Formentera is a small island. With a surface mass of some 83 square kilometres it is a little over two per cent the size of Mallorca. Because it is tiny, when there are noises about it being inundated with tourists and cars, one is intuitively inclined to accept that it is: more so than with the constant laments that Mallorca is overrun. In addition to its size, it has a disadvantage in not having an airport. Tourists mainly arrive with their cars on the ferries.
The largest tourist groups, it is said, are mainland Spanish and Italian. These tourists, of whatever nationality, are being confronted with publicity urging them to become aware of Formentera's environmental delicacy. The key aims of the campaign are the promotion of water-saving, of keeping beaches clean and of "sustainable mobility": traffic and transport.
Understandable though this is, less understandable is the fact that the campaign is being conducted in Catalan with some English. While Catalan, or at least the Formenterenc dialect, is of course common, the people who visit the island are not typically Catalan speakers (or even English speakers). Why, therefore, is there a campaign directed at tourists that's in Catalan?
Among those asking this question are Catalan speakers. They recognise that visitors will not necessarily be au fait. Use Catalan in the campaign but also use other languages, and not just English. And use one language in particular: Castellano.
The Council of Formentera is bossed by the Gent per Formentera party. This is a grouping described variously as being socialist, eco-socialist, Catalan nationalist and simply left. As such, therefore, it is inclined to butt heads with the right, i.e. the Partido Popular. The president of the PP in Formentera has described the campaign as being "one of those absurd things that our Council does".
The PP, one feels, does have a point. There again, it is, or was under Bauzá certainly, the great defender of Castellano. So, it would seem duty bound to offer an assault on the non-use of the other co-official language, just as it can now rely on the support of Ciudadanos (C's) in doing likewise.
However, there is a perceptible shift in language emphasis among the upper echelons of the PP at present. This may in part be as a means of distinguishing itself from the C's, with whom it does share some generally similar policies. Language is one; Catalan nationalism is another.
But more important is the leadership's wish to distance itself from the Bauzá era. In this regard the PP in the Balearics is basically returning to what it used to be: more sympathetic towards regionalism and so a regional identity and so also more sympathetic towards Catalan.
This is a style that helped to make the PP (and what was the forerunner of the PP from the time of regional government in 1983 until 1989 when the PP was formally founded) the dominant political power in the Balearics, a position it has never lost in the sense that it has always polled better than other parties. While the party is still led by an interim president - Miquel Vidal - when it is finally allowed to have a regional congress to elect a permanent leader, it is anticipated that the regionalist faction will win. (There was meant to have been this congress after the general election in December last year, but the indeterminate nature of the election result put that off.)
Vidal is not a contender as permanent leader. The most likely one comes from the regionalist camp - Biel Company, who was environment minister under Bauzá and who also led the revolt against Bauzá following the disastrous performance at the 2015 regional election (though the PP did still gain more seats than others). Two more of those rebels were the mayors of Campos and Santanyi, Sebastià Sagreras and Llorenç Galmés. They are now, respectively, the general-secretary and spokesperson for the PP, indicating the direction that the party has been going and is likely to continue to go.
Coming back to the Formentera affair, both have been asked why, if the PP has been critical of the Council of Formentera, their town halls have issued tourist publicity material without Castellano. This isn't wholly the case, says Galmés, pointing to dual-language use for Cala d'Or's fiestas. In Campos, there isn't much tourism from the mainland, unlike in Formentera. Both can perhaps refute any accusations of hypocrisy, but underlining situations in their respective municipalities is surely the renewed alignment with Catalan as part of a general policy reversal. In Campos, with its comparatively little tourism and greater agricultural tradition, it might be said that here is a municipality that is typical of that former PP regionalist style.
Language can so often be a determining factor in Mallorcan political success or failure. The PP leadership is not about to repeat the mistakes that Bauzá made.
Showing posts with label Castellano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Castellano. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Thursday, August 08, 2013
Rigidity Of Language: Spain's Royal Academy
1713 was the year when modern Spain came into existence. While it can be fatuous to ignore previous history and assign special status to a given year or a given event as a starting-point, there is some justification for elevating 1713 to such a status and for suggesting that everything since can be attributed to what happened in that year - the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht which brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession.
It is true to say that the war did continue. The following year was when Barcelona finally fell and removed the last resistance to King Philip V and the Bourbon dynasty that remains to this day, but 1713 marked an historical line in the sand, to one side of which was the impulse towards creating a centralised and unified Spain, suppressing and indeed abolishing the Crown of Aragon and establishing Castellano as the sole language of government and the rules and laws of Castile as the rules and laws of this one Spain.
