progress. He isn't the only education minister to query the use of testing. For example in Castile and Leon, where the government is run by the Partido Popular, its minister has voiced concerns.
March believes that Lomce and its tests do not answer the needs of current-day society, and he may well be right in believing this, but the problem he has is in convincing society in the Balearics that he has a better solution to the problems that exist in the islands' system of public education. If he has, he might begin by establishing what the "needs" actually are.
Education, fundamental though it is, is an issue which is usually too dry to attract a great deal of public attention. Debates over curriculum can seem too removed. When educational affairs become more explosive, as happened with the trilingual teaching rumpus and the subsequent teachers' strike, they come firmly into the public domain. Otherwise, parents and society in general issue a collective sigh that expresses their ennui with the issue and with politicians endlessly kicking it around.
So even when March alludes to "needs", a constant enough word in any politician's lexicon, the reaction is firmly in neutral. No one much listens because no one is much interested. What might these needs be? Good education? Better education? As a teacher might request - define and discuss. And more to the point, seek to quantify. Increased percentages for this or that. Defined higher numbers going to university. Defined lower numbers dropping out. Defined higher numbers attaining higher scores in languages, maths and science. Target-setting, in other words, and performance measures - pupils, teachers and schools - plus testing. Where have we heard all that before?
People should of course listen and should of course be interested, and not only parents. And of these parents, in Mallorca there are significant numbers who are foreign. Not all can afford private schooling, so the kids go to the public schools and into a public education system that has constantly underperformed. It does perform in other regions of Spain, but the Balearics is one of the worst.
Might there be mitigating circumstances for the repeatedly low attainment in core skills and subjects, and might one of them be the foreign pupil quotient? The Balearics as a whole has the highest foreign population percentage among all the Spanish regions. It also has the highest percentage of foreign pupils, albeit this is not evenly distributed. According to data for 2012, foreign pupils accounted for 11.9% of the primary school population but 18.7% at secondary level, which is where international comparisons are made that indicate the underperformance in key areas.
But what these figures don't reveal is how many of these pupils are Spanish (and/or Catalan) speakers or the age at which they entered the local education system. (The greatest numbers of foreign pupils across the country are of Moroccan and Romanian origin.) Intuitively one has to accept that the age of entrance and native language may prove disadvantageous (and that almost seven per cent difference between primary and secondary might be considered to be very revealing). However, even allowing for this there is now information from the Balearic government itself which reveals failings in key areas, one of them being language.
The government's own institute for education system quality assessment reports that four out of ten 13-year-olds fail to reach required levels in both Catalan and Castellano. Moreover, this situation has been getting worse. For maths, the figure climbs to almost 60%. Such underachievement cannot possibly be explained by a foreign-pupil population.
The inabilities when it comes to the two official languages should be very concerning for March and his ministry. In other regions with two languages, such as the Basque Country where educational performance is vastly superior, there aren't weaknesses.
It might be tempting to consider government policies on language and the way they change to be at the heart of Balearic underperformance, but even these cannot provide a full explanation. The question, therefore, is what does. March can attack Lomce and may be right in doing so, but that, as was also the case with the trilingual teaching row, shouldn't divert attention from an underlying malaise, its identification and remedy. Those are the needs.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Tit For Tat: Education and language
And so we come full circle. More or less. Tit for tat. Education and language, two sides of a coin that has only one face. We are back to 2008. Year zero for much of the legacy of the Antich government: education, language, land plans, decrees for wetlands. Schools, teachers, the civil service and public sector workers, property and infrastructure developments with their implications of investment and employment or not. All of them in a constant state of turmoil and of the violently shifting sands of Balearic politics. Here comes a big wave to wash everything away. Now comes another wave to wash it back into place.
The Partido Popular is not wholly wrong when it suggests that the current government seems hell bent on repealing anything and everything that the Bauzá regime introduced. But it ignores the fact that it had acted similarly in dismantling the Antich legacy. There is an additional tone to this latest revisionism, however: the sheer hostility directed at Bauzá personally and all that he represented. It's not pleasant. Nel Martí, a Més-ite, has compared Bauzá to Felipe V and so to the vindictiveness and repression of the first Bourbon king, with Catalan and Greater Catalonia (not that it was referred to as such in 1715) on the end of a cannon ball and of prohibition. They simply cannot let the past be. History always intrudes. Here is a land constantly re-fighting wars.
PLIS is an association of teachers. The acronym stands for, in English, teachers free of social engineering. It has taken the government to task over its educational reforms. There is a whole list of criticisms. They range from renewed bureaucratisation of school management, to the role of unions in selecting school directors to the totally free training of teachers to be done in the workplace and paid for out of everyone's taxes. Then there is the most recognisable cog in this social engineering wheel. The language.
Bauzá's trilingual teaching (TIL) project was an unmitigated disaster, one that could have been foreseen. Had it been a project predicated on education, it might not have been. But it was not. It was a naked, undisguised means of subverting Catalan, the first attempt at doing so - the free selection of teaching language by parents - having proved to be as much of a disaster as to what was to follow.
No less an institution than the Council of Europe has been having its say. In its report on the charter for regional and minority languages, it has issued its own broadside. It condemns TIL because there weren't teachers qualified to implement it. It insists that Catalan should be respected in teaching at all levels - from infant to secondary. It concludes, however, that during the school year 2011-2012, the first full year over which Bauzá presided, the balance (slightly in favour of Catalan against Castellano) was about right. It was to be the engineered and deeply flawed introduction of English that was to disrupt this. Or would have done, had it ever been implemented in something even approximating a coherent fashion.
The Bauzá critics refer to the "obsession" that the last government had with Catalan. Yet it is an accusation that could equally apply now; only in reverse. To what extent there will be a reversion to the edicts of 2008 which effectively made Castellano a minority language remain to be seen. But in different spheres - schools and the public sector - there is little equivocation. The clock has been turned back eight years. Tit for tat. Catalan becomes once more a pre-requisite for public-sector employment. It's as you were.
Xavier Pericay, the leader of Ciudadanos in the Balearics, must feel lonely. He can snuggle up to the PP, but he fights an all but lone battle. Anti-nationalist, as the C's are, he brings his own scholarly interest in languages to the parliament chamber. Languages do not have rights, only those who speak languages. It's not an argument destined to find favour with the government (or with the regionalist-nationalist El Pi). Languages are all. One in particular. The rights lie with vocabulary, grammar, dialect, the ancient divergence within the Romance languages and so with cultural heritage aka baggage. The social engineering decrees that this must be so.
Nothing, or very little, remains of TIL. It was unceremoniously (and correctly) hurled with great force into the deepest of seas surrounding the Balearics, a faint echo vaguely detectable amidst the fading sonar tests for oil. This echo is in the form of free choice by schools. If they wish to use a third language for teaching, then they can. The PP says this will produce first and second division schools. It probably won't. There'll be one division. First or second depends entirely upon your perspective.
Meanwhile, someone, somewhere is genuinely concerning him or herself with education. He or she is not a politician.
The Partido Popular is not wholly wrong when it suggests that the current government seems hell bent on repealing anything and everything that the Bauzá regime introduced. But it ignores the fact that it had acted similarly in dismantling the Antich legacy. There is an additional tone to this latest revisionism, however: the sheer hostility directed at Bauzá personally and all that he represented. It's not pleasant. Nel Martí, a Més-ite, has compared Bauzá to Felipe V and so to the vindictiveness and repression of the first Bourbon king, with Catalan and Greater Catalonia (not that it was referred to as such in 1715) on the end of a cannon ball and of prohibition. They simply cannot let the past be. History always intrudes. Here is a land constantly re-fighting wars.
PLIS is an association of teachers. The acronym stands for, in English, teachers free of social engineering. It has taken the government to task over its educational reforms. There is a whole list of criticisms. They range from renewed bureaucratisation of school management, to the role of unions in selecting school directors to the totally free training of teachers to be done in the workplace and paid for out of everyone's taxes. Then there is the most recognisable cog in this social engineering wheel. The language.
Bauzá's trilingual teaching (TIL) project was an unmitigated disaster, one that could have been foreseen. Had it been a project predicated on education, it might not have been. But it was not. It was a naked, undisguised means of subverting Catalan, the first attempt at doing so - the free selection of teaching language by parents - having proved to be as much of a disaster as to what was to follow.
No less an institution than the Council of Europe has been having its say. In its report on the charter for regional and minority languages, it has issued its own broadside. It condemns TIL because there weren't teachers qualified to implement it. It insists that Catalan should be respected in teaching at all levels - from infant to secondary. It concludes, however, that during the school year 2011-2012, the first full year over which Bauzá presided, the balance (slightly in favour of Catalan against Castellano) was about right. It was to be the engineered and deeply flawed introduction of English that was to disrupt this. Or would have done, had it ever been implemented in something even approximating a coherent fashion.
The Bauzá critics refer to the "obsession" that the last government had with Catalan. Yet it is an accusation that could equally apply now; only in reverse. To what extent there will be a reversion to the edicts of 2008 which effectively made Castellano a minority language remain to be seen. But in different spheres - schools and the public sector - there is little equivocation. The clock has been turned back eight years. Tit for tat. Catalan becomes once more a pre-requisite for public-sector employment. It's as you were.
Xavier Pericay, the leader of Ciudadanos in the Balearics, must feel lonely. He can snuggle up to the PP, but he fights an all but lone battle. Anti-nationalist, as the C's are, he brings his own scholarly interest in languages to the parliament chamber. Languages do not have rights, only those who speak languages. It's not an argument destined to find favour with the government (or with the regionalist-nationalist El Pi). Languages are all. One in particular. The rights lie with vocabulary, grammar, dialect, the ancient divergence within the Romance languages and so with cultural heritage aka baggage. The social engineering decrees that this must be so.
Nothing, or very little, remains of TIL. It was unceremoniously (and correctly) hurled with great force into the deepest of seas surrounding the Balearics, a faint echo vaguely detectable amidst the fading sonar tests for oil. This echo is in the form of free choice by schools. If they wish to use a third language for teaching, then they can. The PP says this will produce first and second division schools. It probably won't. There'll be one division. First or second depends entirely upon your perspective.
Meanwhile, someone, somewhere is genuinely concerning him or herself with education. He or she is not a politician.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Alcúdia's Language Of Tourism
Before everyone has the chance to troop off to Pollensa and get drunk next weekend, the town has its April Fair, one that is loosely based on the Seville Fair and is organised by the local Andalusian Cultural Association.
Something rather curious has happened with this fair this year. They have actually got round to publicising it rather more effectively than in the past. Accordingly, I was sent the programme by the tourist office and asked if I could supply a translation. Not, to be honest, that there was much to translate, but I'm always happy to oblige, as I am when Alcúdia tourist office makes a similar request. Could we have the boats and cuttlefish in English, pretty please?
The poster and programme that has been put out for the April Fair is a revealing document. It notes the "special collaboration" of both the regional government and Pollensa Town Hall, yet here is a piece of promotion that is not in Catalan. Andalusians don't speak Catalan, except perhaps for some who live in Pollensa, so Castellano it is.
Appropriate though the use of Castellano is, its use highlights, and not for the first time, the curious relationship between languages and promotion of events: curious primarily because there isn't a relationship, save one - Catalan. This subject is an old chestnut, I do recognise, but it is one that doesn't go away and indeed becomes ever more relevant. April is an odd month in tourism terms. Despite Easter falling in April this year, it isn't a month which is considered to officially form part of the tourism season. It is an off-season month, one which local authorities would love to develop in order to lengthen the season and so reduce the harmful impact of tourism seasonality.
The trouble is, as I think many of us are aware, there is a sizable gap between what is hoped for and said and what is actually done, and the promotion of events that occur this weekend pretty much sums this up. Pollensa's April Fair is, in the scheme of things, a minor event, but those in Muro and Puerto Alcúdia are not. Yet, if one takes the boat show and cuttlefish gastronomy extravaganza as an example, what does Alcúdia do? It asks some sucker to supply an English version. Free. This, to me, does not suggest a town hall fully committed to effective promotion. Rather, it suggests one that is content to put up with an ad-hoc arrangement so that English-speaking visitors might be aware that "sipia" is in fact cuttlefish.
Alcúdia has something called the consortium for overseas promotion. It is one rarely referred to and usually only when it has gone off to Miami to try and entice the odd cruise ship to put in an appearance. What does this consortium actually do? Who is on it? Does it not believe in a touch more professionalism, such as establishing a formal arrangement for having its promotional literature in foreign languages? (And I'm sorry, you Germans, I'm not about to put myself out and translate into German as well - there's probably some other mug doing that.)
