Miquel Strubell - Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia

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Language, Democracy and Devolution in CataloniaMiquel Strubell

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To cite this Article Strubell, Miquel(1998) 'Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia', Current Issues InLanguage and Society, 5: 3, 146 180

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Language,DemocracyandDevolutioninCatalonia

MiquelStrubellInstitut de Sociolingstica Catalana, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona,

Catalonia, Spain

In his paper, Miquel Strubell argues that in Europe in the past few centuries therelationship between democracy and language policy in multilingual countries is verycomplex; that Catalan has thrived in democratic periods in which devolution hasadvanced; that the causes of most of the problems facing Catalan are non-linguistic, sothe remedies are also non-linguistic; and that the future of Catalan even in Cataloniaproper is insecure, because of its weak demographic base: very low fertility rates,

plus constant in-migration from Spanish-speaking Spain, often in a hostile mediacontext. He distinguishes between the rights of speakers of territorially stable lan-guages and those of immigrant populations, and like Kymlicka argues that the liberaltradition does make allowance for group or minority rights. Finally, in a situation inwhich a political dictatorship has been replaced by an economic dictatorship (that ofthe free market) any demographically weak language needs a firm pro-active policy inorder to survive and thrive.

Introduction

This subject is an extremely thought-provoking one, for while each of the threeconcepts, language, democracy and devolution, could, in its own right, keeplinguists, sociologists or political scientists in business indefinitely, the interfaces

bring together the different disciplines in new ways. Seen as a triangle, with aconcept at each vertex, it is clear that we can discuss three separate two-wayrelationships, each of which is fascinating in a context such as the one in which Iwork: Catalonia.

I have often said and written1that it is only in bi- or multilingual situations

that the relationship between language and, on the one hand, democracy, andon the other, devolution, attains its greatest potential. This is not to deny thatlanguage and democracy, for instance, are related in monolingual societies:surely a literate, and therefore linguistically well-equipped populace is betterplaced to make informed judgements in a democratic environment than is anilliterate one. Surely there is a need in both mono- and multilingual countriesfor shared meaning in order for citizens to be able to cope with the abstractconcepts that a modern society handles and requires. But nevertheless, in

power relationships between people who speak different languages, language becomes a crucial element and language choice a very easily observablephenomenon or social variable. And in this context Spain is an excellent casestudy.

In a less enlightened age, people would turn through the pages of their atlas,and on reaching the map of Spain, nicely illustrated in a single colour and clearlydifferent from the colours of neighbouring countries, they would say Ah! Spain.Yes: Spanish!. The stereotype was one of bullfights and flamenco, wherever

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people actually came from in Spain (even if they were portrayed in FawltyTowers). But such cultural uniformity was far from the truth, as was the myth oflinguistic uniformity that used to be transmitted to the outside world:

It is frequently forgotten (or entirely unrecognised) that, after the SovietUnion, Spain constitutes the most populous economically developedmultilingual country in the world and the oldest multilingual state in theworld, predating even the Swiss confederation in that respect. Similarlyforgotten or overlooked, is the fact that the Catalan contribution to bothof these circumstances is and has long been the major one. (Fishman,1991: 299)

In the present case, language (which can be regarded as the domain of linguistsand, I would like to add, language planners), democracy (which, in the sense that

it relates the individual to his or her surrounding social environment, can perhaps best be regarded as the domain of sociologists and anthropologists) anddevolution (which is undoubtedly the area of political scientists2) come togetherin exciting ways, as I hope to convince readers. And if the interfaces are excitingin themselves, they are, I can assure you, absolutely enthralling if we look at theparticular case of Catalonia.

I therefore intend to structure this paper in the simplest and most logicalfashion: after a very brief introductory reference to the language itself, I shall deal

in turn with language and democracy, language and devolution, and albeitmore briefly with democracy and devolution.May I state from the outset some of my main hypotheses: that in Europe in the

past few centuries the relationship between democracy and language, in bi- andmultilingual countries, has been far from simple; that Catalan has thrived indemocratic periods in which devolution has advanced; that the causes of mostof the problems facing Catalan, in the past and at present, are non-linguistic innature; and that the future of the language is far from secure.

The Catalan language is probably a unique case in Europe. Not because ofany inherent virtue of the language itself: it is a neo-Latin, or Romancelanguage, that is, a member of the same family of languages as Portuguese,Spanish, Occitan, French and Italian, among others. Not because of theextraordinary standard of its literature. Not because it has an inordinatelylarge vocabulary. Instead, its claim to uniqueness lies in the fact that, aloneamong the languages spoken today by over five million people in Europe, ithas survived three centuries of nation-state ideology (one nation, one state,one language) without having had a state to back it (we can discount theweight of Andorra in the international arena), and without at the same timeentering an irreversible demographic decline. This is of course thanks to thefact that most of the people who speak the language have continued to do so,despite political or other pressures, generation after generation. In this paperwe shall be looking into the causes of this resilience, building on earlier papers(e.g. Webber & Strubell, 1991; Strubell, 1993, 1996) while at the same timehighlighting the threats that have constantly assailed the language and theidentity of its speakers.

Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia 147


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LanguageandDemocracyOn 19 November 1863, Abraham Lincoln gave a memorable definition of

democracy (without, curiously enough, using the word) in a speech in which heexpressed his hope:

that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and thatgovernment of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perishfrom the earth. (Cohen & Cohen, 1991: 234)

Government of the people [] for the people can of course be undertaken bya benevolent despot. It is the reference to government by the people thatassociates the statement so clearly with democracy. Yet it is easy to reacherroneous conclusions by attempting simple associations between language anddemocracy. A language can decline or disappear in a democracy, and it can

survive in an autocracy. Several examples can illustrate these points. The Frenchrevolution, widely hailed as one of the biggest steps towards (parliamentary)democracy that history has ever seen, quickly brought to the fore those whoargued that a single language had to be imposed for all citizens to be equal, andto have equal access to rights and services, in a country in which, at the end ofthe eighteenth century, about half of the population spoke languages other thanFrench: principally Occitan, which was spoken by the vast majority of thepopulation in the southern half of the country, but also Breton, Corsican, Basque,

Catalan, Dutch and German. In order for liberty, equality and fraternity to workin practice, it was felt by those in power that all should learn French as well as or fairly soon, instead of what were known in derogatory fashion as les patois.To be a Provenal speaker was seen as backward and old-fashioned, as ancienregime, and therefore linked to a world which was being swept away without anykind of nostalgia by the waves of modernity and rationality which could only beexpressed through French. Curiously enough, theAcadmie Franaise was closedfor a time. It was felt that before the revolution it had promoted the power of the

ruling elite by mobilising writers and scholars in support of the regime and byimparting to the language of the elite an aroma of sanctity (Cooper, 1989: 34).Soon enough, however, the new rulers saw that it could suit the new regime atleast as well as the old one, so it was re-opened.

At the same time, the Austro-Hungarian empire, run by emperors who wereshocked at the fate of their French counterparts and who were not especiallysympathetic to the ideals of universal suffrage and the rule of the majority, wasa model of peaceful coexistence and mutual respect of a large number of language

communities. No attempt was made to impose a single language on all, or toindoctrinate part of the population. On the contrary, a multilingual policy wasput into force. A good example of this was the fact that senior army officers inthe Austro-Hungarian army had to have a good command of up to fivelanguages, and a monolingual officer was a contradiction in terms.

In another multilingual democratic country, Belgium, which is a good exampleof a linguistically federalised country, it was said that there were considerablecasualties among the Flemish troops during the First World War because nearlyall of them were led by French-speaking (Walloon) officers (de Vroede, 1975: 49).Many of the Flemish speakers had such a very poor command of French, they

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misunderstood orders and lost their lives as a result. Whether or not this is truemay be open to doubt. What is not in question are the steps taken later: in 1928an army bill was passed which meant that recruits would thereafter be trainedexclusively in their own language, thus leading to the creation of linguisticallyseparate army units (de Vroede, 1975: 53).