The language thing is rarely far from the surface in today's Spain, and 1713 was significant for a specific development that truly established Castellano. This was the founding of the Real Academia Española, the Royal Spanish Academy, the arbiter and regulator of matters pertaining to the use of Spanish.
The academy came into being in August of that year, the brainchild of the Marquis of Vilena. It might have been thought that Philip, naturally drawn to anything with a centralising, unifying and Castilian style, would have been sufficiently impressed to have given the academy his immediate blessing. He did bless it, fourteen months later, but there had been initial opposition to the academy in Castilian circles that stemmed from an impression of the founders as being less than wholly supportive of the Church.
Though there was now an academy, modelled after those in Italy and France, something was lacking. There was no dictionary, and so Vilena embarked on the process of producing the first and definitive guide to the Spanish language.
It was to be many years before it appeared. It did, after all, amount to over 4,000 pages once it was finally produced, so it wasn't a task that could have been undertaken rapidly. These 4,000 pages with 42,000 words were spread over six volumes, the "Dictionary of Authorities" being completed in 1739 and a more user-friendly, slimmer, one-volume tome - the concise dictionary - being published in 1780.
The academy, despite having a clear role in defining Castilian-Spanish culture, has traditionally tried to place itself above politics, but politics have intervened, and it isn't difficult to guess when these interventions might have taken place: under that good old Absolutist, Ferdinand VII, and under both dictators, Primo de Rivera and Franco, the latter demanding the expulsion of members considered to be less than fascistic politically correct.
The twenty-third edition of the dictionary is due to be published and it, as with previous editions, will doubtless generate controversy. Criticism of the dictionary has focused on its conservative nature and on its, well, Spanishness to the exclusion of international Spanish usage. But the academy is a conservative body, one that strives to maintain the purity of the Spanish language, a principle it espoused in 1713. It offers a different take on language to that which rules English or rather, which doesn't rule English; there is no equivalent organisation that regulates English.
If Spanish has its academy and its dictionary, what of the language that the events of 1713 conspired to undermine? Since then Catalan has gone through periods of proscription, renaissance, more proscription and the second renaissance following Franco's death. But the problem with Catalan, and so therefore unlike Castellano, is that there is no one Catalan.
The Institute for Catalan Studies' philology section was founded in 1911. Its first president was the Mallorcan, Antoni Maria Alcover. The institute worked on a dictionary and in 1932 the General Dictionary of the Catalan Language was published. It was presented as a standard for all the Catalan-speaking regions, including Valencia, but Valencia has its own academy of language, albeit that it wasn't created until 1998. In the Balearics, the university arbitrates and has established variants which are taken as standard in the islands but which differ to the standard laid down by the institute.
There again, this does perhaps reflect an inherent flexibility in language, which is really as it should be and how it is with English, but isn't with Castellano, the rigidity and conservatism of rules for which can, one feels, be taken as a metaphor for Spain as a nation.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It is true to say that the war did continue. The following year was when Barcelona finally fell and removed the last resistance to King Philip V and the Bourbon dynasty that remains to this day, but 1713 marked an historical line in the sand, to one side of which was the impulse towards creating a centralised and unified Spain, suppressing and indeed abolishing the Crown of Aragon and establishing Castellano as the sole language of government and the rules and laws of Castile as the rules and laws of this one Spain.
The language thing is rarely far from the surface in today's Spain, and 1713 was significant for a specific development that truly established Castellano. This was the founding of the Real Academia Española, the Royal Spanish Academy, the arbiter and regulator of matters pertaining to the use of Spanish.
The academy came into being in August of that year, the brainchild of the Marquis of Vilena. It might have been thought that Philip, naturally drawn to anything with a centralising, unifying and Castilian style, would have been sufficiently impressed to have given the academy his immediate blessing. He did bless it, fourteen months later, but there had been initial opposition to the academy in Castilian circles that stemmed from an impression of the founders as being less than wholly supportive of the Church.
Though there was now an academy, modelled after those in Italy and France, something was lacking. There was no dictionary, and so Vilena embarked on the process of producing the first and definitive guide to the Spanish language.
It was to be many years before it appeared. It did, after all, amount to over 4,000 pages once it was finally produced, so it wasn't a task that could have been undertaken rapidly. These 4,000 pages with 42,000 words were spread over six volumes, the "Dictionary of Authorities" being completed in 1739 and a more user-friendly, slimmer, one-volume tome - the concise dictionary - being published in 1780.