The apparent indifference towards effective foreign promotion and so evidence of the lack of genuine commitment to lengthening the season can be found in the programme for this weekend's fair. It isn't simply that it is all in Catalan, it is what is to be found in one of the greetings. It comes from the councillor with responsibility for fairs, Carme Garcia. It starts: "Benvolguts Alcudiencs i Visitants". Dear people of Alcúdia and visitors. It is the "visitants" which gives the game away. If you are greeting dear visitors, do you not seek to do so in a fashion that they might understand? Or are the "visitants" considered only to be people from, say, Inca or Santa Margalida? I suspect that they may be.
Carme is a councillor from whom Castellano has to be wrenched out. Passion for the language is fine, and I have no objection, but not when it positively discriminates against precisely some of the people who should be being greeted. With such an attitude, and Carme also has responsibility for "linguistic normalisation" (i.e. the promotion of Catalan), what is she doing in charge of the fair?
I fail to understand, and Alcúdia is not unique in this regard, why fairs, fiestas and tourism are the responsibilities of three different councillors. Yes, there is administration required for fairs and fiestas and yes, of course, they are events for the people of Alcúdia, but they are regularly held up as being for tourists. And this weekend's fair is a prime example. But the town hall's own structure has an in-built mechanism which undermines what should be a principal objective: tourism development.
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
What Is The Truth?: Francesc de Borja Moll
The timing of the founding of Editorial Moll in 1934 was both good and bad; good because it was during the period of the Second Republic, bad because of what happened two years later. Under the Republic, Catalan could flourish, and Editorial Moll was a publishing house for Catalan. So, given the bad timing, what happened to the company and to its founder once the Franco regime and the Falange set about their prohibition and persecution of Catalan?
My own knowledge of Borja Moll goes back some years. I came to know about him because he, like Antoni Maria Alcover, is afforded high levels of reverence in Mallorca, especially Alcover. I confess, however, that until now and with an interest sparked off by the closure of Editorial Moll, I had never paid over much attention to his background. And so, it was with more than a little surprise that I found a lengthy article by an historian, Mariano Bendito Saura, that was posted on his blog in 2011 and which was entitled "The historical-linguistic misrepresentations of Francesc de Borja Moll" **.
The company, it would appear, didn't encounter any great difficulties and nor did Borja Moll. And that was because, and Bendito is not the only one to have asserted this, he was a member of the Falange. Bendito says that during the Civil War Borja Moll was in the propaganda department of the Falange and goes on to say that in 1940 he collaborated on a project which was sponsored, among others, by Pilar Primo de Rivera, sister of the founder of the Falange and therefore daughter of the 1920s' dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera. This project was a propaganda exercise to promote the notion of Catalan fascism and a unitary Catalan and language.
Bendito's article, apart from being lengthy, is complex and far from straightforward. It devotes attention to detail of linguistic development and cites innumerable references to this development and to political interference and orders. But at the start of the article, he makes his sentiments clear. "Borja Moll (director of Editorial Moll, ex-Falangist from Palma de Mallorca ...) is an unethical and dishonest person who sold Catalan imperialism and who betrayed and disowned all Balearic historical and linguistic truth." He implies, therefore, that "Catalanisation" of the islands' languages was an invention but was one which re-emerged from 1970 in a very different political and cultural form.
Bendito, who describes himself as being "passionate for historical truth", paints a picture of Borja Moll which is hard to reconcile with what he achieved, e.g. founding the Obra Cultural Balear in 1962 or the grand honour for Catalan "letters" in 1971, and with what Editorial Moll became, a publishing house of great significance which promoted Catalan and which over its eighty years published works by names of cultural and historical importance such as Alcover and the poet Miquel Costa i Llobera. Perhaps Borja Moll had been put under pressure by the Falange. He wouldn't have been the only one. Whatever his involvement, it didn't last, and nor did the strict anti-Catalan dogma that the Franco regime initially pursued with such rigour.
The article does, however, point to complex linguistic arguments which, while somewhat obscure and arcane, inform so much of current-day arguments in Mallorca, those to do with language, culture and education. Bendito is not unique in presenting a version of history which seeks to debunk a Mallorcan link to Catalan (and thus Catalonia) and to the notion of the Catalan Lands. The problem is, and with the greatest of respect to him and to his research, getting at the "truth" is made difficult because of how current-day politics create fertile ground for competing versions of history. His version is firmly in the anti-Catalanist camp.
Editorial Moll folded because of financial difficulties, and one source of these difficulties was the elimination of regional government support for books in Catalan. Borja Moll's son says that this stemmed from "the government's extreme belligerence towards Catalan". Politics, always politics.
** http://historiaregnemallorca.blogspot.com.es/2011/04/tergiversaciones-historico-linguistas.html
Monday, June 16, 2014
Presidential Stubbornness: The hunger strike
Whatever one makes of Jaume Sastre's hunger strike over the Balearic Government's education and language policy, there can be no doubting his strength of conviction. People don't go without food for a month for nothing and so put their well-being and lives at risk.
There is an irony in the Sastre cause, and it comes in the form of some of those who support him. An activist for Catalan Lands independence, Sastre's political philosophy is, in this regard, the total opposite to that of some of them, such as those from the Partido Popular. But take this radical philosophy out of the equation and what one has, or so it would appear, is broad backing across the political spectrum for what he has gone on hunger strike to defend - Catalan and its role in education.
President Bauzá is being called upon to negotiate in order to put an end to the conflict that still engulfs education in the Balearics. Among those who have been doing the calling are Cristòfol Soler, who for a time in the 1990s was a PP president of the Balearics, and Jaume Cladera, the islands' first tourism minister under the PP's president Gabriel Cañellas, someone else who has been less than impressed with the current president's stance. Soler has made a point of supporting Sastre from the start of his hunger strike. The two men would differ completely on the issue of independence, but on language they are as one.
Though not vocal in being critical of Bauzá, Soler has clearly disagreed with him pretty much through the whole of his legislature. The differences lie not just with language but also with the philosophy of regionalism. Soler's PP of the 1980s and 1990s was firmly pro-regionalism and firmly pro-Catalan; Bauzá's PP appears indifferent to regionalism while having made little attempt to disguise its hostility towards Catalan.
Can one style this as a clash between the old and new guards in the PP? Up to a point perhaps, but there are plenty within the new guard of the current PP whose sympathies match those of Soler. Some have spoken out, though none has been as vocal as Antoni Pastor was. The mayor of Manacor, booted out of the party, may just possibly be the presidential candidate next year for the El Pi regionalist-nationalist party, having said that he will not carry on as mayor. That would provide a fascinating and hugely entertaining battle with Bauzá were the two of them to both be presidential candidates.
Increasingly, one has to ask whether Bauzá will indeed be a candidate. Is he in fact a liability? If he were to steer away from the controversies which he generates and focus the narrative on the core issues of the economy and employment, he might well be considered worthy of being given another go. But he doesn't allow there to be such a focus. His stubbornness might be applauded by some, but it can also be nuanced as the digging of an ever deeper hole. The public, generally speaking, don't back him over language or over education.
Having been let off the incompatibility hook by the Balearics High Court, Bauzá, rather than engage in some triumphalism at this victory, should take the opportunity to be magnanimous. He said after the PP's rotten performance in the European elections that the party had to be more "humble". He needs to take the lead, therefore. It was reasonable enough to criticise the opposition for having hounded him over a matter - the alleged incompatibility - that had been blown out of proportion, but it was not reasonable, in the context of newly discovered humility, to appear triumphalist. Magnanimity is called for, and it can include a willingness to embrace the concerns of Soler and others.
Bauzá has said he won't negotiate because there is someone who will, namely the education minister Joana Camps. Unfortunately, no one takes her seriously. It is not she who has sought the conflict or who drives it. Everyone knows who has and does. And this refusal to negotiate has now assumed a more serious dimension. It has been suggested that the conflict is now a humanitarian one, the consequence of Sastre's hunger strike.
It is a conflict which also has the power to go deeper, to be enduring and to create future problems. Lost in all of the arguments, lost in the hunger strike, lost in Bauzá's stubbornness is what the schoolchildren of the Balearics think. Try putting yourselves in their position and in conditions of their impressionability. They see a teacher willing to perhaps commit suicide over a point of linguistic principle. Tell me that this doesn't influence their future views and I'm afraid I wouldn't believe you.
There is an irony in the Sastre cause, and it comes in the form of some of those who support him. An activist for Catalan Lands independence, Sastre's political philosophy is, in this regard, the total opposite to that of some of them, such as those from the Partido Popular. But take this radical philosophy out of the equation and what one has, or so it would appear, is broad backing across the political spectrum for what he has gone on hunger strike to defend - Catalan and its role in education.
President Bauzá is being called upon to negotiate in order to put an end to the conflict that still engulfs education in the Balearics. Among those who have been doing the calling are Cristòfol Soler, who for a time in the 1990s was a PP president of the Balearics, and Jaume Cladera, the islands' first tourism minister under the PP's president Gabriel Cañellas, someone else who has been less than impressed with the current president's stance. Soler has made a point of supporting Sastre from the start of his hunger strike. The two men would differ completely on the issue of independence, but on language they are as one.
Though not vocal in being critical of Bauzá, Soler has clearly disagreed with him pretty much through the whole of his legislature. The differences lie not just with language but also with the philosophy of regionalism. Soler's PP of the 1980s and 1990s was firmly pro-regionalism and firmly pro-Catalan; Bauzá's PP appears indifferent to regionalism while having made little attempt to disguise its hostility towards Catalan.
Can one style this as a clash between the old and new guards in the PP? Up to a point perhaps, but there are plenty within the new guard of the current PP whose sympathies match those of Soler. Some have spoken out, though none has been as vocal as Antoni Pastor was. The mayor of Manacor, booted out of the party, may just possibly be the presidential candidate next year for the El Pi regionalist-nationalist party, having said that he will not carry on as mayor. That would provide a fascinating and hugely entertaining battle with Bauzá were the two of them to both be presidential candidates.
Increasingly, one has to ask whether Bauzá will indeed be a candidate. Is he in fact a liability? If he were to steer away from the controversies which he generates and focus the narrative on the core issues of the economy and employment, he might well be considered worthy of being given another go. But he doesn't allow there to be such a focus. His stubbornness might be applauded by some, but it can also be nuanced as the digging of an ever deeper hole. The public, generally speaking, don't back him over language or over education.
Having been let off the incompatibility hook by the Balearics High Court, Bauzá, rather than engage in some triumphalism at this victory, should take the opportunity to be magnanimous. He said after the PP's rotten performance in the European elections that the party had to be more "humble". He needs to take the lead, therefore. It was reasonable enough to criticise the opposition for having hounded him over a matter - the alleged incompatibility - that had been blown out of proportion, but it was not reasonable, in the context of newly discovered humility, to appear triumphalist. Magnanimity is called for, and it can include a willingness to embrace the concerns of Soler and others.
Bauzá has said he won't negotiate because there is someone who will, namely the education minister Joana Camps. Unfortunately, no one takes her seriously. It is not she who has sought the conflict or who drives it. Everyone knows who has and does. And this refusal to negotiate has now assumed a more serious dimension. It has been suggested that the conflict is now a humanitarian one, the consequence of Sastre's hunger strike.
It is a conflict which also has the power to go deeper, to be enduring and to create future problems. Lost in all of the arguments, lost in the hunger strike, lost in Bauzá's stubbornness is what the schoolchildren of the Balearics think. Try putting yourselves in their position and in conditions of their impressionability. They see a teacher willing to perhaps commit suicide over a point of linguistic principle. Tell me that this doesn't influence their future views and I'm afraid I wouldn't believe you.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Losing The Classroom: TIL
I have a question. It is one that, I suppose, I should send in three languages, addressed to President Bauzá with a copy to education minister Joana Maria Camps. The question is this. How do you expect normality to return to schools in the Balearics when you have clearly lost the classroom?
Rather like the football manager who is said to have lost the dressing-room, the regional government has lost the classroom - its teacher, its pupils, its parents - yet it ploughs on with a system that few associated with the classroom have any confidence in. A football manager who insists on playing 4-3-3 when the team knows it should be playing 4-5-1, who oversees a slump in the team's fortunes which place it in danger of relegation, who is derided from the terraces and who is attacked on phone-ins for the loss of the dressing-room usually ends up getting the sack. Once he has been sacked, a new man comes in and hopefully confidence is restored.