The contrast between the French and Belgian reactions to multilingualism issignificant in terms of political philosophy. In the first case, it is the citizen thatis expected to adapt and conform to the (linguistic) model defined by theauthorities, and is encouraged and aided to do so, principally through theeducation system, so that all citizens will as a result be equal. In the latter case, itis the system itself that has to adapt to the citizens and to their linguistic features,that has to be adjusted and altered so as to be able to treat each citizen equally,that is, on his or her own terms and in his or her own language. Both therefore

have a laudable democratic3

aim, but seek to attain it in radically different, evencompletely opposing, ways.

Another of the definitions of democracy is especially relevant in that it linksdemocracy and minorities. In this use, democracy is defined as a form of societyignoring hereditary class distinctions and tolerating minority views.

4This

tolerance, of course, can be focused in many ways. The Flemings wereundoubtedly, in terms of demography and political clout, a minority in Belgiumin the early years of this century, and their views were tolerated by channelling

them into the political structure of the country until a complex federal systemwas developed. Yet what was tolerated in France was deliberately limited just to(numerically) minority political views (so long as they stayed within bounds),whereas linguistic (or cultural) minorities as such were regarded as deviant, theirwishes not being taken into account, and to this day the Corsicans cannot legallydescribe themselves as a people, as the French constitutional court ruled a fewyears ago, since there is only one people in France. In this they have sociologistsas possibly unwitting allies: there cannot, by definition, be two societies in onecountry.

Whereas thisJacobin view is based on the philosophy that people have to adaptto the state (in order to enjoy the benefits of rational thought and civilisation), theGermanic view, best expressed by Herder, is the opposite: it is the language ofthe people that forms the nation (and therefore the state) (Nelde et al., 1996). Thiscan and has had two consequences: that the state has to use the language of thepeople; but also that it is legitimate to fix the boundaries of the state on thegrounds of language. The unification of Prussia, Bavaria and the rest of theGerman states was a logical political consequence of such a philosophy; but sotoo were the annexations of Austria, Bohemia and Alsace, for instance.

Language,democracyandhumanandminorityrights

I would not like to move on to the next issue without dealing, albeit in passing,with another point of interest: the relationship between language and democracyfrom the point of view of human and minority rights.

Articles 1 and 2 of the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights] establish

two underlying concepts that are of great importance when consideringissues related to human and minority rights. These are the concepts of



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equality and non-discrimination. They presuppose that all human beingshave equal rights regardless of differences; regardless of such considera-tions as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political opinion, national orsocial origin, property, birth or other status. (Siemienski, 1998a)

I have obviously no objection to these claims, quite the contrary. But let us justtake a look at the list of considerations. Nearly all of them are birth-given andsingular in nature. Race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national or socialorigin or birth are either things that simply cannot be changed;

5or are single in

nature: one cannot be at the same time of two social origins, birthplaces orreligions. However, the reference to language in this list, which I think is perfectly

justified, has been rather grotesquely distorted to suit certain ends in recent years.The context is the issue of job vacancies in Catalonia in which Catalan languageproficiency is a job requirement, or at least a stated preference by the employer.

Some Spaniards (mostly outside Catalonia, to be fair) have claimed that to makesuch a requirement is an act of discrimination against Spanish-speakers, and eventhat it goes against the freedom of movement that the Spanish Constitutionguarantees all citizens. This claim is absurd; I am sure that the Constitutions ofSwitzerland and Belgium proclaim the same freedom of movement, yet no-onecomplains if a job in Zurich requires German (or in Geneva, French). It would, to

be sure, be discriminatory to limit access to certain jobs on the basis of a personshome or family language which is what the Universal Declaration renders

illegal. It would also be discriminatory to exclude someone because they have anon-native or regional accent.

6But it is to misunderstand and misquote the

Universal Declaration to argue that Catalan employers do not have the right toask that their employees have competence in Catalan. It seems to me (and to theinternational courts, incidentally) perfectly reasonable to expect an appropriatecommand of one or more official languages by people applying for many jobs inCatalonia, especially if these jobs entail contact with people who speak one orother language. I say appropriate command, and I very much doubt I shall ever

come across a case in which only graduates in Catalan philology can apply tobecome workers in ticket offices! What is at stake is whether it is legitimate to tryand defend a discourse which says that Catalans must learn Spanish (of course!)while Spaniards living in Catalonia are under no obligation to learn Catalan.

From the viewpoint of a social psychologist, I regard it as highly significantthat some people completely fail to accept what most Catalans regard as perfectlyreasonable. It clashes head on with the deeply-rooted premises of those we mightterm Spanish traditionalists orJacobins, regarding the very definition of Spain.

The essentially monolingual, colonial-style attitude is often heard expressed inthe incredulous remark by people who simply cannot accept that Catalans canuse their language freely in public: Pero estamos en Espaa! (But we are in Spain!).Many Catalans object strongly to the exclusive, impositional and monolithic viewof Spain that this short sentence reveals, and it is sometimes used maliciously, to

be sure. But usually, I venture to believe, it is quite innocent: it simply reveals adifferent way of looking at the world, which is clearly incompatible with anacceptance of what that part of the Iberian peninsula which is still called Spain

is really like: a place where four languages, not one, have been spoken for many,



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many centuries. Fully 41% of the Spanish population live in areas where thereare two official languages (Siguan, 1994).

As an afterthought, it is comforting (though we have plenty of other problems)to see that the proportion of the population in Catalonia that claims not to be able tospeak Catalan has been declining non-stop since 1975, when prolonged, large-scale

in-migration abruptly ceased, and General Francos death opened the way towardsdemocratic language policies. Between 1991 and 1996 it fell from 32% to 25%, anaverage annual decrease of over 80,000 people! Monolingualism is indeed a curabledisease (as the Brussels-based linguist Peter Nelde says on occasion).

Language,identityandpoliticalrepresentation

Without wishing to distract the reader from the general thread of myargument, I do feel it worthwhile devoting a few moments to the issue of who is

a Catalan and who isnt in a situation where close to half the population ofCatalonia is a first- or second-generation (mostly Spanish-speaking) in-migrantfrom another part of Spain. There being no large religious difference, or colouror racial difference unlike, for instance, the Basques whose nationalism stressesthe ethnic (Conversi, 1997) the language has, in social terms, an enormousdefining weight in Catalonia, at least for those who are not of recent immigrantorigin (I dare not talk about real Catalans, as I am trying to describe the socialdefinition of what a Catalan is anyway!). Often I hear it said that We Catalans

are the only bilingual people [in Catalonia]: the Castilians are all monolingual.But in fact many of those who are happily regarded as Catalans, as belongingto the in-group, are in fact native Spanish-speakers who have become fluent

bilinguals, whereupon their friends and colleagues will (re)define them asCatalans. May I add that at the political level, ever since the pre-democratic

Assemblea de Catalunya in the seventies, and the early writings of the futurepresident, Jordi Pujol, an extremely open definition of Catalan has been adoptedin all political debates, largely in order to avert the threat of a social and evenpolitical division along ethnolinguistic (and probably urban class) lines. We shallreturn to this important issue later.

This brings us to the interesting point of political representation in Spain.Unlike the former republics of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, where all citizensdefine(d) their nationality on the census form, the political tradition in Spain isclose to the French one. This is not surprising, given Frances high political andsocial standing in western Europe (on the continent at least) and the fact that theSpanish monarchs have been Bourbons for nearly three centuries. No officialreference is made to anyones nationality: it is the place of residence that definesones political rights: primarily, where one has to vote. The Spanish system is

based on the principle of proportional representation, so instead of over 600constituencies which are represented on a first-past-the-post basis, as in Britain,Spain has only as many constituencies as there are provinces: just over 50. Let uslook at the general elections (the elections to the Spanish parliament). Eachprovince returns at least three MPs, and the larger ones return a number whichis related, rationally enough, to the size of the electorate. This gives the largeprovinces (Madrid and Barcelona) over 30 MPs each; but since the small

constituencies have a smaller number of electors per MP, the 16% of the electorate



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who live and can vote in Catalonia choose only about 13% of the total number ofSpanish MPs, which is 350. A similar procedure is followed to elect the 135members of the Catalan Parliament.

This paper is not the place to get involved into considerations of the pros andcons of different systems of parliamentary representation. Let us return to the

language issue. It should now be clear that the Catalans as an ethnolinguisticgroup have no specific quota in the Spanish parliament.

