The Non-Existent Lands: Balearics and Catalonia

Cliché it may be but there is some truth to the notion that certain things can only happen in Mallorca. They could also, theoretically, happen in Ibiza, Formentera and Menorca, but in practice they couldn't, as none of those islands can boast having a Balearic Parliament. Only Mallorca can boast such an institution, and so it could indeed only have happened in Mallorca.

You will be delighted to know how wisely taxpayer money is spent on parliament and parliamentary debate, because this week the Balearic Parliament has been considering where or to what the Balearics belong. On the face of it, the answer to the question is pretty simple. For quite a number of years now the Balearics have belonged to Spain. Once the British were finally booted out of Menorca, over 200 years ago, there hasn't been much argument about the fact that the Balearics, all of the islands, are Spanish.

But hold on, what am I saying? Arguments there are, and arguments there were among our honourable friends in Parliament. And these arguments centred on the pretender to Balearics' possession. Which is? No, not is, but are. The Catalan Lands. Yep, Parliament has been debating whether or not the Balearics belong to these Lands and presumably not therefore to Spain.

Just one of the problems with this debate was a fairly crucial one. As some honourable friends - you won't be surprised to learn that they were from the Partido Popular - disputed the very existence of the Catalan Lands, it was difficult to hold a debate. How can one debate the claim that the Balearics belong to the Catalan Lands when there is no such thing as the Catalan Lands? There again, there are any number of people who are prepared to argue that God doesn't exist but will still insist on debating this non-existence rather than saying that because they don't believe in God's existence, there isn't a great deal of point arguing about it.

While the Catalan Lands may in fact only be an abstract or mythical concept, the fact that they are nebulous is no obstacle to wasting time in Parliament discussing something which doesn't exist, especially when there are others who believe in the God of the Catalan Lands. All the parliamentary deputies, more or less, who are not with the PP are, at the very least, prepared to countenance the possibility of the Lands' existence. So, there they were, debate lines drawn between Catalan Lands atheists, some of an agnostic tendency and others who follow the faith.

In purely linguistic terms, there are - and even the PP have to concede this - certain regions where Catalan or a variant thereof is spoken. The Balearics form one such region. (I don't know why I'm telling you this, as I would presume you realise this, but whatever.)  Speaking the lingo or a type of the lingo isn't quite the same thing as there being a "Catalan Lands" though, because as a concept this has a political and historical background. And it was the politics that went to the heart of the debate. Eventually, Parliament (i.e. the PP because of its majority) decided that the Balearics did not belong to the Catalan Lands.

The PP's spokesperson in Parliament, Mabel "The Lonely Goatherd" Cabrer had consulted her history texts in being the prime mover behind the atheists. The Catalan Lands didn't exist, she maintained, because Mallorca was once a Kingdom and because Catalonia was once just a part of the Crown of Aragon. No one has ever really put forward the case for the Aragon Lands, mainly one presumes because the Aragonese aren't that bothered. In a way of course, she is right. Mallorca was swallowed up by the Crown of Aragon as well until it was finally and definitively made an Un-Crown under the Nueva Planta of the early eighteenth century, a move which has meant that Mallorca and the Balearics (save for the times when the British were in residence on Menorca and also, one might add, when the French were occupying) have, for three centuries, been Spanish and nothing but Spanish.

The debate about the Catalan Lands, daft though it might seem, does have a serious side to it. If the Parliament were to decide that the Balearics do indeed belong to the Catalan Lands, then, if only in theory, the Balearics might find themselves part of a greater Catalonia, assuming that Catalonia were to become independent. This, the claims of Catalonia, is one of the reasons why President Bauzá and others have such a big downer on Catalonia and therefore Catalan. But such a parliamentary decision would fly in the face of popular opinion. As pointed out previously, a sense of identity with the Catalan Lands among the Balearics' people is all but non-existent. About as non-existent as the Catalan Lands themselves. Possibly.