There isn't anyone who can sack Bauzá, unless the ranks of the Partido Popular were to rise as one and start singing "you don't know what you're doing" and a good old-fashioned putsch were to be effected. There is someone who can sack Camps. Bauzá. But he wouldn't do this, as Camps was brought in to press ahead with the 4-3-3 system (or 3-3-3, if you prefer). Camps has lost the classroom but it is a loss dictated remotely from on high. She is the Steve Kean of Balearics education, reporting to a Venky Bauzá, both of them clucking around an empty school field like headless chickens desperately looking for the goals but forgetting that they moved the goalposts, so that no one, not even them, can remember where they put them.
The question I pose above seems a pretty damn crucial one. There is no real point in reiterating the reasons why the teachers have chosen to strike. There is no real point in further dissecting the educational merits of a system that strikes mostly anyone with a touch of common sense as being introduced devoid of rationality and practicality. There is no real point in debating whether the objections to trilingual teaching are in fact more of an objection to an undermining of Catalan than to the use of English. We have become pointed out.
How does the government think it is going to restore anything like normality? The teachers will have to return to work, especially if they lose out financially, and there will be only so few politicians, such as the leader of the Entesa party in Muro, willing to hand over a month's salary to swell the assembly of teachers' coffers. But they will do so under sufferance, lacking confidence in the system, demotivated and demoralised. Their pupils will know all about this lack of confidence and so will parents. The classroom has been well and truly lost.
There is very little point the unions demanding the removal of Keano Camps. José Ramón Venky would simply parachute in a global education adviser with probably even less qualification for the job than Joana Maria. (As was said when she was appointed, she had at least been to school.)
A replacement for Camps on the educational "campo" would not restore confidence. There is only thing that would, and that is that the government backs down and does what it should have done, which is to introduce TIL in a more evolutionary fashion than it is attempting. But would Bauzá consider such a climb down? It's most unlikely. Any credibility he may have would be shot to pieces were he to.
The government has chosen a battle, victory in which can only be pyrrhic. Its eventual loss is likely to be greater than any gains it feels it has made by planting the un-Catalan flag of TIL on the school field. The loss may be, in under two years time, to the replacement board under Francina Armengol which would lower the flag and reclaim the classroom. Meanwhile, two years of education would have been for nothing.
The battle is one that is in contrast to the surrender to business when it threatened the government with the courts over its green taxes; one that is in contrast to its slavish bowing to the demands of its sponsors in the hotel industry. It has picked a fight in which there aren't any winners and so we will be left with a system that is deeply flawed, being implemented by teachers who don't believe in it. The classroom is lost.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Rather like the football manager who is said to have lost the dressing-room, the regional government has lost the classroom - its teacher, its pupils, its parents - yet it ploughs on with a system that few associated with the classroom have any confidence in. A football manager who insists on playing 4-3-3 when the team knows it should be playing 4-5-1, who oversees a slump in the team's fortunes which place it in danger of relegation, who is derided from the terraces and who is attacked on phone-ins for the loss of the dressing-room usually ends up getting the sack. Once he has been sacked, a new man comes in and hopefully confidence is restored.
There isn't anyone who can sack Bauzá, unless the ranks of the Partido Popular were to rise as one and start singing "you don't know what you're doing" and a good old-fashioned putsch were to be effected. There is someone who can sack Camps. Bauzá. But he wouldn't do this, as Camps was brought in to press ahead with the 4-3-3 system (or 3-3-3, if you prefer). Camps has lost the classroom but it is a loss dictated remotely from on high. She is the Steve Kean of Balearics education, reporting to a Venky Bauzá, both of them clucking around an empty school field like headless chickens desperately looking for the goals but forgetting that they moved the goalposts, so that no one, not even them, can remember where they put them.
The question I pose above seems a pretty damn crucial one. There is no real point in reiterating the reasons why the teachers have chosen to strike. There is no real point in further dissecting the educational merits of a system that strikes mostly anyone with a touch of common sense as being introduced devoid of rationality and practicality. There is no real point in debating whether the objections to trilingual teaching are in fact more of an objection to an undermining of Catalan than to the use of English. We have become pointed out.
How does the government think it is going to restore anything like normality? The teachers will have to return to work, especially if they lose out financially, and there will be only so few politicians, such as the leader of the Entesa party in Muro, willing to hand over a month's salary to swell the assembly of teachers' coffers. But they will do so under sufferance, lacking confidence in the system, demotivated and demoralised. Their pupils will know all about this lack of confidence and so will parents. The classroom has been well and truly lost.
There is very little point the unions demanding the removal of Keano Camps. José Ramón Venky would simply parachute in a global education adviser with probably even less qualification for the job than Joana Maria. (As was said when she was appointed, she had at least been to school.)
A replacement for Camps on the educational "campo" would not restore confidence. There is only thing that would, and that is that the government backs down and does what it should have done, which is to introduce TIL in a more evolutionary fashion than it is attempting. But would Bauzá consider such a climb down? It's most unlikely. Any credibility he may have would be shot to pieces were he to.
The government has chosen a battle, victory in which can only be pyrrhic. Its eventual loss is likely to be greater than any gains it feels it has made by planting the un-Catalan flag of TIL on the school field. The loss may be, in under two years time, to the replacement board under Francina Armengol which would lower the flag and reclaim the classroom. Meanwhile, two years of education would have been for nothing.
The battle is one that is in contrast to the surrender to business when it threatened the government with the courts over its green taxes; one that is in contrast to its slavish bowing to the demands of its sponsors in the hotel industry. It has picked a fight in which there aren't any winners and so we will be left with a system that is deeply flawed, being implemented by teachers who don't believe in it. The classroom is lost.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Mallorca's Queen Of Twitter
Joey Barton is not and never has been an important footballer. Joey might like to think that he is important, but because he isn't, he has compensated for his lack of importance by diversifying his considerable talents and becoming a fully paid-up member of the Twitterati. Joey (2,285,941 followers, as of time of writing) has a saying on his Twitter page: "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught". Joey didn't come up with this, Oscar Wilde did. Had Oscar lived in the day of Twitter, he would have had more followers than even Joey Barton.
Joey suffers from Twitterrhoea, a term I thought I had made up until Mr. Google informed me that I most certainly hadn't. Damn. I could have started a whole Twitter trending topic of my own. Not to worry. What about Compulsive Twitter Disorder? Nope, looks like someone beat me to this as well. I suppose one just has to accept that there is no such thing as originality any longer. There will always be somebody who has had the same thought and blasted it all over the Twittersphere and had it re-tweeted by fellow compulsives who are in desperate need of an immobilising Imodium palliative to relieve them of uncontrollable vowel movements (including consonants, a maximum of 140 characters).
Ana María Aguiló isn't Joey Barton. She has less than 0.1% of the number of Twitter followers that Joey has and yet she has been proclaimed the "queen of Twitter", not by me but by ... well, I'm not entirely sure. Just take it from me that she has been. Ana María is a deputy in the Balearics parliament. She is a member of the Partido Popular. She also so happens to be the government's spokesperson on education. Which brings us, sort of, to Oscar Wilde.
Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught might be a maxim with which Ana María agrees, so long as what is being taught is in Catalan and nothing but Catalan. Ana María is part of the militant Castellano-trilingualism wing of the PP, and it is this militancy that attracts much of the attention that she receives (from slightly fewer than 1,500 followers) through her allegedly monarchical Twitter status.
Ana María. She tweets, therefore she is. Tweet? She can't help herself. Here a tweet, there a tweet, everywhere a tweet, tweet. Yes, she really ought to get to know Joey, or at least follow him. Perhaps she does. Education is an admirable thing, now that the decree on the treatment of languages (trilingualism) has averted the crisis. This crisis being exactly? It was that of Catalan. So dominant had Catalan become that Castellano had been prohibited in Mallorca. Thus tweeted Queen Ana María of the Autonomous Community of the Twitter Islands.
But Castellano is no longer threatened, thanks to education being an admirable thing. The years of living in a virtual dictatorship of Catalan are over. When Ana María brought up the D-word and put it alongside the C-word, Twitter exploded. Or rather it suffered the effects of a small incendiary device.
Ana María's various indiscretions have seen her placed in a hall of infamy on something called Shamequotes. The Catalan dictatorship thing will probably be added to "teachers should be dismissed if they criticise the administration in class" and "I don't understand why, in the times we live, people who have jobs protest".
Neither of these quotes is actually that shameful. I don't agree with her on either of them but I can imagine that many people would. There will probably be many who also agree with her about having lived under a dictatorially Catalan yoke, but they might not have expressed it in such a way. For pretty obvious reasons, put the D and C-words together and you will get some Twittered volcanic activity.
Dictatorship no, but for some years there had been talk of "the Catalan imposition", one that the current government has sought to eradicate. But it has badly misjudged the sympathies of the people of Mallorca and the Balearics and has, as a consequence, badly mismanaged its language reforms. Queen Ana María, undeterred by this debacle, has been in a Twitter tiz that merely adds to the misjudgment.
There again, she gets what she wants. Publicity. And so she becomes the queen of Twitter. Ana María is not Joey Barton, but she shares his compulsion and fuels her own sense of importance through the viral tendencies of social media. Once upon a time, few would have known who she was and even fewer would have cared.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Joey suffers from Twitterrhoea, a term I thought I had made up until Mr. Google informed me that I most certainly hadn't. Damn. I could have started a whole Twitter trending topic of my own. Not to worry. What about Compulsive Twitter Disorder? Nope, looks like someone beat me to this as well. I suppose one just has to accept that there is no such thing as originality any longer. There will always be somebody who has had the same thought and blasted it all over the Twittersphere and had it re-tweeted by fellow compulsives who are in desperate need of an immobilising Imodium palliative to relieve them of uncontrollable vowel movements (including consonants, a maximum of 140 characters).
Ana María Aguiló isn't Joey Barton. She has less than 0.1% of the number of Twitter followers that Joey has and yet she has been proclaimed the "queen of Twitter", not by me but by ... well, I'm not entirely sure. Just take it from me that she has been. Ana María is a deputy in the Balearics parliament. She is a member of the Partido Popular. She also so happens to be the government's spokesperson on education. Which brings us, sort of, to Oscar Wilde.
Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught might be a maxim with which Ana María agrees, so long as what is being taught is in Catalan and nothing but Catalan. Ana María is part of the militant Castellano-trilingualism wing of the PP, and it is this militancy that attracts much of the attention that she receives (from slightly fewer than 1,500 followers) through her allegedly monarchical Twitter status.
Ana María. She tweets, therefore she is. Tweet? She can't help herself. Here a tweet, there a tweet, everywhere a tweet, tweet. Yes, she really ought to get to know Joey, or at least follow him. Perhaps she does. Education is an admirable thing, now that the decree on the treatment of languages (trilingualism) has averted the crisis. This crisis being exactly? It was that of Catalan. So dominant had Catalan become that Castellano had been prohibited in Mallorca. Thus tweeted Queen Ana María of the Autonomous Community of the Twitter Islands.
But Castellano is no longer threatened, thanks to education being an admirable thing. The years of living in a virtual dictatorship of Catalan are over. When Ana María brought up the D-word and put it alongside the C-word, Twitter exploded. Or rather it suffered the effects of a small incendiary device.
Ana María's various indiscretions have seen her placed in a hall of infamy on something called Shamequotes. The Catalan dictatorship thing will probably be added to "teachers should be dismissed if they criticise the administration in class" and "I don't understand why, in the times we live, people who have jobs protest".
Neither of these quotes is actually that shameful. I don't agree with her on either of them but I can imagine that many people would. There will probably be many who also agree with her about having lived under a dictatorially Catalan yoke, but they might not have expressed it in such a way. For pretty obvious reasons, put the D and C-words together and you will get some Twittered volcanic activity.
Dictatorship no, but for some years there had been talk of "the Catalan imposition", one that the current government has sought to eradicate. But it has badly misjudged the sympathies of the people of Mallorca and the Balearics and has, as a consequence, badly mismanaged its language reforms. Queen Ana María, undeterred by this debacle, has been in a Twitter tiz that merely adds to the misjudgment.