7It is the electorate of the

territory, as a whole, who are called to decide on its representatives. So let us askourselves: what happens when they are? The answer is both complex andfascinating. The three-tier system (Spanish, Catalan and local elections), wherebyeach election is called independently of the other two, leads to fascinatingdifferences in results. I shall outline them, and then try and associate the resultswith language, as befits this section.

In Spain there are basically (I am forced to simplify, for obvious reasons whichI hope will be appreciated) three national parties: the Partido Socialista ObreroEspaol, or PSOE, the socialist party which held power from 1982 to 1996; theright-wing Partido Popular, or Peoples Party, which did not win an election until1996; and the former Communists, Izquierda Unida, or United Left, which usuallytakes under 10% of votes and has recently splintered. In very broad terms, andas might be expected, the socialists get good results in the industrial cities and inthe south, where a semi-feudal society still survives, and where they put into

place widespread benefits for seasonal farm labourers. The right wins intraditional Spain, in the north-west (Galicia), and in the capital, Madrid.This picture is quite different in Catalonia, where there are more actors. The

main one is a stable coalition in which the leading partner is a liberal nationalistparty, Convergncia Democrtica de Catalunya, and the other is the historicChristian democratic party founded in 1931, Uni Democrtica de Catalunya. Thesecond is a leftist party, also founded in 1931, which seeks independence fromSpain, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. Finally there is a second coalition,formed basically by the ex-Communists (

Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya,

PSUC, founded yes! in 1931), with some radical nationalists and severalGreen parties: Iniciativa per Catalunya. Its formal link with the Spanish IzquierdaUnida was broken by the latter several months ago.

Who, you may well ask, represents the Catalans? As might be expected,Convergncia Democrtica de Catalunya, Uni Democrtica de Catalunya and EsquerraRepublicana de Catalunyapick up proportionally many more votes from Catalans thanfrom others living in Catalonia, who tend to vote more on national lines, on thePartido Socialista Obrero EspaolPartido Popular axis. But it would be completelyuntrue to say that Catalans do not vote for either of these two parties. Their veryleaders are Catalan, and indeed the Catalan socialist party linked to PSOE, the Partitdels Socialistes de Catalunya PSC-PSOE, has a firm catalanista tradition.

All in all, the socialists have hitherto always won the general elections inCatalonia, while second place goes to Convergncia i Uni. The thorn in the fleshof Spanish right-wingers is Catalonia, where they win a fraction of the votes theyobtain everywhere else (except in the Basque country, where nationalist partiesare also very strong). The political antics of Partido Popular in recent years, asregards the language issue, have not been totally transparent. They are widely



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regarded to have been behind the smear campaign led by a section of theprivately-owned media, such asABC (to whom I shall have to return later) andDiario 16 both dailies the COPE radio group, and the TV channelAntena 3,among others. After the Partido Popular unexpectedly failed to win the generalelection in 1993, and Convergncia i Uni agreed to support the Socialist winners

in the hung parliament to provide the political stability needed for the Spanisheconomy to fulfil the Maastricht criteria, a verbal onslaught from the Right triedto create the impression that the Catalans were close to committing ethniccleansing, and that the failure of the Socialists to prevent such atropellos only wentto show what a weak government they were. This awoke some Spaniards latentantipathies towards Catalans in general: the cause of the largest demonstrationin the history of Salamanca was the announced agreement by the Spanishgovernment that the part of the Catalan governments archives that had been

confiscated by the army in 1939 and deposited in a building in Salamanca was toreturn to its rightful owner. The nation-wide campaign ended overnight whenthe Partido Popular won the following (and last) general election in 1996, and wasleft in the uncomfortable position of having to negotiate a parliamentaryagreementwith Convergncia i Uni!

It is, however, in the regional elections that the ethnolinguistic identity of theelectorate in Catalonia becomes extremely highly correlated with results. I havemyself looked into the issue, in an unpublished paper, where I mathematically

and graphically correlated various results. To give an example, I took theprovince, or circumscription, of Barcelona. I did so for two reasons: firstly becauseit is by far the largest of the four in Catalonia; and secondly, because the peopletopping the list of candidates each party put forward were also that partyscandidate to become President of Catalonia.

Figure 1 shows clearly how the percentage vote given to the moderate

Figure 1 Moderate nationalist votes cast in Catalan regional elections, November

1995, per district (comarca) in Barcelona circumscription, by percentage of popula-tion born outside Catalonia



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nationalists, Convergncia i Uni, is very highly correlated with the percentage ofautochthonous population living in each district.

A similar, but negative, relationship is seen to exist if the percentage ofimmigrants is compared with the turnout: the higher the percentage ofimmigrants, the lower the turnout. This of course is extremely important in

political terms, and is the reason why it has been possible for Convergncia i Unito win a larger share of actual votes in regional elections than in general elections(and perhaps larger than might be expected given the sociological breakdown ofthe country as well).

It may seem surprising that there are no ethnic parties as such, and that bothCatalans and Castilians vote for all parties, albeit in greatly differing propor-tions. The reason is two-fold. Firstly, all politicians in Catalonia are acutelymindful of the tragic effect that the arrival in Catalan politics of a Spanish radical

politician had at the beginning of the century. Alejandro Lerrouxs party had avery divisive demagogic strategy and did much to confront the earliestSpanish-speaking workers in Catalonia with Catalans. And secondly, after nearly40 years of dictatorship, the democratic movement in its entirety, of whateverpolitical hue, was basically catalanista, and therefore united in support ofpromoting the Catalan language. We shall return to this later.

This does not mean to say that all parties have the same position as regardslanguage policies, as we shall see: and in fact the differences become evident

when it comes to electioneering; the Catalan nationalist parties use more Catalanthan the Spanish national (or nationalist) parties. However, though thesedifferences are evident, they are minor: the chief Catalan candidates of all partieswill probably make their main speeches in Catalan. This obviously brings theparties closer to the prospective Catalan voter, without alienating the Spanish-speaker, who almost certainly understands Catalan anyway.

One final remark on the relationship between language and democracy. Thereare effects on language itself, on the internal structure of the language, whichresult from the association (or not) of a language with power, be it democratic orotherwise. The languages of the pays dOc which have not had a power base sinceProvence became part of the French state at the end of the 15th century have

become even more fragmented than they were in the medieval period. There isno agreement even on a spelling system: Gascon-dialect speakers defend onesystem in the west, the Provenal-speakers in the east defend another. Mutualcomprehensibility has declined over the centuries. Is this a result of democracy?On the one hand the language has stayed close to the people with all varietiesequally accepted. On the other hand without political and institutional backing,fragmentation becomes a likely outcome and both the utility and influence of thelanguage are weakened. The same happened within the Catalan dialectcontinuum in the 16th19th centuries, and to this day the language receives manylocal names, including Majorcan and, most significantly, Valencian. Conversely,once a standard, codified form is projected on to society, local variations will tendover time to diminish and may even eventually disappear. This has been the casewith both French and Spanish.



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Languageandautocracy

I said earlier that language diversity can survive under autocracies. This ofcourse was the case for thousands of years, when monarchs and tribal leadersimposed their authority with little of no reference to the will of their subjects. Asa rule, pre-industrial societies were extremely weakly organised in terms of

political and administrative structures, so the average person had little contactwith central power except perhaps in wartime. Such schooling as was offeredwas more likely to be offered by the churches than by the state. Under suchconditions, language groups could survive virtually indefinitely. The threat tosuch groups came in tandem with economic and political integration, and withthe increasing power and influence of the state upon daily life. To provide anexample, let us move closer to Catalonia. Let us recall that the country wasdivided in 1659 by the Treaty of the Pyrenees, by which the kingdoms of Spain

ceded to France northern Catalonia, the plains and mountains north of the linelinking the highest ridges along the Pyrenees. That territory, with its capital atPerpiny (Perpignan) was subjected fairly early on to an increasing onslaught ofmeasures designed to introduce French and to steadily reduce the importanceand status of Catalan, and the significant point is that this pressure increased afterthe 1789 Revolution. The language survived there as an increasingly rurallanguage, and its speakers felt more and more ashamed of theirpatois. But only(yet significantly) after the two World Wars did Catalan families decide en masse

to stop speaking it to their offspring. Today, only a small proportion of thepopulation there can speak the language, and even then with a heavy Frenchinfluence in their accent and vocabulary.

