The Catalan Imposition

There has been a whole load rumbling on about Catalan. The ongoing coverage of  the "Catalan imposition" in the English media suggests that is either a subject of burning interest or one that has caught the interest of a vocal but small minority within the expat community. "Nobody expects the Catalan imposition; Biggles, the comfy chair".

To what extent, though, should the Catalan thing be an issue for the Brits? It's not our language, so how can it be our debate? Insofar as officialdom works in that language alone, sometimes in contravention to the law which demands that both Catalan and Castilian are used, and insofar as the priority given to Catalan affects education, then it is an issue for many. But I don't know that I am alone in thinking that it isn't really my debate, or that of any other Brit, except in the sense of it being a genuinely interesting social-political-historical phenomenon.

It is too easy to seek to nuance this debate in ways that will chime with the British, as in, for example, comparing the Catalan situation with Welsh or Cornish. Such a comparison is wrong-headed. Catalan was and still is a genuine European language. It contributed significantly to European development until it was effectively granted second-language status through the Castile-Aragon union and the elevation to supremacy of Castilian as the language of nation, commerce and empire. And so it has been ever since, subject also to fascistic diktat that saw it proscribed. But it survived as a significant language. Because it did not acquire international status, unlike Castilian, is no reason to suggest its unimportance. Swedish is not an international language either, but no-one is proposing the Swedes give it up, and there are roughly the same number of Swedish speakers as there are Catalan speakers.

With the exception of Belgium, an arguably artificial construct in any event (if any country can be considered not to be artificial), nowhere else in western Europe is there a linguistic argument that compares as a political and social issue. For this reason, it is fascinating to observe and, for the most part, that it is what one has to do. The "Catalan imposition" may seem idiotic and politically motivated (I prefer to call it impractical), but unless one is a Catalan native speaker, I suspect one cannot understand fully the significance of the discussion. One is not of course suggesting that it is on anything like the same scale, but there remains the irony that Catalan, forcibly banned by Franco, should now be the tool for an imposition in reverse.

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