There again, she gets what she wants. Publicity. And so she becomes the queen of Twitter. Ana María is not Joey Barton, but she shares his compulsion and fuels her own sense of importance through the viral tendencies of social media. Once upon a time, few would have known who she was and even fewer would have cared.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, June 03, 2013
The Realities Of Language
Alcúdia town hall has taken what appears to be a rather odd decision. It has agreed that requirements for any council job will include differing levels of ability to speak Catalan. The decision appears odd because it goes against the regional government's new law on public function which has removed the need for knowledge of Catalan to be a requirement for public-sector employment and because the town hall is dominated by the Partido Popular. There is a further oddity in that the lady mayor, Coloma Terrasa, had, some months ago, rejected the hanging of the "senyera" Aragonese/Catalan flag outside the town hall building, arguing that it gave the wrong impression for a town and council that wished to be "for all languages". Despite this previous opposition, the PP administration in Alcúdia is unanimous in stipulating that Catalan will remain a requirement and justifies its position on the grounds that it reflects the "sociolinguistic" realities of the town. The flying of the flag had presumably not reflected these realities.
There may be other factors that have influenced the decision. The PP administration does not hold an overall majority. Its natural ally (some would say unnatural ally) is the one-time Mallorcan socialist, Carme García, who lined up with the PP after the elections in 2011 and enabled it to form the council's administration but who has had cause to disagree with the PP. And Catalan, one would imagine for someone from a Mallorcan nationalist background, is a likely candidate for disagreement.
Elections are quite possibly another factor. The next municipal elections are two years away. A town which has sociolinguistic realities rooted in Catalan therefore has an electorate that is rooted in similar fashion. The politics of language in Mallorca, or at least in Alcúdia, might be said to be governed by the realities of politics, those of the ballot box. And these realities can make even Partido Popular politicians sit up and take note, especially if they fear seeing their power disappearing because of a stance that does not reflect the language realities.
While Alcúdia town hall has taken a decision which is at variance with the Bauzá regional government, the president and his new education minister plough on with their objective of promoting Castellano as a language for education. It is curious indeed that Alcúdia's PP can appreciate linguistic realities, yet the government cannot. Or maybe Alcúdia is odd in having such realities. I don't think so.
The government will argue, however, that these linguistic realities are changing. It can point to the fact that the percentage of families with children aged three to seven who want Castellano as the language of their children's education has increased; for the next school year, it will be up to 30%, slightly more than double what it has been during the current school year.
The argument, however, has to take into account the fact that when it came to choosing between Catalan and Castellano before the current school year, there was considerable confusion about the system of so-called free selection of language, so much so that some schools advised against a choice being made. Indeed, a quarter of parents made no choice. For the next school year, the government says that there are no "no choices". So, one can interpret the rise in the number of parents opting for Castellano in different ways, one of them being that they may represent some of the 25% who made no choice in 2012.
However the rise is interpreted, and the government naturally interprets it as support for its free selection policy, 30% does not amount to a ringing endorsement of the policy. Or perhaps it does, in that 70% of parents want Catalan, thus reflecting sociolinguistic realities, such as those in Alcúdia. And the government has steered away from undermining its message that free selection is getting parental support by failing to explain why the percentage of parents who prefer Catalan has itself increased - from 62% to 70%.
With elections for regional government also two years away, it is pertinent to wonder to what extent the politics of language will influence the electorate. In Alcúdia, the decision to support Catalan can be interpreted as one with an eye on the electorate. The PP government, though, cannot backtrack on its policy in the hope of mollifying discontented Catalan speakers. Indeed, with the changing of the guard at the education ministry, it seems more intent than ever on pressing the case for Castellano.
The politics of language were always likely to be a potential electoral Achilles' heel for the PP. And in two years time, Bauzá may discover just how sore that heel is.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There may be other factors that have influenced the decision. The PP administration does not hold an overall majority. Its natural ally (some would say unnatural ally) is the one-time Mallorcan socialist, Carme García, who lined up with the PP after the elections in 2011 and enabled it to form the council's administration but who has had cause to disagree with the PP. And Catalan, one would imagine for someone from a Mallorcan nationalist background, is a likely candidate for disagreement.
Elections are quite possibly another factor. The next municipal elections are two years away. A town which has sociolinguistic realities rooted in Catalan therefore has an electorate that is rooted in similar fashion. The politics of language in Mallorca, or at least in Alcúdia, might be said to be governed by the realities of politics, those of the ballot box. And these realities can make even Partido Popular politicians sit up and take note, especially if they fear seeing their power disappearing because of a stance that does not reflect the language realities.
While Alcúdia town hall has taken a decision which is at variance with the Bauzá regional government, the president and his new education minister plough on with their objective of promoting Castellano as a language for education. It is curious indeed that Alcúdia's PP can appreciate linguistic realities, yet the government cannot. Or maybe Alcúdia is odd in having such realities. I don't think so.
The government will argue, however, that these linguistic realities are changing. It can point to the fact that the percentage of families with children aged three to seven who want Castellano as the language of their children's education has increased; for the next school year, it will be up to 30%, slightly more than double what it has been during the current school year.
The argument, however, has to take into account the fact that when it came to choosing between Catalan and Castellano before the current school year, there was considerable confusion about the system of so-called free selection of language, so much so that some schools advised against a choice being made. Indeed, a quarter of parents made no choice. For the next school year, the government says that there are no "no choices". So, one can interpret the rise in the number of parents opting for Castellano in different ways, one of them being that they may represent some of the 25% who made no choice in 2012.
However the rise is interpreted, and the government naturally interprets it as support for its free selection policy, 30% does not amount to a ringing endorsement of the policy. Or perhaps it does, in that 70% of parents want Catalan, thus reflecting sociolinguistic realities, such as those in Alcúdia. And the government has steered away from undermining its message that free selection is getting parental support by failing to explain why the percentage of parents who prefer Catalan has itself increased - from 62% to 70%.
With elections for regional government also two years away, it is pertinent to wonder to what extent the politics of language will influence the electorate. In Alcúdia, the decision to support Catalan can be interpreted as one with an eye on the electorate. The PP government, though, cannot backtrack on its policy in the hope of mollifying discontented Catalan speakers. Indeed, with the changing of the guard at the education ministry, it seems more intent than ever on pressing the case for Castellano.
The politics of language were always likely to be a potential electoral Achilles' heel for the PP. And in two years time, Bauzá may discover just how sore that heel is.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The Illogic Of Catalan
The Catalan language arrived in Mallorca on horseback. Jaume I of Aragon rode across his newly conquered domain, dispensing Catalan linguistics and Catalan traditions.
There is absolutely no question as to the roots of Mallorcan language and culture and there should be no question as to what historically binds Mallorca to the mainland of Spain. This is not Castile and the Castellano language, it is Catalonia (or Aragon to be strictly accurate) and the Catalan language.
The usurping of this historical connection has occurred on different occasions over the centuries, and we all know about the attempts to destroy this connection and so therefore language and traditions during the Franco period. In the democratic, post-Franco era, Mallorcans have been able to resurrect in a fully open fashion their language and traditions, and in so doing, tourists, who in Franco times might well have been completely ignorant of anything cultural or linguistic that didn't bear the hallmark of Castile, have come to appreciate that local culture isn't, or isn't predominantly, a "Spanish" one.
Though tourists might have been unaware of an alternative version of culture, for the Mallorcans, the traditional culture didn't disappear. A particularly striking example of how the Catalan tradition still burnt during the Franco time was the staging of a glosadors contest in Felanitx in the 1940s, a time when Spanish Nationalism was at its most ferocious and vicious. In theory, such an event was not permitted, but it occurred nevertheless.
But then, what tradition was it that had been upheld during those years of prohibition? Was it Catalan or was it Mallorquín? Where the glosadors were concerned, and they were arguably the most important socio-cultural agents for maintaining linguistic tradition, it wasn't Catalan. It was Mallorquín.
It is this blurring of tradition that is at the heart of the endless arguments over language in Mallorca. While these arguments are normally styled as being between Catalan and Castellano, there is a whole separate debate regarding the Mallorquín dialect and Catalan. President Bauzá has recently reiterated his view that there are four island languages (or dialects) and he has done so by steadfastly ignoring the claims of Catalan.
The Bauzá line is, in a key respect, illogical. It pays no regard to the historical connection to Jaume I. Without Jaume, there would have been no Catalan in Mallorca and equally there would have been no Mallorquín. Catalan and Mallorquín are, therefore, well and truly part of a common heritage. There can be no debate.
But debate there most certainly is, and it is driven by political philosophy. Catalan is anti-Hispania, and is therefore, where Bauzá and others of similar views are concerned, a "bad thing". Catalan is anti-Hispania in being the language of separatism and dissent and so therefore a further bad thing. That Catalan bequeathed to Mallorca its own linguistic variant is airbrushed away in the pursuit of advancing a nationalistic dogma.
The more I come to appreciate how Mallorca was during Franco's time, the more it appears that, even if there was unofficial approval, the local dialects were not stamped on with anything like the ferocity that Catalan was; the glosadors staging a contest in a public theatre was a prime example. And it is this nationalist alliance between Castellano, the main language (despite Catalan being a co-official language), and the local dialects that represents Bauzáist philosophy. Unfortunately for the president, though, there are other political voices who proclaim the same philosophy, and they are very much to the right in a way that Bauzá isn't, because they are the neo-fascists.
Though it can seem illogical to seek to downplay the historical connection through Jaume and so downplay the role of Catalan, its traditions, its very being as a political entity as the motherland of Mallorcan language and traditions, I'm not convinced that Bauzá may not be right. The education debate, that of Catalan v. Castellano, muddies the water to an extent, and it does so because Mallorcan people appear to end up arguing against what many otherwise believe. And what they believe, at least mostly all I have ever spoken to about the subject, is in accordance with the Bauzá line. They don't want to be associated with Catalan. That may seem illogical as well, because of the historical connection, but for most Mallorcans, they take pride in Mallorquín and in not wishing to be ruled by Barcelona.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There is absolutely no question as to the roots of Mallorcan language and culture and there should be no question as to what historically binds Mallorca to the mainland of Spain. This is not Castile and the Castellano language, it is Catalonia (or Aragon to be strictly accurate) and the Catalan language.
The usurping of this historical connection has occurred on different occasions over the centuries, and we all know about the attempts to destroy this connection and so therefore language and traditions during the Franco period. In the democratic, post-Franco era, Mallorcans have been able to resurrect in a fully open fashion their language and traditions, and in so doing, tourists, who in Franco times might well have been completely ignorant of anything cultural or linguistic that didn't bear the hallmark of Castile, have come to appreciate that local culture isn't, or isn't predominantly, a "Spanish" one.
Though tourists might have been unaware of an alternative version of culture, for the Mallorcans, the traditional culture didn't disappear. A particularly striking example of how the Catalan tradition still burnt during the Franco time was the staging of a glosadors contest in Felanitx in the 1940s, a time when Spanish Nationalism was at its most ferocious and vicious. In theory, such an event was not permitted, but it occurred nevertheless.
But then, what tradition was it that had been upheld during those years of prohibition? Was it Catalan or was it Mallorquín? Where the glosadors were concerned, and they were arguably the most important socio-cultural agents for maintaining linguistic tradition, it wasn't Catalan. It was Mallorquín.
It is this blurring of tradition that is at the heart of the endless arguments over language in Mallorca. While these arguments are normally styled as being between Catalan and Castellano, there is a whole separate debate regarding the Mallorquín dialect and Catalan. President Bauzá has recently reiterated his view that there are four island languages (or dialects) and he has done so by steadfastly ignoring the claims of Catalan.
The Bauzá line is, in a key respect, illogical. It pays no regard to the historical connection to Jaume I. Without Jaume, there would have been no Catalan in Mallorca and equally there would have been no Mallorquín. Catalan and Mallorquín are, therefore, well and truly part of a common heritage. There can be no debate.
But debate there most certainly is, and it is driven by political philosophy. Catalan is anti-Hispania, and is therefore, where Bauzá and others of similar views are concerned, a "bad thing". Catalan is anti-Hispania in being the language of separatism and dissent and so therefore a further bad thing. That Catalan bequeathed to Mallorca its own linguistic variant is airbrushed away in the pursuit of advancing a nationalistic dogma.
The more I come to appreciate how Mallorca was during Franco's time, the more it appears that, even if there was unofficial approval, the local dialects were not stamped on with anything like the ferocity that Catalan was; the glosadors staging a contest in a public theatre was a prime example. And it is this nationalist alliance between Castellano, the main language (despite Catalan being a co-official language), and the local dialects that represents Bauzáist philosophy. Unfortunately for the president, though, there are other political voices who proclaim the same philosophy, and they are very much to the right in a way that Bauzá isn't, because they are the neo-fascists.