To the south of the Franco-Spanish border, the language, though in a periodof literary decline, continued to be the only language spoken and used byvirtually all the population well into this century. It was not until the Catalans,who had supported the Habsburgs claim to the Spanish throne, were conquered

by the joint Spanish and French forces under the Duke of Berwick, following the

fall of Barcelona in September 1714 after a thirteen-month siege, that the newregime began to seriously design and implement a subtle8

language policydesigned to replace Catalan by Spanish (Ferrer i Girons, 1985). The victoriousmonarch, Philip V, abolished the Catalan Parliament (the Corts) and government(the Diputaci General or Generalitat), both of which were clearly democratic ininspiration (albeit far from acknowledging or furthering universal suffrage),abolished the University of Barcelona, razing its very buildings along the famousBarcelona Rambla, and imposed the semi-feudal and autocratic system that had

been devised centuries earlier to run Castile. Yet in spite of the longer time span,and the lack of democracy in the country, the spread of Spanish in Catalonia wasfar slower than was the case with the spread of French in France; both theinefficiency of the political and administrative structures and the lack of agenerally accepted legitimacy guaranteed Catalan a much greater degree ofsurvival in Spanish Catalonia than north of the border.

LanguageandautocracyinSpain

The threat to Catalan greatly increased under the two dictatorships in thiscentury: General Primo de Rivera (192330) and General Franco (1938/975).



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This was particularly true of the latter where repression was longer-lasting andmore virulent. Following the failure of the army coup in July 1936, Spain enduredalmost three years of civil war. Those who rose against the Spanish Republic (whocalled themselves, significantly enough, the nacionalistas) aimed to overthrowthe Catalan institutions of self-government (the Generalitat de Catalunya) which

had been restored after two centuries in 1931 by the Second Republic. There were,to be accurate, Catalans on both sides of the conflict, although, of course, far fewerwith the Francoists. Many Spaniards feared that Catalonia was moving towardsindependence, as the Irish had only 15 years earlier. One Spanish right-wingintellectual

9claimed he would rather a communist Spain than a free Catalonia:

Espaa, antes roja que rota.More recently, following Francos death in 1975, the nostalgic moan of the

supporters of his regime, Con Franco vivamos mejor,10 was countered by

democrats who said ContraFranco vivamos mejor.11

Behind the pun lies a firm belief that, among other things, Catalan gained an inner strength by beingillegitimately suppressed. The suppression of democracy and Catalan cultureand language gave them strong links in the public mind. It is not surprising,therefore, that the prevalent view among Catalan nationalists is that over thecenturies there has been, in Catalonia, a close even apparently causal relationship between autocracy and Spanish, on the one hand, and betweendemocracy and Catalan, on the other. This opinion deserves great attention

because it is central to the whole issue.It would of course be too simplistic to claim that all pro-democraticmovements have favoured Catalan or that all pro-autocratic or dictatorialmovements have favoured the spread of Spanish at the expense of Catalan.However, in this century the movement par excellence Francos glorioso

Movimiento nacional was most definitely a Spanish nationalist movement,aiming to obliterate Catalan along with what they referred to as the other dialectsspoken in Spain, and to replace them with la lengua del Imperio. Some Falangistasintended to distribute Catalan books from lorries during the victorious militaryparade of the Caudillos army of Spanish, Italian and Moorish troops, tounderline the will of the new regime to respect the culture of Catalonia; but theauthorities never allowed those books to be handed out, and indeed thousandsof books were publicly burnt over the following months, especially in Barcelona.

Increasingly, the democratic opposition used the Francoist repression of useof the language in the press, on the radio, in schools, in shop signs, in localcouncils etc. to mobilise public and world opinion. Many historians and othershave written profusely on this clear association between the will for a democraticregime and the will for the status of the Catalan language to be restored (e.g.Benet, 1973; Ferrer i Girons, 1985; Sol i Sabat & Villarroya, 1993; Guardiola,1980).

The Congrs de Cultura Catalana (197577), an extraordinary, unrepeatablemultidisciplinary look at the state of Catalan society, including enthusiastic workin Valencia, the Balearic Islands and in the other Catalan-speaking areas outsideCatalonia proper, again related closely the plight of the language to the politicaloppression it had suffered, the effects of which were noticeable in all fields.

A few years later, the same organisers were responsible for the II Congrs



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Internacional de la Llengua Catalana (1986), which took a basically sociolinguisticlook at the health of the language and made wide-ranging recommendations tothe authorities, many of which have still not been implemented over ten yearslater. The call for a joint body co-ordinating language promotion in at least thethree main areas where the language is official (Catalonia, Valencia and the

Balearic Islands), along the lines of the Taalunie between Belgium (for Flanders)and Holland or the co-operation between the Scandinavian countries channelledthrough the Nordic Council, has gone unheeded for reasons which I shall discuss

below.

Languagepoliciesandliberalism

All this does not exclude the possibility of someone claiming that there areexceptions to such a clear-cut relationship between language and democracy, that

the cops may not in all cases be cops (or else they may be crooked cops) and therobbers may not all be robbers. And indeed in the past few years it has beeninteresting from an academic point of view if not from any other to observethe emergence of a current of opinion inside Catalonia itself, and with powerfulloudhailers helping to broadcast their views in the rest of Spain, which claimsthat the Generalitats language policies are not democratic. Sometimes the fightwas against policies that were imagined rather than real; sometimes dissent wasto forestall or pre-empt policy decisions that were not necessarily going to

happen anyway. It would be a gross oversimplification to say that the promotersof such lobbies have been right-wing ex-franquistas. It seems also to be the casethat some of these critics have moved over the years away from leftist positions.One particularly well-qualified opponent of the language policies designed bythe Catalan government and Parliament is Francesc de Carreras who argues fromthe standpoint of a liberal. The subject in question is a language bill that was soonto be enacted:

Sin embargo, el ncleo de aquello que se pone en discusin no es tanto la

ley en s misma, sino toda la poltica lingstica que la ley ha llevado a suculminacin. El error de fondo de esta poltica, y tambin, por supuesto, dela ley, radica en que se inspira en una concepcin nacionalista de Cataluaque, a mi modo de ver, no resulta conciliable con los principios de libertady pluralismo en los cuales est basada nuestra democracia constitucional.

Porque, ciertamente, desde esta concepcin, la lengua es considerada comoel nervio de la nacin, aquello que convierte a los ciudadanos encatalanes. Como deca un manifiesto nacionalista hecho pblico haceunos meses, la lengua es una manera de ver el mundo, un lugar donde seconfiguran mitos y deseos, una casa que ayuda a convertir en pueblo aaquellos que la habitan. Desde una posicin liberal y democrtica, unalengua es, sin duda, un rasgo cultural que caracteriza a una sociedad, peronunca un rasgo cultural que pueda limitar nuestra libertad individual; esdecir, nunca una manera de ver el mundo. La lengua no es la esencia denuestra personalidad o el ncleo duro de nuestra identidad como personas:desde la Ilustracin, por lo menos, nuestra identidad y nuestra personali-

dad slo tienen un fundamento que no es otro que la libertad.



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Por tanto, el error de fondo que constituye confundir los derechos de laspersonas con los derechos de las naciones -partiendo de un conceptopreexistente de nacin, desligado de los derechos de cada uno de suscomponentes -se proyecta en el articulado de la ley a dos niveles: por unlado, confundiendo lengua propia con lengua nica o preferente; por

otro, confundiendo la legtima proteccin de la lengua catalana, necesariapor ser lengua minoritaria, con la imposicin del uso del cataln a todas lasinstituciones pblicas e incluso a las relaciones entre particulares. (deCarreras, 1998)

12

Much could be said to counter these arguments, and much has. For instance, thehistory of the Enlightenment in France is precisely the history of the negation ofpeoples right to speak their own language unless it was French. For instance,Spanish is not official in Catalonia because Spanish-speakers live there.