The academy, despite having a clear role in defining Castilian-Spanish culture, has traditionally tried to place itself above politics, but politics have intervened, and it isn't difficult to guess when these interventions might have taken place: under that good old Absolutist, Ferdinand VII, and under both dictators, Primo de Rivera and Franco, the latter demanding the expulsion of members considered to be less than fascistic politically correct.
The twenty-third edition of the dictionary is due to be published and it, as with previous editions, will doubtless generate controversy. Criticism of the dictionary has focused on its conservative nature and on its, well, Spanishness to the exclusion of international Spanish usage. But the academy is a conservative body, one that strives to maintain the purity of the Spanish language, a principle it espoused in 1713. It offers a different take on language to that which rules English or rather, which doesn't rule English; there is no equivalent organisation that regulates English.
If Spanish has its academy and its dictionary, what of the language that the events of 1713 conspired to undermine? Since then Catalan has gone through periods of proscription, renaissance, more proscription and the second renaissance following Franco's death. But the problem with Catalan, and so therefore unlike Castellano, is that there is no one Catalan.
The Institute for Catalan Studies' philology section was founded in 1911. Its first president was the Mallorcan, Antoni Maria Alcover. The institute worked on a dictionary and in 1932 the General Dictionary of the Catalan Language was published. It was presented as a standard for all the Catalan-speaking regions, including Valencia, but Valencia has its own academy of language, albeit that it wasn't created until 1998. In the Balearics, the university arbitrates and has established variants which are taken as standard in the islands but which differ to the standard laid down by the institute.
There again, this does perhaps reflect an inherent flexibility in language, which is really as it should be and how it is with English, but isn't with Castellano, the rigidity and conservatism of rules for which can, one feels, be taken as a metaphor for Spain as a nation.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
For What It's Wert: Education law
Education, education, education. In the five co-official languages of Spain, there are three translations of education. Educación, educació, hezkuntza. As ever, it is only the Basques who are in a total linguistic other world. Castellano and Galician are in agreement and so, in a slightly different way, are Catalan and Aranese.
The Galicians having the same word for education as the one in the language the rest of the world finds easier to refer to as Spanish is fortuitous. The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, is Galician. The Galician people, those who bothered to vote recently anyway, favour Rajoy and his party. The Galicians are a conservative people. They can also number among their most famous sons one Francisco Franco.
José Ignacio Wert isn't Galician. He comes from Madrid, the centre of government and very firmly a centre of Castellano. Sr. Wert is the national minister for education (educación, educació, hezkuntza), culture and sport. He is currently attempting, and succeeding handsomely, in antagonising everyone who has an interest in education, culture and sport, save for those who are educated in Castellano (or Galician), have a culture which is "high" Spanish (which excludes the Catalans most obviously) and who follow football teams rooted near to the seat of national government. Well, follow a football team.
So aware of education and culture is Sr. Wert that he wishes to establish a Spanish mono-culture. And Spanish it most definitely would be. His reform of education envisages far greater amounts of teaching being undertaken in Spanish and not in co-offical languages such as Catalan. Among the various opponents of Wert's Law are FC Barcelona, the Catalonian footballing anti-Christ forever in conflict with the regal, the very Spanish Real Madrid, Rajoy's football team, as it was also Franco's. Barça, more than a club, is living up to its motto. It is fully in favour of Catalan "immersion" in Catalonia's schools and so dead against Wert. (I wonder how good Messi's Catalan is.)
A couple of months ago, Sr. Wert signalled the direction in which he was heading when he announced that it was his government's intention to "castellanize" Catalan students so that they would feel greater national pride. He didn't actually say that he didn't want the students to not feel pride in being Catalan as well, but this of course was how it was interpreted. It was an easy mistake to make because anti-Wert forces had been alerted to an earlier example of Wertism. This was his decision to revive a grant (of almost 200,000 euros) for the Spanish biographical dictionary. It had been withdrawn by the previous government until certain "errors" were corrected, which still haven't been. Specifically, these are that Franco isn't referred to as a dictator and that a large part of the repression under Franco is overlooked.
As always, the spectre of Franco looms whenever Catalan appears threatened. The secretary-general of the CiU in Catalonia, Josep Duran Lleida, has called for Wert's resignation and has described his law as "the worst attack" on Catalan since Franco's death. The CiU may have lost ground after the recent election, but there are more fanatically separatist elements which have gained ground in Catalonia that will take great delight in using Wert's Law as a means to their end of independence.