Though it can seem illogical to seek to downplay the historical connection through Jaume and so downplay the role of Catalan, its traditions, its very being as a political entity as the motherland of Mallorcan language and traditions, I'm not convinced that Bauzá may not be right. The education debate, that of Catalan v. Castellano, muddies the water to an extent, and it does so because Mallorcan people appear to end up arguing against what many otherwise believe. And what they believe, at least mostly all I have ever spoken to about the subject, is in accordance with the Bauzá line. They don't want to be associated with Catalan. That may seem illogical as well, because of the historical connection, but for most Mallorcans, they take pride in Mallorquín and in not wishing to be ruled by Barcelona.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Agony Without Ecstasy: Glosadors
At a Sant Antoni celebration in Muro one year, a friend and I took ourselves away from our group that was assembled at a bar terrace in order to investigate what could only have been described as a God-awful racket. It was being made by an elderly lady and a younger gentleman. She was playing the ximbomba, he wasn't, and they were taking turns in making utterances in a tuneless half-sung fashion. I knew what they were, as I had encountered such utterances before, though not with the "musical" accompaniment. They were glosadors, two of the many Mallorcan performers of the art of the "glosa".
It's impossible to describe glosadors as singers, as they specialise in singing only in the loosest sense of the word. What they aren't, are straightforward verse poets. The glosa can and does veer off at a tangent, an improvisational element being important, as the glosador rarely, if ever, performs alone; he or she is normally in "competition" with at least one other and quite often with several others. The improvisation, indeed the whole performance, can also be aided by alcohol. Some glosadors stick to water in order to lubricate the vocal chords, such as they are, but others can take on board copious amounts of wine or mezcla, so much so that the performances become more like drinking-song contests.
The glosador tradition dates back at least to the nineteenth century when "professional" glosadors emerged who would travel the island to take on rivals in glosa combats. The glosadors, historically, have played an important part in Mallorca's culture, not just because they are part of a folk tradition but also because they were a vital conduit for disseminating information.
Mallorquín, as with other local Mediterranean dialects and lesser languages, used not to be written, and one reason why it wasn't written was because few Mallorcans would have been able to read it. Lack of education and little by way of print media made the written word pretty much redundant. Those who could read were the elite and they wouldn't have been reading Mallorquín, even if scripts or texts had been available. So the glosadors were a means of communication. Their songs could be ribald, but they also provided political and social commentary, with satire an essential ingredient.
The lack of written Mallorquín means that little of the work of glosadors from years ago has been captured for posterity. While some will have been handed down, in the time-honoured fashion by which storytelling is passed on, only fragments will have been. The essence of the glosa was, in any event, of the time, rather than it being folk storytelling. There is an example, however, of a combat that took place in 1944 in Felanitx and which was written down. What is quite revealing about this contest was that it was of course conducted in Mallorquín, and yet it took place at a time when Catalan and Catalan dialects were supposedly banned - for public purposes at any rate. Perhaps it demonstrates that the totality of proscription wasn't as total as is generally assumed. And perhaps it also shows that it was the glosadors who helped to keep the popular use of Catalan and Mallorquín alive before the Franco regime did start to relax its linguistic prohibition.
Nowadays, the glosadors are identified with the politics of language. One of them, Santa Margalida's "Xurí" (most glosadors have nicknames), contributed to a publication in defence of Catalan in which he referred to history repeating itself in Catalan being attacked. The glosadors are, therefore, very much part of the wider movement to defend the island's Catalan culture, and at a dinner ahead of the Sant Antoni fiestas in Sa Pobla, mayor Biel Serra, a member of the Partido Popular who is one of the more sympathetic towards language defence in the party, fought an impromptu glosa battle with opposition political leaders.
The glosa is most certainly an acquired taste. The chances are that you wouldn't have a clue what the glosadors were on about, while the style can verge on the excruciating. But this is down, in no small part, to the fact that the local accent sounds as though it is being spoken/sung by someone who is in agony. This is the nature of the Mallorquín dialect and accent, however. The vocal sound isn't lovely; it isn't ecstatic, it is in pain. Yet for all that glosadors may seem impenetrable to the foreign observer, it should be noted that they play and have played a significant part in the island's culture. Go along and see them some time, and just laugh when the Mallorcans laugh.
Xurí featured in this glosador combat; Xurí is the young one.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It's impossible to describe glosadors as singers, as they specialise in singing only in the loosest sense of the word. What they aren't, are straightforward verse poets. The glosa can and does veer off at a tangent, an improvisational element being important, as the glosador rarely, if ever, performs alone; he or she is normally in "competition" with at least one other and quite often with several others. The improvisation, indeed the whole performance, can also be aided by alcohol. Some glosadors stick to water in order to lubricate the vocal chords, such as they are, but others can take on board copious amounts of wine or mezcla, so much so that the performances become more like drinking-song contests.
The glosador tradition dates back at least to the nineteenth century when "professional" glosadors emerged who would travel the island to take on rivals in glosa combats. The glosadors, historically, have played an important part in Mallorca's culture, not just because they are part of a folk tradition but also because they were a vital conduit for disseminating information.
Mallorquín, as with other local Mediterranean dialects and lesser languages, used not to be written, and one reason why it wasn't written was because few Mallorcans would have been able to read it. Lack of education and little by way of print media made the written word pretty much redundant. Those who could read were the elite and they wouldn't have been reading Mallorquín, even if scripts or texts had been available. So the glosadors were a means of communication. Their songs could be ribald, but they also provided political and social commentary, with satire an essential ingredient.
The lack of written Mallorquín means that little of the work of glosadors from years ago has been captured for posterity. While some will have been handed down, in the time-honoured fashion by which storytelling is passed on, only fragments will have been. The essence of the glosa was, in any event, of the time, rather than it being folk storytelling. There is an example, however, of a combat that took place in 1944 in Felanitx and which was written down. What is quite revealing about this contest was that it was of course conducted in Mallorquín, and yet it took place at a time when Catalan and Catalan dialects were supposedly banned - for public purposes at any rate. Perhaps it demonstrates that the totality of proscription wasn't as total as is generally assumed. And perhaps it also shows that it was the glosadors who helped to keep the popular use of Catalan and Mallorquín alive before the Franco regime did start to relax its linguistic prohibition.
Nowadays, the glosadors are identified with the politics of language. One of them, Santa Margalida's "Xurí" (most glosadors have nicknames), contributed to a publication in defence of Catalan in which he referred to history repeating itself in Catalan being attacked. The glosadors are, therefore, very much part of the wider movement to defend the island's Catalan culture, and at a dinner ahead of the Sant Antoni fiestas in Sa Pobla, mayor Biel Serra, a member of the Partido Popular who is one of the more sympathetic towards language defence in the party, fought an impromptu glosa battle with opposition political leaders.
The glosa is most certainly an acquired taste. The chances are that you wouldn't have a clue what the glosadors were on about, while the style can verge on the excruciating. But this is down, in no small part, to the fact that the local accent sounds as though it is being spoken/sung by someone who is in agony. This is the nature of the Mallorquín dialect and accent, however. The vocal sound isn't lovely; it isn't ecstatic, it is in pain. Yet for all that glosadors may seem impenetrable to the foreign observer, it should be noted that they play and have played a significant part in the island's culture. Go along and see them some time, and just laugh when the Mallorcans laugh.
Xurí featured in this glosador combat; Xurí is the young one.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Culture Nights, Culture Years: The OCB
It may not have been 31 December on Friday, but this didn't stop there being an awards ceremony in honour of 31 December. And why would there be an awards ceremony to honour this date? Because 31 December, unofficially, is Mallorca day (note the lower-case "d" as a result of it being unofficial).
As anyone with a smattering of Mallorcan history can tell you, 31 December was the day in 1229 when King Jaume I invaded (didn't re-conquer; invaded and then occupied). The Jaume invasion introduced Catalan to the island of course, and the rest has been history; one very complicated history ever since.
733 years after Jaume invaded, on 31 December 1962, an organisation was formed. Oddly perhaps, given the times they lived in then, this was the Obra Cultural Balear, arch-defenders in Mallorca of all things Catalan. It is the OCB which was dishing out the awards on Friday. It does so every year, but this, being its 50th anniversary, meant there was more to make a song and dance about (a dance that was probably in good, traditional Mallorcan "ball de bot" style).
In fact, the 50th anniversary has been given special meaning, as 2012 has been a very good year for the OCB. Because there has been so much anti-Catalan stuff flying around, it has been able to assume new purpose, kicking up a fuss left, right and centre (mainly left though), the devil of the Partido Popular attempting to play havoc with the demons of tradition and the language and culture of the island.
For its ceremony, the OCB chose Manacor. And why Manacor? Ostensibly, because 2012 is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of a famous son of the town, Antoni Maria Alcover, man of words and ideas, man of story-telling (mostly in Catalan). The choice of Manacor was fortuitous, however, as the town is the centre of opposition to the PP that has come from within the PP, or rather from those now no longer members of the PP, as they have been expelled. And they include Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor.
The ceremony, also known as the night of culture, was, as the OCB spelled out, an occasion that demonstrated a "clamour for the rights and linguistic identities of Mallorcans". On 6 January, the whole thing will be broadcast by Catalonia Television, thus extending fraternal Catalan cultural greetings across the water to the mainland and reinforcing, the OCB would believe, as it believes also in the rights of the mythical Catalan Lands, the fraternity of Catalan culture. The gala was offered to the Mallorcan channel IB3, but it seems that the offer was turned down. From what I understand, groups like the OCB and its environmental chums, GOB, are pretty much verboten by IB3 (all to do with impartial editorial direction, determined by a PP plant).
But what of this grand gala, this night of culture? Who got the awards? Well, if I were to reel them off, you wouldn't have a clue who I was referring to, and to be honest, I hadn't heard of most of them myself. One whose name is familiar, and is familiar to this blog, was Francesc Vicens. You might recall that he is the musicologist who has written, among other things, a book about pop music in Mallorca. The book's title is "Paradise of Love", and I wrote about this recently (http://alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/los-kinks-mallorca-and-sixties-pop.html).
As for the others, there were groups who defend Catalan in education, one of which helped to organise a day of protest recently, an actor called Antoni Gomila (from Manacor) who referred to the theatre as being the "backbone" for the expression and consolidation of Catalan language and culture, and a band from Valencia called Obrint Pas that mixes punk, ska and rock, all with a clear Catalan flavour.
So, there you are. What an evening of culture it must have been. And onlooking was Pastor, there with other former PP members of the town hall who await any further childish reprisals from the PP for having had the temerity to disagree with the party line. The auditorium in Manacor was packed. Whether one can read much into the attendance is hard to say, but the night of culture, it could be argued, demonstrates the serious divisions in Mallorcan society, ones created by the assault on Catalan. But how serious really are they? It suits the OCB to emphasise them, but then the OCB has its belief in the Catalan Lands and so therefore, and ultimately, some sort of independent Greater Catalonia. This is not something that has wide support in Mallorca. Indeed, it has very little popular support, and among politicians formerly of the "popular" party, I very much doubt that Pastor supports the idea either.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
As anyone with a smattering of Mallorcan history can tell you, 31 December was the day in 1229 when King Jaume I invaded (didn't re-conquer; invaded and then occupied). The Jaume invasion introduced Catalan to the island of course, and the rest has been history; one very complicated history ever since.
733 years after Jaume invaded, on 31 December 1962, an organisation was formed. Oddly perhaps, given the times they lived in then, this was the Obra Cultural Balear, arch-defenders in Mallorca of all things Catalan. It is the OCB which was dishing out the awards on Friday. It does so every year, but this, being its 50th anniversary, meant there was more to make a song and dance about (a dance that was probably in good, traditional Mallorcan "ball de bot" style).
In fact, the 50th anniversary has been given special meaning, as 2012 has been a very good year for the OCB. Because there has been so much anti-Catalan stuff flying around, it has been able to assume new purpose, kicking up a fuss left, right and centre (mainly left though), the devil of the Partido Popular attempting to play havoc with the demons of tradition and the language and culture of the island.
For its ceremony, the OCB chose Manacor. And why Manacor? Ostensibly, because 2012 is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of a famous son of the town, Antoni Maria Alcover, man of words and ideas, man of story-telling (mostly in Catalan). The choice of Manacor was fortuitous, however, as the town is the centre of opposition to the PP that has come from within the PP, or rather from those now no longer members of the PP, as they have been expelled. And they include Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor.