Several authors have pointed out the large number of similar rules andregulations the central government applies vis--vis Spanish, starting with theobligation of all citizens to know Spanish, without any of these self-proclaimedliberals batting an eyelid, at least in public. Others have argued that a personcannot be truly free, as a member of a minority, unless the political structure takesspecial and deliberate account of this fact (Kymlicka, 1995; Branchadell, 1997).But in the last analysis I (at least) cannot help feeling that each writer is firmlyrooted in his or her own cultural and ideological perspective, and that a true

dialogue between the opposing points of view is, by definition, well-nighimpossible.

Democracyandlanguage:Theruleofthemajority

Where minority language speakers are actually in a majority, democracy canhelp redress the power balance. Otherwise democracy can be used to confirmminority status, unless of course international standards on human and minorityrights

13are scrupulously respected. Some democratic countries re-define

regional boundaries so that the local majority becomes a minority in two newterritorial units (e.g. Slovakia). In the 1960s Franco seriously toyed with the ideaof lopping the whole of the province of Lleida off Catalonia and adding it to anEbro region along with the three basically Spanish-speaking provinces ofAragon.

It is significant, I am sure, that there is no generally accepted word forlanguages, or rather language groups, that find themselves in a subordinateposition in a given state. They have variously been referred to as minority

languages, lesser-used languages, stateless languages, lesser-taught lan-guages, unofficial languages, regional languages, dialects, minoritisedlanguages, langues moins rpandues etc. The problem is that the simplest word,minority, has a mathematical connotation that is sometimes inappropriate: ifDanish and Norwegian are not minority languages, why is Catalan, which isspoken by more people? The answer, of course, has nothing to do with linguisticmatters, but is a matter of power: some languages have been adopted by the stateand therefore have its backing and enjoy the benefits thereof; while other

languages in the same state are either neglected (only sometimes benignly) or inother ways given a subordinate role. In Spain for instance, the general law on the



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judiciary14

states that Spanish is the language of all court proceedings, and thenallows a small space for Basque, Galician and Catalan, though only under certaincircumstances.

In a situation of perfect democracy, multilingual countries (that is, countrieswhose borders enclose specific areas where different languages have been spoken

for centuries) could accommodate such issues, allowing the majority in each areato decide upon its linguistic regime. This does indeed happen in Switzerlandscantons. It also happens in (coastal) Finland, where (in a remarkably flexible andpragmatic way) municipalities in which the proportion of Swedish-speakers ineach census surpasses a certain benchmark become officially bilingual (or ceaseto be bilingual, when the percentage declines).

The question here though is that minority language groups are often not ina majority even in their heartland. Catalonia itself has been subject to periodic

surges of immigration from the rest of Spain. Immigrants used to become fullyand actively bilingual within a couple of generations; but this has happened onlypartly in the last thirty years, chiefly on account of the massive scale of recentimmigration, which means that under half of the present population areCatalans in the traditional sense.

Thus the day may come when a new majority will take over the reins oflanguage policy, and will reject the long-standing entente cordiale (which I amstating far too crudely!) that Catalans will continue to learn Spanish provided

incoming Spaniards learn Catalan and use it in their interactions with Catalans,or at the very least ensure that their children do so.This would undoubtedly be democratic in the sense that the local majority

would make the decision; but it could also signal the death-knell for the locallanguage by removing it from a favoured institutional position and thus reducingits association with power, however limited. It might also lead to social division,with Catalan-speakers reacting strongly against the public use of Spanish, evenif the minimum international standards were still respected.

Though I do not want to take the simile too far, this issue does remind me of theplight of the American Indians, whose reservations are essential if they are to be trulyable to maintain their way of life, including the use of their language(s). Kymlicka(1995) has interesting and to my mind convincing points to make on this.

LanguageandDevolutionSo much for the relationship between language and democracy. Let us

move on to an equally interesting interface, that between language and

devolution.Let no-one question the profound relationship between the two, often closelyassociated with identity and self-affirmation. Noah Webster, the Americanlinguist, writing in 1789, assumes the relationship in the following:

Let us then seize the present moment and establish a national language, as wellas a national government as an independent people, our reputation abroaddemands that, in all things we should be federal; be national; for if we do notrespect ourselves we may be assured that other nations will not respect us.

(Webster quoted in Weinstein, 1982: 9495; viz. Cooper, 1989: 147)



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As has already been mentioned, it is often said in Catalonia that the Catalanlanguage has only flourished, in the past hundred or more years, in times ofdemocracy. The two dictatorships (Primo de Rivera and Franco, both armygenerals) were certainly enthusiastic and thorough about banning Catalan,especially the second and much longer regime. Yet the Boletn Oficial del

Estado of both periods has curiously few examples of repression, because thislargely took place without the need for legal measures. Once the Catalans knewwhat could happen to them if they kept their shop signs up in Catalan, or werecaught teaching pupils in Catalan, or tried to publish a newspaper in Catalan,there was scarcely any need to actually legislate! Nevertheless, historians andpolitical scientists have written profusely about the subject, and conclude thatthe degree of repression, including propaganda designed with the expert adviceof leading figures in the Hitler regime, was very severe indeed, especially in the

early years (Benet, 1973; Ferrer i Girons, 1985; Sol i Sabat & Villarroya, 1993).Yet, if we read through recent legislation governing languages passed by the

Spanish Parliament, and through the Boletn Oficial del Estado, the claim thatdemocracy is by its very essence good for Catalan is certainly not substantiated.On the contrary, there has been an unflagging interest in ensuring that CastilianSpanish remains supreme. What varies is the degree to which this supremacy isimposed. The 1978 Constitution is most certainly an historic step forward asregards the recognition of the other languages of Spain, and specifically Catalan,

Basque and Galician; yet even then only one language is official throughoutSpain, and these other languages have to share their official character inside thehistorical territories where they have been spoken for centuries. The Swiss or theBelgian models, where the historical language in each territory is the only officialone (at least as far as German, French and Italian are concerned), are mostcertainly not applied. My position may seem unduly harsh, but it is backed up

by the existence of a large body of current legislation and statutory regulationswhich still make the use of Castilian Spanish compulsory.

15When the Generalitat

complained that some seemed to forget that the Constitution obliges all theauthorities to take measures to ensure that the linguistic heritage is protected,ministries rephrased later measures. Instead of making the use of at leastSpanish obligatory, they now say at least the official language of the state,which is simply a euphemism which hides exactly the same state of affairs.

What then has given rise to the very widespread belief in Catalonia, that theCatalan language can only flourish in times of democracy? The answer is in thevery different conception that Catalans have of democracy, as opposed to the

Jacobin centralist and uniformist view. For Catalans, democracy and devolutionhave meant the same for the whole of this century at least. Let us look into thisin a little more detail.

Llibertat, amnistia, Estatut dAutonomia was the slogan that encapsulated thedemands of theAssemblea de Catalunya towards the end of the Franco regime. IfLlibertat and amnistia represented democracy and an end to political reprisals andrepression, Estatut dAutonomia was a call for devolution.

Unfortunately, for many in Spain Llibertat and Estatut dAutonomia forCatalonia were, and to some extent still are, tantamount to a serious threat to the

integrity of the state. To put it another way, many Spaniards are unconvinced



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that Catalans see Spain as an attractive proposition or project, and given thechance, would opt for independence. This immediately raises two issues. One,the inferiority complex that some Spaniards seem to feel, with respect not merelyto the French, the British or the Italians, but even to the Catalans. The stereotypicalCastilian, the hidalgo, may be extremely proud to the point of violence if need

be to defend his personal identity: he is easily insulted and quick to takeoffence. But his relationship with Spain is much more complex and is a

bitter-sweet, or a lovehate one. I insist that I am conjuring up the image of thetraditional Castilian, but if there is any truth behind the stereotype this wouldexplain the ferocity of some Castilian reactions to Catalan demands.

The second issue is whether or not Catalans really do want to becomeindependent. Field research, and especially surveys, are highly contradictory,particularly when compared with the election results of those parties (the largest

of which is Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) which actively pursue fullsovereignty for Catalonia. A good example of this is a study by Antoni Estradand Montserrat Treserra (1990). When a sample of 2100 people were asked if theyconsidered independence to be desirable, fully 39.4% replied affirmatively. Asmight be expected, the figure was brought down by the fact that a considerableproportion of the sample were not born and bred in Catalonia; and when theauthors looked at the replies given by those interviewees whose parents were

both born in Catalonia, the answers were as shown in Table 1.