You do have to wonder why the national government is so intent in pushing Castellano to the detriment of other languages. It knows it will have a fight and it seems happy to pick one. So much, therefore, for trying to create a spirit of unity in the country as a whole in order to tackle rather more pressing matters.
But it could have been predicted that the fight would come, as one only had to look at the Balearics, the test-bed, the experiment for some of what the PP nationally had in mind. However, the desire to push Castellano in the Balearics has been a flop. For the Balearics education minister, Rafael Bosch, who has overseen the failure to achieve a greater degree of teaching in Castellano, Wert's Law is a Godsend. He can blame it when its imposition falters. Or he can use it to reinforce the Balearic Government's own stance on Catalan, though he is prone to coming out with seemingly contrary statements, his latest being that he will "work to the last moment so that Catalan is an official language".
While Bosch is working to the last moment, Sr. Wert will be busy in a different way. Faced with criticism of his law, he has said that he is "a fighting bull that grows stronger when provoked." He really should choose his descriptions more carefully. The Catalonians have banned bullfighting.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The Galicians having the same word for education as the one in the language the rest of the world finds easier to refer to as Spanish is fortuitous. The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, is Galician. The Galician people, those who bothered to vote recently anyway, favour Rajoy and his party. The Galicians are a conservative people. They can also number among their most famous sons one Francisco Franco.
José Ignacio Wert isn't Galician. He comes from Madrid, the centre of government and very firmly a centre of Castellano. Sr. Wert is the national minister for education (educación, educació, hezkuntza), culture and sport. He is currently attempting, and succeeding handsomely, in antagonising everyone who has an interest in education, culture and sport, save for those who are educated in Castellano (or Galician), have a culture which is "high" Spanish (which excludes the Catalans most obviously) and who follow football teams rooted near to the seat of national government. Well, follow a football team.
So aware of education and culture is Sr. Wert that he wishes to establish a Spanish mono-culture. And Spanish it most definitely would be. His reform of education envisages far greater amounts of teaching being undertaken in Spanish and not in co-offical languages such as Catalan. Among the various opponents of Wert's Law are FC Barcelona, the Catalonian footballing anti-Christ forever in conflict with the regal, the very Spanish Real Madrid, Rajoy's football team, as it was also Franco's. Barça, more than a club, is living up to its motto. It is fully in favour of Catalan "immersion" in Catalonia's schools and so dead against Wert. (I wonder how good Messi's Catalan is.)
A couple of months ago, Sr. Wert signalled the direction in which he was heading when he announced that it was his government's intention to "castellanize" Catalan students so that they would feel greater national pride. He didn't actually say that he didn't want the students to not feel pride in being Catalan as well, but this of course was how it was interpreted. It was an easy mistake to make because anti-Wert forces had been alerted to an earlier example of Wertism. This was his decision to revive a grant (of almost 200,000 euros) for the Spanish biographical dictionary. It had been withdrawn by the previous government until certain "errors" were corrected, which still haven't been. Specifically, these are that Franco isn't referred to as a dictator and that a large part of the repression under Franco is overlooked.
As always, the spectre of Franco looms whenever Catalan appears threatened. The secretary-general of the CiU in Catalonia, Josep Duran Lleida, has called for Wert's resignation and has described his law as "the worst attack" on Catalan since Franco's death. The CiU may have lost ground after the recent election, but there are more fanatically separatist elements which have gained ground in Catalonia that will take great delight in using Wert's Law as a means to their end of independence.
You do have to wonder why the national government is so intent in pushing Castellano to the detriment of other languages. It knows it will have a fight and it seems happy to pick one. So much, therefore, for trying to create a spirit of unity in the country as a whole in order to tackle rather more pressing matters.
But it could have been predicted that the fight would come, as one only had to look at the Balearics, the test-bed, the experiment for some of what the PP nationally had in mind. However, the desire to push Castellano in the Balearics has been a flop. For the Balearics education minister, Rafael Bosch, who has overseen the failure to achieve a greater degree of teaching in Castellano, Wert's Law is a Godsend. He can blame it when its imposition falters. Or he can use it to reinforce the Balearic Government's own stance on Catalan, though he is prone to coming out with seemingly contrary statements, his latest being that he will "work to the last moment so that Catalan is an official language".
While Bosch is working to the last moment, Sr. Wert will be busy in a different way. Faced with criticism of his law, he has said that he is "a fighting bull that grows stronger when provoked." He really should choose his descriptions more carefully. The Catalonians have banned bullfighting.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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