The ceremony, also known as the night of culture, was, as the OCB spelled out, an occasion that demonstrated a "clamour for the rights and linguistic identities of Mallorcans". On 6 January, the whole thing will be broadcast by Catalonia Television, thus extending fraternal Catalan cultural greetings across the water to the mainland and reinforcing, the OCB would believe, as it believes also in the rights of the mythical Catalan Lands, the fraternity of Catalan culture. The gala was offered to the Mallorcan channel IB3, but it seems that the offer was turned down. From what I understand, groups like the OCB and its environmental chums, GOB, are pretty much verboten by IB3 (all to do with impartial editorial direction, determined by a PP plant).
But what of this grand gala, this night of culture? Who got the awards? Well, if I were to reel them off, you wouldn't have a clue who I was referring to, and to be honest, I hadn't heard of most of them myself. One whose name is familiar, and is familiar to this blog, was Francesc Vicens. You might recall that he is the musicologist who has written, among other things, a book about pop music in Mallorca. The book's title is "Paradise of Love", and I wrote about this recently (http://alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/los-kinks-mallorca-and-sixties-pop.html).
As for the others, there were groups who defend Catalan in education, one of which helped to organise a day of protest recently, an actor called Antoni Gomila (from Manacor) who referred to the theatre as being the "backbone" for the expression and consolidation of Catalan language and culture, and a band from Valencia called Obrint Pas that mixes punk, ska and rock, all with a clear Catalan flavour.
So, there you are. What an evening of culture it must have been. And onlooking was Pastor, there with other former PP members of the town hall who await any further childish reprisals from the PP for having had the temerity to disagree with the party line. The auditorium in Manacor was packed. Whether one can read much into the attendance is hard to say, but the night of culture, it could be argued, demonstrates the serious divisions in Mallorcan society, ones created by the assault on Catalan. But how serious really are they? It suits the OCB to emphasise them, but then the OCB has its belief in the Catalan Lands and so therefore, and ultimately, some sort of independent Greater Catalonia. This is not something that has wide support in Mallorca. Indeed, it has very little popular support, and among politicians formerly of the "popular" party, I very much doubt that Pastor supports the idea either.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Language And Nationalism
Ed Miliband would, under a future Labour government, make it a stipulation that every Briton would have to speak English. He also would appear to want to stipulate that anyone who goes to live in Britain would have to speak English and that, to have a job which requires interaction with the public, staff would need to demonstrate proficiency in the English language.
This may all seem like a sop to the right-wing, but it doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, especially where public-sector jobs are concerned. If you wish to create something of unified national identity, then language is as good a symbol as any for ensuring it.
Such language stipulation is not solely an issue for British politicians to have to consider. It is one, you may have noticed, that also taxes the minds of Spanish politicians. The Catalan-Castellano great bore aside, there have been thoughts about insisting that immigrants to Spain speak Spanish (as opposed to Catalan, though maybe they think differently on the matter in Catalan-speaking areas). The current prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, once said that he would make it a stipulation, much as Miliband appears to want to where English is concerned.
Rajoy was coming from the issue from a non-EU angle (and, one suspects, a non-EU angle that nevertheless placed certain EU nationals, the likes of the British, the Germans and the French, in a different category to, for example, Bulgarians). There has never been any enactment as such, but, and regardless of where an immigrant comes from, an inability to speak the language will be an obstacle. This much is inevitable. In Spain, in Britain, wherever you care to mention.
Requiring immigrants to speak the native-tongue takes on the not always healthy glow of nationalism and the somewhat specious concept of citizenship, whether a formal application for citizenship is made or not. Speaking the language (Spanish) demonstrates a willingness to be a good citizen. Or in theory, it does. But what is meant by this? For politicians, it means the same as embracing culture, given that language and culture are indivisible, but this is highly questionable; immigrants retain their old cultures, to greater or lesser degrees, even when able to speak a new language perfectly well, and indeed Miliband is not suggesting that immigrants should abandon the cultures of their birth, which is very noble of him.
By the same token, not being able to speak the new language does not automatically mean that someone is a bad citizen. There are plenty of British people in Mallorca who speak Spanish hardly at all or not very well but who are perfectly decent citizens (or rather members of local society).
A demand that language should be acquired also takes no notice of practicality. Again, in theory, it is possible for anyone of more or less any age to learn a new language, but any language teacher or linguistics expert will tell you that language acquisition becomes harder the older the person is. It isn't just age and linguistic conditioning that are drawbacks to learning, there are also linguistic rules. For the Briton in Mallorca (or Spain), one who has never really understood English grammar, coming to terms with what appears a far more rule-based language is a mammoth task. There is only so much language that can be acquired through conversation. It needs real teaching in order to explain why, for example, Spanish has two overtly past tenses, why the present perfect doesn't necessarily observe the same rules as in English or why the subjunctives are as they are. Put any of this grammatical stuff in front of your average English-speaker, and he or she wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about.
Language is one of the great bastions of nationalism. This much is evident in the Catalan argument, among those both for and against. It isn't unreasonable to expect or at least hope that immigrants can acquire proficiency. Not unreasonable but not easy. And the logic of this is that, because it isn't easy, the proficiency won't be attained, and so the immigrant should be shown the door. Hence, language becomes an arbiter of entitlement and an enforcement. It also becomes a mark of having obtained a state of those two cultural impostors, assimilation and integration; impostors because neither can be adequately or satisfactorily defined.
Purely personally, I believe that language should be acquired to at least a reasonable level, which means to a far higher level than being able to order "dos cervezas". I suspect that there will be those resident in Mallorca, British with negligible language ability, nodding in agreement with Miliband. They would be the ones, therefore, who have not only not acquired much Spanish (or maybe they have), they would also be the ones who are still firmly rooted in Britain. Language? Culture? So long as they are someone else's problem.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This may all seem like a sop to the right-wing, but it doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, especially where public-sector jobs are concerned. If you wish to create something of unified national identity, then language is as good a symbol as any for ensuring it.
Such language stipulation is not solely an issue for British politicians to have to consider. It is one, you may have noticed, that also taxes the minds of Spanish politicians. The Catalan-Castellano great bore aside, there have been thoughts about insisting that immigrants to Spain speak Spanish (as opposed to Catalan, though maybe they think differently on the matter in Catalan-speaking areas). The current prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, once said that he would make it a stipulation, much as Miliband appears to want to where English is concerned.
Rajoy was coming from the issue from a non-EU angle (and, one suspects, a non-EU angle that nevertheless placed certain EU nationals, the likes of the British, the Germans and the French, in a different category to, for example, Bulgarians). There has never been any enactment as such, but, and regardless of where an immigrant comes from, an inability to speak the language will be an obstacle. This much is inevitable. In Spain, in Britain, wherever you care to mention.
Requiring immigrants to speak the native-tongue takes on the not always healthy glow of nationalism and the somewhat specious concept of citizenship, whether a formal application for citizenship is made or not. Speaking the language (Spanish) demonstrates a willingness to be a good citizen. Or in theory, it does. But what is meant by this? For politicians, it means the same as embracing culture, given that language and culture are indivisible, but this is highly questionable; immigrants retain their old cultures, to greater or lesser degrees, even when able to speak a new language perfectly well, and indeed Miliband is not suggesting that immigrants should abandon the cultures of their birth, which is very noble of him.
By the same token, not being able to speak the new language does not automatically mean that someone is a bad citizen. There are plenty of British people in Mallorca who speak Spanish hardly at all or not very well but who are perfectly decent citizens (or rather members of local society).
A demand that language should be acquired also takes no notice of practicality. Again, in theory, it is possible for anyone of more or less any age to learn a new language, but any language teacher or linguistics expert will tell you that language acquisition becomes harder the older the person is. It isn't just age and linguistic conditioning that are drawbacks to learning, there are also linguistic rules. For the Briton in Mallorca (or Spain), one who has never really understood English grammar, coming to terms with what appears a far more rule-based language is a mammoth task. There is only so much language that can be acquired through conversation. It needs real teaching in order to explain why, for example, Spanish has two overtly past tenses, why the present perfect doesn't necessarily observe the same rules as in English or why the subjunctives are as they are. Put any of this grammatical stuff in front of your average English-speaker, and he or she wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about.
Language is one of the great bastions of nationalism. This much is evident in the Catalan argument, among those both for and against. It isn't unreasonable to expect or at least hope that immigrants can acquire proficiency. Not unreasonable but not easy. And the logic of this is that, because it isn't easy, the proficiency won't be attained, and so the immigrant should be shown the door. Hence, language becomes an arbiter of entitlement and an enforcement. It also becomes a mark of having obtained a state of those two cultural impostors, assimilation and integration; impostors because neither can be adequately or satisfactorily defined.
Purely personally, I believe that language should be acquired to at least a reasonable level, which means to a far higher level than being able to order "dos cervezas". I suspect that there will be those resident in Mallorca, British with negligible language ability, nodding in agreement with Miliband. They would be the ones, therefore, who have not only not acquired much Spanish (or maybe they have), they would also be the ones who are still firmly rooted in Britain. Language? Culture? So long as they are someone else's problem.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
García Is Mallorcan
You might think that García is not a Mallorcan name. Strictly speaking, it isn't even a Spanish name. It was first recorded in the region of Lower Navarre which lies over the border in France and which historically forms part of the French Basque Country. García, for Spanish purposes, has come to be acknowledged as being of Basque origin, but having cropped up for the first time in the late eighth century the name spread rapidly and widely - to Castille and León, to Aragon and eventually right across the regions of Iberia.
The proliferation of the García surname puts it on a par with a British Smith. But whereas Smith comes from an Old English word smitan, meaning to strike, as in, for example, a blacksmith, García is not derived from labour or occupation; its origin is believed to be from a Basque adjective meaning youthful (or, in Spanish terms, the word "joven" which has a wider application than referring solely to youth).
Nowadays, there are more Spaniards with the surname García than any other (bearing in mind that Spaniards have two surnames). It is the most common name in numerous regions of Spain, beating by some distance other common surnames - Fernández, Martínez, Rodríguez - and there are more Garcías in the Balearics than anyone else.
The names of García and of others noted above have an essentially Spanish feel to them; indeed, they are considered to be Castellano surnames. As such, it seems slightly odd that García should be as prevalent as it is in Mallorca and the Balearics, given the islands' historic links with Aragon and Catalonia.
But as also noted above, the name García was widely and quickly diffused across Spain, and when King Jaume I invaded Mallorca in the thirteenth century, one of his most trusted aides was one Sancho García. He was granted a great deal of Mallorcan land by Jaume, and with the land came a lineage; the name García in Mallorca is as old as the introduction of Catalan. Though García was originally Basque, it came to be identifiably Spanish, and so Mallorca was, by surname alone, subject to a process of Spanishisation as long ago as 1229. García, though it might not sound it, is very much a Mallorcan name.
The Balearics statistics institute issues annually a report on surnames. Its latest shows that García dominates in nine municipalities - Alcúdia is one, Palma and Calvià are others. One interesting aspect of this report is that it also shows the extent to which certain surnames are particularly prevalent in specific towns. For example, the name of the Balearic president, Bauzá, is shared by almost 11% of the population of the town of Sant Joan. Not that Bauzá comes from Sant Joan; he was in fact born in Madrid, which may explain a lot, and his second surname is Díaz, another essentially Castellano surname.
Bauzá is, along with the likes of Pons, Riera and Barceló, one of the Mallorcan surnames that is most encountered across Mallorca. But what is meant by a Mallorcan surname? This is not an idle question. Like the whole Catalan argument, surnames form part of a linguistic and political battle, one designed to demonstrate Catalan roots or not.
One view of Mallorca's relationship with Catalan seeks to distance the island from Catalonia. Accordingly, the onomastic argument has it that, unlike the roots of surnames in Catalonia, which are said to be 70% of Germanic origin, almost a half of the Balearic names are a mix of Hebrew, Latin, Greek and other sources. The rest date from the old Kingdom of Mallorca.
The implication of this is that there are surnames which are unique to the islands, many of them in fact. The reference to the Kingdom of Mallorca is pertinent as the separate-development argument disputes the involvement of Catalonia in this kingdom; it was, after all, the legacy of the Aragonese king Jaume.