Equally revealing, however, were the answers to another question, in whichinterviewees were asked whether they thought that independence was possible.Only 37.4% replied that they thought it would be. Significantly enough, the figureis only slightly higher among the interviewees whose parents were both born inCatalonia (see Table 2).

There is obviously a fairly high degree of scepticism among those of Catalanancestry. The average Catalan is very familiar with the definition of politics asthe art of the possible and votes accordingly, on a highly pragmatic basis, largely

Yes, independence would be desirable 55.4%

No, independence would not be desirable 31.3%

Other replies, indifference 3.0%

No reply 10.3%

Source: Estrad & Treserra, 1990, Table 50, p. 104

Table 1

Yes, independence is possible 41.3%

No, independence is impossible 47.0%

Other replies, indifference 3.8%

No reply 7.9%Source: Estrad & Treserra, 1990, Table 49, p. 102

Table 2



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abandoning the independence parties. Not only pragmatism but also a healthyrespect for history, which the system has been careful to inculcate over thecenturies: Catalonia did not win her independence in 1640, unlike Portugal.Catalonia did not retain her confederal status in 1714, having lost to the Bourbonarmies. And much more vividly, Catalonia lost to Franco and was punished for

having striven to recover her national identity. These somewhat simplifiedstatements

16have helped to prevent Catalans from dreaming; ideological feeling,

for instance, is much less intense than in, say, the Basque country.So the average Catalan person-in-the-street

17is not prone to seriously

contemplate independence, because of memories of the savage repressionwrought the last time such an aim was regarded as being a real and viable option.

However, the questionnaire included yet another item on independence, insuch a way as to allay peoples almost genetic fear of violent reactions from the

Meseta.18

The question asked was as follows: If a referendum was called now tobegin a gradual process towards independence for Catalonia, how would youvote?

19The results (Table 3) are quite striking, in my view. Once the fears are

removed, and even bearing in mind the quite understandable fact that two outof nine interviewees whose parents are (or were) both Catalan, and two out ofseven of the other interviewees either say they would not vote or refuse to givean opinion, those who say they would vote for independence greatly outnumberthose who say they would vote against it. Let me add, finally, that the survey was

carried out by ICOP, SA, a firm with a well-established reputation in the field ofmarket and opinion research.

LanguageanddevolutioninCatalonia

Returning to the main issue of the relationship between language anddevolution, Catalan could have been defined in the Spanish Constitution (1978)as a national language with official status in specified parts of Spain. Instead thisstatus was established by the Statute of Autonomy (1979) which was drafted bythe Catalan MPs, put to the people in a referendum and given the level of anorganic law, which forms part of the constitutional legislative package.

Article 3.1 of the Statute states that the historic language of the people whohave inhabited Catalonia, and have been hegemonic there for over eight

Both parents Catalan All others Total

Id vote Yes 60.5% 33.0% 44.5%

Id vote No 14.9% 34.6% 26.4%

Id cast a blank vote 2.5% 3.6% 3.1%

I wouldnt vote 6.5% 11.8% 9.6%

I dont know/No reply 15.6% 17.0% 16.4%

Total 100% 100% 100%

Source: Estrad & Treserra, 1990, Table 51, p. 107

Table 3



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centuries, is Catalan. A close approximation in English to the expression llenguaprpia de Catalunya would be Catalonias own language.

The second paragraph says that Catalan is the official language of Catalonia(). The sentence does not, however, end here, for it continues: () as isSpanish, official throughout the Spanish State. This means, in effect, that Catalan

is not the official language in Catalonia, but one of two. The grammatical mistakewas politically intended: it underlines the different origin of the official characterof the two languages in Catalonia. Note, as I have already pointed out, thatSpanish (it is called Castilian in the Statute and the Constitution, incidentally) isnot official in Catalonia because there are Spanish-speakers living there.

Leading legal specialists such as Josep Maria Puig-Salellas were quick to pointout that the official status of Catalan, alongside Spanish (which is, as I havealready said, official throughout Spain) is both autonomous (that is, a Catalan text

is valid whether or not it is accompanied by a Spanish version, and vice versa),and indivisible:

(a) It is indivisible, so that the official nature of one of the two languages cannot be limited, for example, by reducing it to one particular material orgeographic domain of the life of the community, while excluding it fromanother, even if this domain is the exclusive responsibility of the State or theAutonomous Community. ()

(b) It is autonomous, in the sense that each official language is official on its

own, so that if a directive only allowed the autochthonous language if usedside by side with Castilian or even imposed this double use of bothlanguages, this would be unacceptable. (Puig i Salellas, 1983: 6263)

20

Paragraph 3 of Article 3 takes account of the fact that after a period ofrepression of one language in favour of another, simply declaring both languagesto be official will not in itself guarantee that people will be able to overcome theirformer (imposed) habit of using the language that was allowed, and start to usethe other. Affirmative action is therefore necessary. Lacordaire described thereason for this very neatly: Entre le fort et le faible cest la libert qui opprime et la loiqui affranchit (Sol, 1995: 91). It also illustrates the legitimacy of working, withina liberal tradition, to overcome the obstacles that limit, in practice, the freeexercise of language rights inside Catalonia.

21The paragraph states that:

The Generalitat of Catalonia will guarantee the normal and official use ofboth languages, adopt whatever measures are deemed necessary to ensure both languages are known, and create suitable conditions so that full

equality between the two can be achieved as far as the rights and duties ofthe citizens of Catalonia are concerned.

This is a clear statement of the social contract: both Catalan- and Spanish-speakersare expected to make a balanced and shared effort to integrate in both directions,and the authorities have to work actively in pursuit of this objective.

Leaving to one side, for a moment, the issue of the legal status of the language,one of the main novelties of the 1978 Constitution was the transfer of power tothe regions. The Constitution devotes considerable attention to the responsibili-

ties that central government may or may not transfer to the autonomous



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governments. Articles 143 to 158 deal with these issues. Article 148, for instance,states that autonomous communities (the official name for regions and statelessnations) can take over responsibility for urban and territorial planning; publicworks; railways and roads which start and end inside the territory; non-commer-cial ports and airports; agriculture and livestock; forestry; protection of the

environment; hydraulic planning, including spas; hunting, and coastal andinland fishing; internal trade fairs; economic development of the autonomouscommunity, in the framework of general economic policy; handicrafts; museums,libraries and music conservatories; monuments and historic heritage; culture,research and the teaching of the language (where applicable); tourism; sport;social assistance; health and hygiene.

Paragraph 3 of article 150 grants the state the right to legislate by defining theprinciples that have to be applied, so as to harmonise legislation and regulations

enacted in different regions. This issue has on several occasions given rise toconsiderable crises and polemic, because the central Parliament can decideunilaterally on those areas which it is in the states general interest toharmonise.

Finally, the regional governments are entitled to raise their own taxes, aboveand beyond the general taxation system run (except in Navarre and the Basquecommunity) by central government.

The Catalan Statute lists the areas for which the Catalan regional authorities

are to be responsible. These include the public health, prison and educationservices, the arts, public works and the environment, economic and industrialdevelopment, tourism, labour relations, internal commerce, etc. All these powershad been administered since 1939 through provincial offices of the Spanishgovernment ministries in Barcelona, Tarragona, Girona and Lleida (broadlyequivalent, all in all, to the Welsh or Scottish Offices in the UK) and were handedover, with budgetary provisions, over a period of years (though a few serviceshave yet to be transferred) to the new or rather, restored Catalanadministration. This basically meant that the civil servants changed boss, butneither desk nor basic tasks, at least initially.22

What did change very quickly was the language used at work in thesedelegations. Whereas very few forms were even bilingual in 1979, the use ofwritten Catalan grew very rapidly. Although the quality of such use was oftennot up to standard, this is hardly surprising given that many of the civil servantswere not even Catalans themselves, and virtually none of the Catalans had hadany form of education in or through Catalan. Thus a massive in-service languagetraining scheme was put into effect, involving the Escola dAdministraci Pblicade Catalunya, the Catalan civil service college. Increasingly, new appointeeswould be expected to have a satisfactory level of oral and written Catalan, and alanguage qualification would also be a requirement for promotion. No-one,however, lost their job on linguistic grounds. Not a single person.

