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.
Showing posts with label FC Barcelona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FC Barcelona. Show all posts
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Basket Case: Sport and tourism promotion
Wherever a successful sportsman or woman or successful sports team is to be found, someone from a Spanish tourism promotion authority will also be found, running behind, puffing and turning puce and brandishing an advertising contract.
If not the Mallorcans Nadal and Lorenzo, then it will be either the Real Madrid football team or the Spanish men's basketball side. Both Madrid and the basketball players are faces and bodies of tourism promotion.
The contracts are, however, different. Madrid are being paid a million euros. The basketball team is getting nothing. Nada. Not a centimo. European champions, they are worth zilch. How come Madrid can be paid and the basketball team can't be?
It seems to have to do with the fact that Madrid is a business and that the basketball team is a representative of the state, down to its red and yellow strip. The six players from the championship-winning side depicted in Turespaña's hastily cobbled-together advert are "ambassadors" for Spain. Does this mean, therefore, that the Madrid players aren't? No, as they too, according to Turespaña, are ambassadors. If you play in white, though, you get paid; just ask Nadal.
Whatever the ins and outs of the contractual agreement, why is the Spanish tourism promotion agency, Turespaña, so desperate to nail its promotional colours to the masts of successful sports teams? The answer seems pretty simple. Teams with high recognition as well as fame mean high awareness and, you would hope, high numbers of tourists. In Madrid's case this may be so, but as for the basketball team, the thinking is more questionable. Perhaps this explains why they're not getting paid.
The ad featuring the basketball players is all part of the Turespaña campaign under the slogan of "I Need Spain". Yes, that campaign, the one that demands you fill in the missing words. I need Spain like I need a massive budget deficit; this sort of thing. Apparently, the basketball guys not only themselves need Spain, they love it. The ad carries the legend: "There is only one thing they love more than basketball - Spain". We'll take their word for it.
Questionable as this ad is in terms of what it might actually achieve for tourism, there is a question mark over whether a national basketball team should be going anywhere near Spanish tourism promotion. The reason for this is that basketball and Spain have form.
There was the unfortunate matter of the Spanish team which won the Paralympics gold medal in Sydney in 2000, but which turned out to have contained some ringers, i.e. players (ten out of the twelve) who were fully mentally able. Then there was the slitty-eyed gesture advert the men and women's teams participated in during the Beijing Olympics, which might not have caused much of a fuss had Sid Lowe of "The Guardian" not brought it to the world's attention. Let's just say that Spanish basketball, in its 2011 incarnation, is more ambassadorial.
But what of Real Madrid? In June, a promotional video popped up with nine players. All good ambassadors for Spain? Only up to a point, as only two of them were Spanish. Otherwise it was a video that would have played well with the German tourism market (Özil and Khedira), the French (Benzema) and the all-important Brazilian (Kaká and Marcelo), Argentinian (Di María) and Portuguese (Ronaldo) markets.
There is a rather obvious question. Why Madrid and not Barcelona? Barça are after all European club champions. At the time of the announcement of the tie-up with Madrid, the minister for industry, tourism and commerce, Miguel Sebastián, said that it had not been possible to come to an agreement with the club that would have allowed the use of the team's image and that things were rather easier where Madrid was concerned. Barcelona, however, said that there had been no request from the government.
Things being easier with Madrid than Barcelona presumably had nothing to do with Barça being littered with Catalan players and also nothing to do with the fact that the club had an existing agreement with the Catalonia Tourism Agency. The club has said that it is open to an approach from Turespaña so long as it doesn't conflict with its arrangements with the agency, which it probably almost certainly would.
And so the age-old Madrid versus Barcelona, Spain versus Catalonia El Clásico national division persists and with it so tourism promotion becomes political. The basketball players love Spain and together with Real Madrid, the team with all its historical connotations of Spanishness, they form the faces of Spain. I need Spain. I need Spain like I need the eternal row between Castile and Catalonia.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
If not the Mallorcans Nadal and Lorenzo, then it will be either the Real Madrid football team or the Spanish men's basketball side. Both Madrid and the basketball players are faces and bodies of tourism promotion.
The contracts are, however, different. Madrid are being paid a million euros. The basketball team is getting nothing. Nada. Not a centimo. European champions, they are worth zilch. How come Madrid can be paid and the basketball team can't be?
It seems to have to do with the fact that Madrid is a business and that the basketball team is a representative of the state, down to its red and yellow strip. The six players from the championship-winning side depicted in Turespaña's hastily cobbled-together advert are "ambassadors" for Spain. Does this mean, therefore, that the Madrid players aren't? No, as they too, according to Turespaña, are ambassadors. If you play in white, though, you get paid; just ask Nadal.
Whatever the ins and outs of the contractual agreement, why is the Spanish tourism promotion agency, Turespaña, so desperate to nail its promotional colours to the masts of successful sports teams? The answer seems pretty simple. Teams with high recognition as well as fame mean high awareness and, you would hope, high numbers of tourists. In Madrid's case this may be so, but as for the basketball team, the thinking is more questionable. Perhaps this explains why they're not getting paid.
The ad featuring the basketball players is all part of the Turespaña campaign under the slogan of "I Need Spain". Yes, that campaign, the one that demands you fill in the missing words. I need Spain like I need a massive budget deficit; this sort of thing. Apparently, the basketball guys not only themselves need Spain, they love it. The ad carries the legend: "There is only one thing they love more than basketball - Spain". We'll take their word for it.
Questionable as this ad is in terms of what it might actually achieve for tourism, there is a question mark over whether a national basketball team should be going anywhere near Spanish tourism promotion. The reason for this is that basketball and Spain have form.
There was the unfortunate matter of the Spanish team which won the Paralympics gold medal in Sydney in 2000, but which turned out to have contained some ringers, i.e. players (ten out of the twelve) who were fully mentally able. Then there was the slitty-eyed gesture advert the men and women's teams participated in during the Beijing Olympics, which might not have caused much of a fuss had Sid Lowe of "The Guardian" not brought it to the world's attention. Let's just say that Spanish basketball, in its 2011 incarnation, is more ambassadorial.
But what of Real Madrid? In June, a promotional video popped up with nine players. All good ambassadors for Spain? Only up to a point, as only two of them were Spanish. Otherwise it was a video that would have played well with the German tourism market (Özil and Khedira), the French (Benzema) and the all-important Brazilian (Kaká and Marcelo), Argentinian (Di María) and Portuguese (Ronaldo) markets.
There is a rather obvious question. Why Madrid and not Barcelona? Barça are after all European club champions. At the time of the announcement of the tie-up with Madrid, the minister for industry, tourism and commerce, Miguel Sebastián, said that it had not been possible to come to an agreement with the club that would have allowed the use of the team's image and that things were rather easier where Madrid was concerned. Barcelona, however, said that there had been no request from the government.
Things being easier with Madrid than Barcelona presumably had nothing to do with Barça being littered with Catalan players and also nothing to do with the fact that the club had an existing agreement with the Catalonia Tourism Agency. The club has said that it is open to an approach from Turespaña so long as it doesn't conflict with its arrangements with the agency, which it probably almost certainly would.
And so the age-old Madrid versus Barcelona, Spain versus Catalonia El Clásico national division persists and with it so tourism promotion becomes political. The basketball players love Spain and together with Real Madrid, the team with all its historical connotations of Spanishness, they form the faces of Spain. I need Spain. I need Spain like I need the eternal row between Castile and Catalonia.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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