It is an arcane argument to say the least, but being somewhat obscure doesn't make it any less interesting. But it is an argument that runs up against the Castellano element, as with García. It is said that a unique Balearic surname is Garcías, which may be the case, but it had to have been derived from García, a surname which is prevalent only partly as a result of immigration as it was a name inherently associated with Jaume and ultimately therefore the Kingdom of Mallorca.
García undermines arguments of those who would either aver that Balearic surnames owe everything to Catalan or have followed a path of development separate to Catalan. García is a Spanish name. It is also a Mallorcan name and every bit as much as Bauzá is.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The proliferation of the García surname puts it on a par with a British Smith. But whereas Smith comes from an Old English word smitan, meaning to strike, as in, for example, a blacksmith, García is not derived from labour or occupation; its origin is believed to be from a Basque adjective meaning youthful (or, in Spanish terms, the word "joven" which has a wider application than referring solely to youth).
Nowadays, there are more Spaniards with the surname García than any other (bearing in mind that Spaniards have two surnames). It is the most common name in numerous regions of Spain, beating by some distance other common surnames - Fernández, Martínez, Rodríguez - and there are more Garcías in the Balearics than anyone else.
The names of García and of others noted above have an essentially Spanish feel to them; indeed, they are considered to be Castellano surnames. As such, it seems slightly odd that García should be as prevalent as it is in Mallorca and the Balearics, given the islands' historic links with Aragon and Catalonia.
But as also noted above, the name García was widely and quickly diffused across Spain, and when King Jaume I invaded Mallorca in the thirteenth century, one of his most trusted aides was one Sancho García. He was granted a great deal of Mallorcan land by Jaume, and with the land came a lineage; the name García in Mallorca is as old as the introduction of Catalan. Though García was originally Basque, it came to be identifiably Spanish, and so Mallorca was, by surname alone, subject to a process of Spanishisation as long ago as 1229. García, though it might not sound it, is very much a Mallorcan name.
The Balearics statistics institute issues annually a report on surnames. Its latest shows that García dominates in nine municipalities - Alcúdia is one, Palma and Calvià are others. One interesting aspect of this report is that it also shows the extent to which certain surnames are particularly prevalent in specific towns. For example, the name of the Balearic president, Bauzá, is shared by almost 11% of the population of the town of Sant Joan. Not that Bauzá comes from Sant Joan; he was in fact born in Madrid, which may explain a lot, and his second surname is Díaz, another essentially Castellano surname.
Bauzá is, along with the likes of Pons, Riera and Barceló, one of the Mallorcan surnames that is most encountered across Mallorca. But what is meant by a Mallorcan surname? This is not an idle question. Like the whole Catalan argument, surnames form part of a linguistic and political battle, one designed to demonstrate Catalan roots or not.
One view of Mallorca's relationship with Catalan seeks to distance the island from Catalonia. Accordingly, the onomastic argument has it that, unlike the roots of surnames in Catalonia, which are said to be 70% of Germanic origin, almost a half of the Balearic names are a mix of Hebrew, Latin, Greek and other sources. The rest date from the old Kingdom of Mallorca.
The implication of this is that there are surnames which are unique to the islands, many of them in fact. The reference to the Kingdom of Mallorca is pertinent as the separate-development argument disputes the involvement of Catalonia in this kingdom; it was, after all, the legacy of the Aragonese king Jaume.
It is an arcane argument to say the least, but being somewhat obscure doesn't make it any less interesting. But it is an argument that runs up against the Castellano element, as with García. It is said that a unique Balearic surname is Garcías, which may be the case, but it had to have been derived from García, a surname which is prevalent only partly as a result of immigration as it was a name inherently associated with Jaume and ultimately therefore the Kingdom of Mallorca.
García undermines arguments of those who would either aver that Balearic surnames owe everything to Catalan or have followed a path of development separate to Catalan. García is a Spanish name. It is also a Mallorcan name and every bit as much as Bauzá is.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, November 08, 2012
The Reluctant Catalans
The Ramon Llull Institute is a body that was founded ten years ago. Its purpose is to promote the Catalan language and Catalan culture, the emphasis being on promotion internationally. The institute comprises different regional authorities - the Balearic Government, the governments of Catalonia and Andorra - as well as the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales, the town council of Alghero in Sardinia, various cities in the region of Valencia, the Vives network of Catalan universities and the Ramon Llull Foundation, a body which basically does the same as the Institute but which is based in Andorra; the Institute is headquartered in Palma and Barcelona.
The geographical spread of the Institute's representatives more or less corresponds with where Catalan or a Catalan dialect/variant are spoken. The Institute lives up to its billing of promoting the Catalan language and culture and it manages to co-opt some important partners. In September, an agreement was signed with FC Barcelona to promote Catalan culture. The Institute is promoting the teaching of Catalan studies at the LSE as from this academic year. It stages exhibitions, such as that dedicated to the artist Joan Miró in Yorkshire in October. During the World Travel Market in London it has been staging an exhibition by Balearic artists called Isleart.
The Institute, named after the ancient Mallorcan writer-theologian-astrologist and all-round man of mystery, has in its ten years faced some controversy; all of it political. Two years after it was founded during Francesc Antich's first PSOE socialist administration in the Balearics, the new Balearic Government of Jaume Matas's Partido Popular withdrew its support. The Balearics rejoined the Institute's consortium in 2008, after Antich had been re-elected as the president of the Balearics. The now Balearic Government of José Ramón Bauzá's PP is to withdraw from the consortium once again.
As can be seen from the list of the various bodies involved with the Institute, its existence owes much to the provision of public money. Ostensibly, it is public funding, or the lack of it, which is behind the Balearic Government's decision to withdraw. But there is more to it; a political more to it, just as there was when Matas was president.
Whether they have been critical in Bauzá's thinking, the elections in Catalonia are said to have influenced the attitude of the Balearic Government towards the Institute. I suspect that, regardless of whether Artur Mas wins on 25 November and so presses ahead towards independence, the decision would be the same. The PP has a distinctly unenthusiastic attitude towards the Institute.
On the face of it, you would think that the current government would be happy to have a body such as the Institute bringing the name of one of Mallorca's two most famous sons to the world's attention and doing so in a fashion that might help with promoting the much-hyped cultural tourism. The trouble is of course that this famous son has been hijacked by the rest of the Catalan world in order to promote the concept of Catalan as part of the Catalan Lands. The PP doesn't want to be a part of such a concept; it is totally anathema.
Much though Catalan culture and language are promoted and are spoken of with pride in Mallorca and the Balearics, the Mallorcan people - the majority possibly, or even probably - are reluctant Catalans. They wrap themselves in Catalan and Aragonese flags and favour the use of Catalan as the language of their children's education but they want little to do with Catalonia; they certainly don't want to be dominated politically by the region across the water.
The Mallorcans aren't the only ones. Though cities from the Valencia region have Institute representation, the regional government in Valencia has never supported the Institute. Valencia does not wish to be seen as some sort of Catalonia satellite, and there are many Valencians who would argue that their brand of Catalan is the real Catalan language and not that spoken in Barcelona.
The Institute, far from being a body that represents a unified Catalan culture, is one that shows divisions within Catalan-speaking regions. These are divisions of politics, dialects and jealousies. They are such that any notion of a Greater Catalonia will remain elusive and unattainable. There is no Catalan unity.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The geographical spread of the Institute's representatives more or less corresponds with where Catalan or a Catalan dialect/variant are spoken. The Institute lives up to its billing of promoting the Catalan language and culture and it manages to co-opt some important partners. In September, an agreement was signed with FC Barcelona to promote Catalan culture. The Institute is promoting the teaching of Catalan studies at the LSE as from this academic year. It stages exhibitions, such as that dedicated to the artist Joan Miró in Yorkshire in October. During the World Travel Market in London it has been staging an exhibition by Balearic artists called Isleart.
The Institute, named after the ancient Mallorcan writer-theologian-astrologist and all-round man of mystery, has in its ten years faced some controversy; all of it political. Two years after it was founded during Francesc Antich's first PSOE socialist administration in the Balearics, the new Balearic Government of Jaume Matas's Partido Popular withdrew its support. The Balearics rejoined the Institute's consortium in 2008, after Antich had been re-elected as the president of the Balearics. The now Balearic Government of José Ramón Bauzá's PP is to withdraw from the consortium once again.
As can be seen from the list of the various bodies involved with the Institute, its existence owes much to the provision of public money. Ostensibly, it is public funding, or the lack of it, which is behind the Balearic Government's decision to withdraw. But there is more to it; a political more to it, just as there was when Matas was president.
Whether they have been critical in Bauzá's thinking, the elections in Catalonia are said to have influenced the attitude of the Balearic Government towards the Institute. I suspect that, regardless of whether Artur Mas wins on 25 November and so presses ahead towards independence, the decision would be the same. The PP has a distinctly unenthusiastic attitude towards the Institute.
On the face of it, you would think that the current government would be happy to have a body such as the Institute bringing the name of one of Mallorca's two most famous sons to the world's attention and doing so in a fashion that might help with promoting the much-hyped cultural tourism. The trouble is of course that this famous son has been hijacked by the rest of the Catalan world in order to promote the concept of Catalan as part of the Catalan Lands. The PP doesn't want to be a part of such a concept; it is totally anathema.
Much though Catalan culture and language are promoted and are spoken of with pride in Mallorca and the Balearics, the Mallorcan people - the majority possibly, or even probably - are reluctant Catalans. They wrap themselves in Catalan and Aragonese flags and favour the use of Catalan as the language of their children's education but they want little to do with Catalonia; they certainly don't want to be dominated politically by the region across the water.
The Mallorcans aren't the only ones. Though cities from the Valencia region have Institute representation, the regional government in Valencia has never supported the Institute. Valencia does not wish to be seen as some sort of Catalonia satellite, and there are many Valencians who would argue that their brand of Catalan is the real Catalan language and not that spoken in Barcelona.
The Institute, far from being a body that represents a unified Catalan culture, is one that shows divisions within Catalan-speaking regions. These are divisions of politics, dialects and jealousies. They are such that any notion of a Greater Catalonia will remain elusive and unattainable. There is no Catalan unity.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - The Osborne bull goes Catalan
The object of all manner of graffiti and various campaigns, the Osborne bull statue near Algaida has now become embroiled in the defence of Catalan campaign, a Catalan flag having been knotted around its neck and slogans painted onto it.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Sunday, March 11, 2012
A Hunger For Language: Catalan
You might have been wondering what Alcúdia town hall was making of all the kerfuffle to do with Catalan, as it had been notably silent on the matter. Actually, you probably weren't wondering, but I was. Are you indifferent to the subject? Does it matter not a jot, or even a jota (as in the Mallorcan dance)?
Alcúdia's apparent reticence to declare was made conspicuous by the public debates on the issue emanating from neighbours Pollensa and the heartland of Catalan in a Mallorcan style, Sa Pobla. It has now shed its silence. The "turncoat" Carme Garcia has put her old Mallorcan socialist duffle coat back on and sided with the Convergència and PSOE in outvoting the Partido Popular and issuing the town's defence of Catalan in matters of its use in the public sector, something that the PP regional government would prefer went away.
Your indifference or attitudes may be determined by the pragmatism argument, i.e. that Castellano, a world language, is of far more use than Catalan, and that it is the predominant language of Spain. It is a not unreasonable argument, but it ignores much, most obviously the cultural aspect of Catalan. Language is culture. Culture is language. The two are indivisible.
Language and culture, you might hope, would be separate from politics, but of course they are not. It is nonsensical to suggest that the language issue in Mallorca is being politicised, as it has long been so, as it has long been politicised in Spain as a whole. The politics of repression have required that Catalan be proscribed, and proscription was imposed not only by Franco.
It was said to me recently that fears were being expressed locally that a new Civil War could engulf Spain. It is an extreme view and one that probably owes much to the actual Civil War and its aftermath residing in the collective, living memory. Less dramatic than the almost total impossibility of a repeat of 1936 are the practicalities of this memory, one of them being attitudes towards Catalan. History can repeat itself, not in exactly the same ways but in similar ways, and this is what underpins the resistance to the regional government's language policy.
Pensioners going on hunger strike to defend the language seems like an over-reaction, but then how can you or I truly appreciate the reasons why? The language is not ours, the culture is not ours, the living memory is one of some foreigners who experienced the Franco era at first hand, but it is one unshared by most. Resort to the pragmatism argument is one of social and psychological distance, of simplification. It is one of a typically pragmatic, unromantic northern European perspective and mentality.