In 1980 the first elections to the Catalan Parliament gave a clear mandate toConvergncia i Uni, under Jordi Pujol. He has been the President ever since. Thesocialists were shocked at their poor result, having expected to win, and theyrefused, in my view mistakenly, to join a broad coalition government. Within a

short space of time the new government had appointed a director-general for



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language policy, Sra Aina Moll, daughter of one of the most important linguistsof this century (author of the ten-volume Alcover-Moll Catalan Dictionary) anda linguist in her own right. During her eight-year mandate there were three mainpolicy objectives:

(1) To put into practice the basic legal instruments, and to ensure that theGeneralitat itself practised what it preached, in exemplary fashion, as far asthe actual use of the language was concerned.

(2) To ensure that all school children would become active and literatebilinguals, and that adults would have access to special language trainingon demand.

(3) To encourage the whole population to play an active part in the recovery ofthe public use of the language, in a spirit of tolerance and peacefulco-existence.

Two of the three main elements of this policy were and still are beyond the controlof the directorate general (and in the latter case, of the government as a whole):the education system, and the public TV and radio services set up by the CatalanParliament.

The 1983 Language Bill was enacted thanks to the support of all theparliamentary groups (though the Partido Popular, at that time still calledAlianzaPopular, failed to get a seat). At the time, the Act was not regarded primarily as

a Convergncia i Uni imposition, though over the years memories fade and moreand more often one reads references to the language policy as if it had beendesigned by the government coalition, instead of being the outcome of a carefullyworked out and negotiated parliamentary pact.

The 1983 Language Act is far less ambitious than its Quebec equivalent, Bill101 or the Charte de la Langue franaise (1977). Yet in one respect, Catalan languageplanners advanced further than their counterparts in Quebec. The former wereanxious to take the public with them and undertook attitude-changing cam-paigns. Let me give two simple examples, both from the early 1980s: the Normacampaign and the Scales spot. The Norma campaign was a very successful andpopular attempt to bring the language question out in the open. Short video filmsillustrated different ways in which people could contribute to the recovery of thelanguage, revolving around the image of a 10-year-old girl called Norma. Acouple of caravans drove round Catalonia, from one market place to the next,showing the films on monitors and distributing material (stickers, posters, etc.)while dozens of lectures were given in cities, towns and villages. The Scales spotwas designed shortly after the 1983 bill became law. It consisted of a beautiful30-second spot in which the metaphor of a set of scales was used to convey theintention of the law, which was to lead to a balanced and just linguistic situation.This time dozens of round-table discussions were organised, mainly in districtsin the industrial hinterland of Barcelona, where nearly all in-migrants lived, andwhere it was felt that demagogic politicking could cause serious social unrest.

Alongside the language-status planning work which I have been describing,a great deal of work was undertaken on the language itself, i.e. in the field ofcorpus planning. Three initiatives deserve special attention. Firstly, a multimedia

language course designed for adult Spanish-speakers, under the auspices of the



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Council of Europe. Digui, digui quickly became a best-seller, and has since beenadapted for speakers of other languages, including English. Secondly, thesubsidising of a growing number of language courses organised locally either bycultural organisations such as mnium Cultural or local councils. Over 40,000people still attend such courses every year. Thirdly, a terminology research centre

for Catalan, called Termcat, was founded. Among other achievements in its earlyyears, it developed the necessary vocabulary, in Catalan, Spanish, English andFrench, for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

In the years following 1988, under our second director-general, Miquel Reniu,the accent was placed on building structures. Firstly, the teachers and otherspecialists working locally, and numbering over 300, were contracted by aspecially founded consortium (consisting of the Generalitat and most of the mainlocal authorities in Catalonia), which has an annual budget of about 8 million.

Secondly, a Social Council for the Catalan language was established in 1991, witha membership of over 40 representatives from most of the main sectors of Catalansociety. And thirdly, a great deal of work went into trying to systematise workin favour of Catalan, and to establish objectifiable ways of deciding uponpriorities on the basis of strategic analyses of the situation.

Our third, and present, director-general, Llus Jou, has seen the 1983 Actreplaced by a new Act (No. 1 of 1998) which renders immersion programmes theregular way of receiving non-Catalan-speaking children into infant schools,

unless parents choose otherwise; makes some linguistic requirements of employ-ers; increases the use of Catalan in public registers; introduces quota systems intoprivate radio and TV stations broadcasting in Catalonia, etc.

Looking back over these years, there seem to be two periods: one, in which theCatalan population identified very firmly with the aims of the government, andduring which the increase in the public use of the language was evident in shopsigns, oral use in meetings and consumption of radio and TV in Catalan.Awareness-raising campaigns were fairly frequent. However, after about tenyears the wind seemed to cease filling the sails of the process. The easy work wasover, the volunteers had been mobilised. Further gains seemed to become harder.The government has not undertaken any further advertising/propagandacampaigns on the language issue for years now. And the process began to beperceived as linked to the will of the government: some parties were seen as

becoming less enthusiastic in their support. Many people feel that the presentstate of affairs is now normal as far as the use of Catalan is concerned.

I shall leave this section as it stands, though at the end of my paper I shall referto the socio-demographic situation, which is critical for the future of the Catalanlanguage and for the Catalans as a people.

Before ending, however, let me refer to a separate matter. One sometimescomes across references to the language situation in Catalonia, and particularlyto the language policy in the region, in comparison with Belgium or Switzerland.Here is an example:

La relativa facilidad con que los hablantes de una lengua pueden aprenderla otra ha servido para que Catalua no sufra la segregacin fsica de las

dos comunidades lingsticas como sucede en Blgica entre las comuni-dades francesa y flamenca; en Finlandia, entre las comunidades finlandesa



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y sueca, y en Canad, entre las comunidades francesa e inglesa. (Jackson,1998)

23

These comparisons are quite inappropriate. If these two multilingual countriesare quoted to serve as a model, it must be as a model for the state, not for part ofthe state. It is Spain, and not Catalonia, that should be compared to policies inBelgium, Switzerland or Canada.

And indeed, time and again Catalan nationalists (and recently, Basquenationalists as well) have called for Spain to accept and implement its conditionas a multilingual and multicultural country (e.g. Ninyoles, 1977). A recentexample is given by the present Catalan minister for Culture, Joan-Maria Pujals:

En estos veinte aos de democracia se han asumido positivamente lapluralidad poltica y las alternancias en el Gobierno, y tambin la

redistribucin del poder antes centralizado y ahora vertebrado en el Estadode las Autonomas. Pero existen todava muchas reticencias para aceptar lapluralidad lingstica [] (Pujals, 1998)

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Until this occurs, and Catalan is treated by central government and institutionsat least as well, in Catalonia, as is Castilian Spanish in, say, Extremadura, the

balance will be constantly loaded against Catalan. Yet time and again Spanishnationalists use Spanish nationalistic arguments to attack policies in Catalonia,seemingly blissfully unaware that they themselves are as fervently nationalist as

they accuse the Catalans of being.

Bilingualismforwhom?

Even highly respectable and respected Spanish liberal intellectuals like PedroLan Entralgo, who is widely regarded as a friend of the Catalan cause, insist onthe need for all Catalans to be bilingual (in Spanish, needless to say!), even if inthe same breath they acknowledge that non-Catalans living in Catalonia shouldlearn Catalan (Lan Entralgo, 1997).