The emergence of the Moviment per la Llengua, driven by current Partido Popular dissenters such as Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor, and ex-PP dissenters who abandoned the party for reasons that included language policy, demonstrates the strength of feeling against the Balearic Government's downgrading of Catalan. But there is a confusion for many of us. A question I have posed before is - which Catalan is being defended?
The government, and certainly President Bauzá, have made it clear that they are in favour of the Catalan languages of the Balearics, the dialects. The Círculo Balear, the organisation that holds up imaginary crosses at the mere mention of the devil of Catalan, has expressed its opposition to the government's recent announcement of a grant (a small one of 50,000 euros) for publishing textbooks which reflect the islands' languages. Is this the act of a government that has no time for Catalan or at least its dialects? Well no, but the defence of Catalan is more abstract than simply the language (or languages).
The Bauzá position is one that is shared by organisations further to the right than the Partido Popular. It is one that respects localism in the form of dialects but that grants supremacy to the national language, i.e. Castellano. But the politics of language and culture are less to do with the language (Catalan) per se; they are more to do with geopolitics. In other words, the ambitions of the anti-Spain: Catalonia.
The Catalan imposition, as it has been styled, is what the regional government is seeking to un-impose. It has been an imposition nuanced as regional imperialism on behalf of Catalonia, with the language in the vanguard, and the advancement of the largely mythical concept of the Catalan lands, which include the Balearics.
Against romanticism, mythology, history and culture, what chance does pragmatism have? It is too simplistic, and if you don't agree, then try talking to a hunger striker.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Alcúdia's apparent reticence to declare was made conspicuous by the public debates on the issue emanating from neighbours Pollensa and the heartland of Catalan in a Mallorcan style, Sa Pobla. It has now shed its silence. The "turncoat" Carme Garcia has put her old Mallorcan socialist duffle coat back on and sided with the Convergència and PSOE in outvoting the Partido Popular and issuing the town's defence of Catalan in matters of its use in the public sector, something that the PP regional government would prefer went away.
Your indifference or attitudes may be determined by the pragmatism argument, i.e. that Castellano, a world language, is of far more use than Catalan, and that it is the predominant language of Spain. It is a not unreasonable argument, but it ignores much, most obviously the cultural aspect of Catalan. Language is culture. Culture is language. The two are indivisible.
Language and culture, you might hope, would be separate from politics, but of course they are not. It is nonsensical to suggest that the language issue in Mallorca is being politicised, as it has long been so, as it has long been politicised in Spain as a whole. The politics of repression have required that Catalan be proscribed, and proscription was imposed not only by Franco.
It was said to me recently that fears were being expressed locally that a new Civil War could engulf Spain. It is an extreme view and one that probably owes much to the actual Civil War and its aftermath residing in the collective, living memory. Less dramatic than the almost total impossibility of a repeat of 1936 are the practicalities of this memory, one of them being attitudes towards Catalan. History can repeat itself, not in exactly the same ways but in similar ways, and this is what underpins the resistance to the regional government's language policy.
Pensioners going on hunger strike to defend the language seems like an over-reaction, but then how can you or I truly appreciate the reasons why? The language is not ours, the culture is not ours, the living memory is one of some foreigners who experienced the Franco era at first hand, but it is one unshared by most. Resort to the pragmatism argument is one of social and psychological distance, of simplification. It is one of a typically pragmatic, unromantic northern European perspective and mentality.
The emergence of the Moviment per la Llengua, driven by current Partido Popular dissenters such as Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor, and ex-PP dissenters who abandoned the party for reasons that included language policy, demonstrates the strength of feeling against the Balearic Government's downgrading of Catalan. But there is a confusion for many of us. A question I have posed before is - which Catalan is being defended?
The government, and certainly President Bauzá, have made it clear that they are in favour of the Catalan languages of the Balearics, the dialects. The Círculo Balear, the organisation that holds up imaginary crosses at the mere mention of the devil of Catalan, has expressed its opposition to the government's recent announcement of a grant (a small one of 50,000 euros) for publishing textbooks which reflect the islands' languages. Is this the act of a government that has no time for Catalan or at least its dialects? Well no, but the defence of Catalan is more abstract than simply the language (or languages).
The Bauzá position is one that is shared by organisations further to the right than the Partido Popular. It is one that respects localism in the form of dialects but that grants supremacy to the national language, i.e. Castellano. But the politics of language and culture are less to do with the language (Catalan) per se; they are more to do with geopolitics. In other words, the ambitions of the anti-Spain: Catalonia.
The Catalan imposition, as it has been styled, is what the regional government is seeking to un-impose. It has been an imposition nuanced as regional imperialism on behalf of Catalonia, with the language in the vanguard, and the advancement of the largely mythical concept of the Catalan lands, which include the Balearics.
Against romanticism, mythology, history and culture, what chance does pragmatism have? It is too simplistic, and if you don't agree, then try talking to a hunger striker.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Language Movement in defence of Catalan formed
Current and former members of the Partido Popular have come together to create the "Moviment per la Llengua" to counter the Balearic Government's proposed changes to the law as it applies to the use of Catalan in the public sector. Prominent in this movement are Antoni Pastor, mayor of Manacor, Cristòfol Soler, for a time the president of the Balearics in the 1990s, and Jaume Font, formerly a member of the PP who left the party because of disagreements with the now president, Jóse Bauzá, and formed his own party, La Lliga. Politicians from other parties have also signed up to the movement, including the ex-PSOE president of the islands, Francesc Antich.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa agrees Catalan policy
An unusual level of accord has broken out at Pollensa town hall. Along with the general agreement related to Ullal (see "Ullal proposals withdrawn by town hall", 24 February), there is also agreement regarding opposition to the regional government's attitude towards Catalan, the town hall pressing to ensure that, for example, programmes and films on local television are transmitted in Catalan.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Misjudgments: Culture and expatriates
I am not a newsagent loyalist. Given that a journey is required for whichever newsagent I might patronise, each day brings its moment of decision-making. Which one?
A Can Picafort shop has become the newsagent of most chat, partly because the chap seems to take notice of what's in the "Bulletin"; well, on its front and back covers at any rate. I very much doubt that he will be reading this (when it goes forward to the Bulletin). Nor indeed does he know that I am there within its covers.
"Capello quits" was the cue for a morning chat. What I had anticipated might have been solely an assessment of the now former England manager's contribution to the national team turned out to be the cue for another racism analysis; there had been a previous one regarding Luis Suárez.
The chat does tend to be somewhat one-sided. As a subject for discussion, I tend to simply nod, utter the occasional "claro", even if I don't mean it, and eventually depart, bidding my interlocutor a pleasant and good day. I have no wish to cause offence and no offence has been caused on his part. It is a discussion, if you can call it that, which speaks volumes about different cultural perspectives.
The chat wandered off into seemingly unrelated territory, that of the French broadcaster Canal Plus' satirising of Rafael Nadal as a doper and of claims by the French to be superior in matters of racial correctness. Who had France ever had in their national football team who was of a different ethnic origin? Zidane. Spain had Senna, and he was black.
This did rather overlook Henry, Thuram, Desailly and any number of black French players and also overlooked the occasion when the former Spanish coach, Luis Aragonés, was caught describing Henry in a John Terry-like fashion (allegedly, when it comes to Terry of course).
It is good to know that the French are currently European public enemies "numéro un" where the Mallorcans are concerned. Showing Nadal urinating into a petrol tank; how dare the French? This does at least divert attention from the British for the time being. And it is also good to know that a French propensity to provoke neighbourly ill-will extends to the south as well as the north of France.
Be it racially correct Britain or France, there is no great vive of la différence between Britain and France in the eyes of many a Spaniard or Mallorcan. They simply don't get the whole racial deal. Which is not to say that there is rampant racism, as there isn't. Just that they don't see what the fuss is all about. And the newsagent couldn't figure out what the fuss over Capello was all about.
Capello's mistake was to have made a misjudgment, but it was a mistake in keeping with what appears to have been his failure to have bought into British culture and mores, and not just because of his failure to have acquired a decent level of English.
British expats in Mallorca aren't of course like Capello. Most of them are not paid a small fortune for doing very little. But the Capello story is instructive as an example of how not acquiring a feel for culture, central to which is an appreciation of language, can result in misjudgment and in non-ingratiation.
Capello can't be blamed for his mercenariness. What the precise terms of his contract were, who can say. They should though have included clauses for the sake of keeping up appearances if nothing else. Without them it was all too easy to consider him as someone taking a fat pay cheque and giving very little back.
In a similar way, many an expat is a mercenary. Not in terms of monetary or material gain, but in terms of gains from what Mallorca has to offer and not giving much back or not seriously attempting to come to terms with local culture or societal mores. Or in making misjudgments in the form of constant criticisms, be they anything from disapproval of bullfighting or road behaviour or standards of service.
But perhaps it is too much to expect otherwise. There will always be misjudgments and misunderstandings and not just because of a failure of language. The mercenariness of ease of mobility can sharpen cultural distinctions rather than lessen them. And it is one that leaves the country or island that is subject to the mercenariness wishing to fall back on what it knows best - its own. Not just Mallorca but also England. After Sven and Fabio, England wants an Englishman; Harry, for whom there has been no misjudgment.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
A Can Picafort shop has become the newsagent of most chat, partly because the chap seems to take notice of what's in the "Bulletin"; well, on its front and back covers at any rate. I very much doubt that he will be reading this (when it goes forward to the Bulletin). Nor indeed does he know that I am there within its covers.
"Capello quits" was the cue for a morning chat. What I had anticipated might have been solely an assessment of the now former England manager's contribution to the national team turned out to be the cue for another racism analysis; there had been a previous one regarding Luis Suárez.
The chat does tend to be somewhat one-sided. As a subject for discussion, I tend to simply nod, utter the occasional "claro", even if I don't mean it, and eventually depart, bidding my interlocutor a pleasant and good day. I have no wish to cause offence and no offence has been caused on his part. It is a discussion, if you can call it that, which speaks volumes about different cultural perspectives.
The chat wandered off into seemingly unrelated territory, that of the French broadcaster Canal Plus' satirising of Rafael Nadal as a doper and of claims by the French to be superior in matters of racial correctness. Who had France ever had in their national football team who was of a different ethnic origin? Zidane. Spain had Senna, and he was black.
This did rather overlook Henry, Thuram, Desailly and any number of black French players and also overlooked the occasion when the former Spanish coach, Luis Aragonés, was caught describing Henry in a John Terry-like fashion (allegedly, when it comes to Terry of course).
It is good to know that the French are currently European public enemies "numéro un" where the Mallorcans are concerned. Showing Nadal urinating into a petrol tank; how dare the French? This does at least divert attention from the British for the time being. And it is also good to know that a French propensity to provoke neighbourly ill-will extends to the south as well as the north of France.
Be it racially correct Britain or France, there is no great vive of la différence between Britain and France in the eyes of many a Spaniard or Mallorcan. They simply don't get the whole racial deal. Which is not to say that there is rampant racism, as there isn't. Just that they don't see what the fuss is all about. And the newsagent couldn't figure out what the fuss over Capello was all about.
Capello's mistake was to have made a misjudgment, but it was a mistake in keeping with what appears to have been his failure to have bought into British culture and mores, and not just because of his failure to have acquired a decent level of English.
British expats in Mallorca aren't of course like Capello. Most of them are not paid a small fortune for doing very little. But the Capello story is instructive as an example of how not acquiring a feel for culture, central to which is an appreciation of language, can result in misjudgment and in non-ingratiation.
Capello can't be blamed for his mercenariness. What the precise terms of his contract were, who can say. They should though have included clauses for the sake of keeping up appearances if nothing else. Without them it was all too easy to consider him as someone taking a fat pay cheque and giving very little back.
In a similar way, many an expat is a mercenary. Not in terms of monetary or material gain, but in terms of gains from what Mallorca has to offer and not giving much back or not seriously attempting to come to terms with local culture or societal mores. Or in making misjudgments in the form of constant criticisms, be they anything from disapproval of bullfighting or road behaviour or standards of service.
But perhaps it is too much to expect otherwise. There will always be misjudgments and misunderstandings and not just because of a failure of language. The mercenariness of ease of mobility can sharpen cultural distinctions rather than lessen them. And it is one that leaves the country or island that is subject to the mercenariness wishing to fall back on what it knows best - its own. Not just Mallorca but also England. After Sven and Fabio, England wants an Englishman; Harry, for whom there has been no misjudgment.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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