Reactions to language legislation in Catalonia, from the traditional,Jacobin,Spanish side, are interesting to analyse. There are several different suchorganisations, some of which have been founded quite recently (Voltas, 1996).One of the more militant Spanish nationalist groups,Accin Cultural Miguel deCervantes, founded in the early eighties and with a clear right-wing image, tookup the cause of a lawyer, Esteban Gmez-Rovira, whose personal legal waragainst the Generalitat has been unflagging (he managed to have the 1983Language Act taken back to the Constitutional Court in 1994, eleven years after

the central government had done the same). Realising that no more could be doneto try and get Spanish courts to declare that this legislation, particularly itsapplication in schools, is unconstitutional,Accin Cultural Miguel de Cervantestook the case to the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimi-nation and Protection of Minorities in Geneva in March 1997, on a human rightsticket, where it was classified under procedure 1503, a procedure designed by theUN Economic and Social Council in 1967 to deal with situations which reveal aconsistent pattern of violations of human rights. It remains to be seen whether

this case will be referred by the working group to the Sub-Commission, whichmeets once a year. I had occasion to comment to the UN information officer in



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Geneva that the language policy in Catalonia falls considerably short of the policyin any Swiss canton, so that if Catalonias policy was censured by the UNSub-Commission, they could expect demonstrations in the streets by Swisscitizens!

Those opposing the Catalan governments policy tend to define themselves as

bilingistas. Significantly, many of them are in fact militantly monolingual. Theirview of bilingismo is in fact a desire to be able to survive anywhere within theSpanish state without having to learn or use any language other than Spanish.

Spanish nationalists argue that any legislation which makes knowledge ofCatalan a job requirement goes against article 28 of the Spanish Constitution,which guarantees freedom of movement for all citizens throughout Spain. Sucha claim was made by the central government when the Catalan Parliament passedits Civil Service Act in 1988; but the appeal was turned down by the

Constitutional Court, which ruled that the Catalan Parliament and governmentare entitled to establish such requirements, provided (reasonably enough) theyare not disproportionate with regard to the linguistic needs of the post.

The other main legal offensive against the Catalan government was launchedagainst its language policy for public schools. Not only the Spanish Constitu-tional court, but also several authors (e.g. Milian, 1994), and indeed internationalcourts, have made it clear that there is no basic human right to education in onesown language. There is, however, a basic right to education, and this cannot

function unless the child understands the language in which this education isgiven. In Milians words (I have chosen the Spanish edition of his successfulbook):

El contenido propiamente lingstico que encubren tanto el derecho a lainstruccin como el derecho a la educacin es pura y simplemente elderecho del nio a recibir la enseanza en una lengua que les seacomprensible. Este contenido no significa que los nios gocen del derechoa recibir la enseanza en su lengua. (Milian, 1994: 443)

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The highly successful immersion programmes (Strubell, 1996) ensure this, andthe fact that Catalan and Spanish are both Romance languages is, of course, agreat help.

Opposition to the Generalitats policies in the media is found in its mostextreme form in the Madrid daily newspaperABC, which is known for its Spanishnationalist position. This paper has an extremely long-standing tradition in thisregard. One author, in studying the newspaper in the period 19161936concludes that:

no solament podia contemplar en tota la seva cruesa i virulncia quin haviaestat histricament labc de lanticatalanisme, sin que tamb vaig poderentendre millor en qu ha consistit la histria de Catalunya i dEspanyadurant el nostre segle i quins han estat llurs xits i fracassos en un procs[] que sembla encara no resolt. (Medina, 1995: 7)

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The tone of the articles is inflammatory. Here is a selection of extracts from afairly recent article by none other than the former editor of the paper, Lus Mara



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Anson (who, by the way, claims British ancestry as the reason for omitting theaccent from his surname):

La llamada ley de Poltica Lingstica [] pretende hacer de Catalua unaregin monolinge. Pretende extirpar el castellano de la Autonomacatalana. Introducir veladuras o matices a estas afirmaciones sera sumarseal pasteleo electoral, a la poltica desdentada de la componenda y laclaudicacin. (Anson, 1998)

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Jordi Pujol [] ha cado en la tentacin totalitaria del poder, al establecerun sistema lingstico que atenta contra los derechos humanos y perjudicagravemente al sector menos favorecido de la poblacin catalana. (Anson,1998)

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One might suspect that some believe, at least secretly, that had Spain remained

a strongly centralised country, as it was under Franco, none of this would havehappened.

Languageanddevolutionelsewhere

The social scientists dream (and in fact, any empirical scientists) is to controlall the independent variables but one in an experimental situation, and see howchanges in the value of the independent variable affect the value of the dependentvariable. Though this is not strictly the case for there are other variables

involved it is extremely interesting to see how the same degree of devolution,granted to Catalans and Valencians for instance, has not led to the same increase or rather recovery in the use of the (same) language. I would like to includethe Balearic Islands as well, but there are two large differences in the politicalcontext which discourage their inclusion: the Balearic Islands have neverseriously contemplated setting up a television (and radio) service of their own,unlike Catalonia and Valencia, which have TV3 and Canal 9 respectively; thegovernment of the Balearic Islands has only very recently taken over responsi-

bility for the school system.It would be perfectly understandable for an outsider to imagine, given that the

language is the same, that the Franco (and former) regimes have affected both ofthem equally, and that both regions have devolved political institutions, thatCatalonia and Valencia would have adopted similar language policies, and thatthe language situation would now be quite similar.

A comparative analysis of the Statues of Autonomy and of the basic languagelegislation (the Language Acts passed by both Parliaments in 1983) gives little

inkling of the degree to which the two situations do really differ. The fact that inthe region and its legal texts Catalan is called Valencian, should not particularlydisturb us. The simplest explanation of the difference might be to point out thatwhereas Catalonia has been governed since the first post-Franco elections in 1980,without a break, by Catalan nationalists, the Generalitat Valenciana has beengoverned by socialists (till 1995) and by the conservative Partido Popular sincethen. Still more significant is the existence of a right-wing regionalist party, UninValenciana, whose main feature is its strikingly anti-Catalan character. Following

years of parliamentary sniping, since 1995 they have held the balance of power,and in return for supporting the Partido Popular, they have occupied some key



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political posts, including the post of Speaker in the regional parliament, or CortsValencianes, and several ministries.

In these areas, a different spelling system (using, I may add, what all linguistsI know regard as quite ridiculous criteria) has been adopted so as to try andfurther the claim that Valencia and Catalonia have nothing at all in common, and

that anyone who claims otherwise (such as the whole of academia) is some kindof a traitor. In fact, Unin Valenciana, though a regionalist party purporting todefend the regions heritage, consists largely of people who speak Spanish andnot Catalan. Its heartland is the city of Valencia itself, a city where the numberand proportion of speakers of the language has declined dramatically since even

before the Franco regime took power in 1939.Several authors have tracked the development of a considerable movement

against the Catalans and against the recovery of the language in Valencia (e.g.

Bello, 1988; Strubell, 1994). One of the main daily newspapers in Valencia, LasProvincias, has waged a constant campaign, including incendiary commentariespublished anonymously almost every day; it would almost certainly have beenclosed down in any other country for inciting the population to violence andrabid xenophobia. Many Catalans visiting Valencia have learned to their dismaythat cars with Barcelona number plates often get scratched if they are left parkedout in the street overnight. This is of course nothing compared to the incendiary

bombing campaigns directed at book shops and leading intellectuals about

twenty years ago.Right now many people are holding their breath while the Consell Valenci deCultura prepares its report on the whole issue. All the universities and, needlessto say, virtually all linguists have put their weight behind the orthography thathas been used by virtually all writers in Valencia since 1932, the so-called Normesde Castell. The secessionists, known locally as the blaveros, have only threeofficial representatives on the Council and are doing their best to influencepublic opinion through the mass media. In the meantime, the Catalonian channel,TV3, broadcasts the latest Valencian soap opera without dubbing it!

I have been referring to Valencia for two reasons. One is that in contrast toCatalonia, the language has recovered much less rapidly and sturdily. In practicethe language policy in Valencia was much more timid under the socialists, andunder the conservatives has all but disappeared; even such trilateral technicalagreements regarding the mutual recognition of language certificates issued bythe Junta Permanent de Catal, the Junta Avaluadora de Valenci and theircounterpart in the Balearic Islands, have been unilaterally rescinded, as has the

joint publication of books of common cultural interest.The other reason is that in the case of Valencia the relationship between

language and devolution was politicised to such a degree that it backfired. Thelanguage issue was used, before devolution took place in the early 80s, to try anddrive a (political, but also social) wedge between Catalonia and Valencia.

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Miquel Strubell - Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia

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Transcript of Miquel Strubell - Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia