Anti-Catalan sentiment
 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
| Part of a series on |
| Discrimination |
|---|
 |
Anti-Catalan sentiment (Catalan: anticatalanisme, IPA: [ˌantikətələˈnizmə]) is the collective name given to various trends in Spain, France and Italy that expresses disdain, discrimination, or hatred for Catalonia, to Catalans, Catalan culture, Catalan language or its history. It can also be referred to as Anti-Catalanism or Catalanophobia.
Description[edit]
In a historical context, anti-Catalanism expresses itself as a hostile attitude towards the Catalan language, people, traditions or anything identified with Catalonia. In a political context it may express itself as the reaction to a perceived intrusion of Catalan political nationalism into the area. In its most extreme circumstances, this may also be referred as Catalanophobia, though it is not a phobia per se. Several political movements, known for organising boycotts of products from Catalonia, are also actively identified with anti-Catalanism. Anti-Catalan sentiment often expresses the denial of any degree of Catalan national identity, whether in the past or in the present.
History[edit]
Italy in the Middle Ages[edit]
Historian Antoni Simon states that between the 12th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon's military expansion into Sicily, Sardinia and southern Italy and the entry of Catalan merchants into these markets generated a deep sense of hostility against the Catalans - often identified as Spaniards. Reflections can be found in the literary works of Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca, Luigi Alamanni, Pietro Aretino or Serafino Aquilano. He states that it was an anti-Catalan sentiment that was more cultural-linguistic than political-territorial, due to the protests over the election of Alfonso de Borja in 1455 as Pope Calixtus III for being "barbarian and Catalan".
Spain in the early modern period[edit]
The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile with the Crown of Aragon took place through the Catholic Monarchs. The Castilian hegemony in the newly established Monarchy of Spain left the peripheral realms under a royal government located in Madrid since 1561, a government composed of people mainly of Castilian origin.
At the beginning of the 16th century, King Ferdinand II of Aragon was called, in a derogatory manner, "viejo catalanote" ("old Catalan fool") by the Castilian nobility, being expelled from Castile and seen as an intruder after the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile.
In accordance with the Nueva Planta decree of 1716 promulgated by Philip V after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), most of the public legislation and institutions of the Principality of Catalonia was abolished,[1] leading to the marginalization of the Catalan language and culture, favoring instead the Spanish language. The administrative use of the Catalan language was replaced it with Spanish. While theoretically the replacement solely affected the Royal Audience, the king provided with secret instructions to the royal officers in Catalan territory: they "will take the utmost care to introduce the Castilian language, for which purpose he will give the most temperate and disguised measures so that the effect is achieved, without the care being noticed."[2]
The Nueva Planta decrees were royal measures aimed at suppressing those who were defeated during the Succession War, and it initiated the creation of a French-style Spanish centralized state in accordance with the laws of Castile, and for the first time founded the Kingdom of Spain. This centralization took quite some time during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reaching maximum levels during the dictatorship of Franco and the White Terror.
The 19th and 20th centuries[edit]
Persecution of Catalan in Francoist Spain[edit]
The dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), not only saw the supression of democratic freedoms, but also the Catalan language and culture were crushed at an unprecedented level, being excluded from the education system and relegated to the family sphere. Castillian (Spanish) became the only language of education, administration, business and the media. During the Spanish Civil War period, the retoric use of Catalanophobia by the Rebel faction led directly to menaces and outbreaks of ethnic conflict of genocidal nature, as Paul Preston points out in "The Spanish Holocaust":[3]
"In the days following the occupation of Lleida (...) republican prisoners identified as Catalans were executed without trial. Whoever they heard speaking in Catalan was very likely to end up arrested. The arbitrary brutality of the anti-Catalan repression reached such a point that Franco himself had to issue an order stipulating that mistakes that could later be regretted should be avoided”..."There are examples of the murder of peasants for no other apparent reason than that of speaking Catalan"
Scholars Rafael Aracil, Joan Oliver and Antoni Segura considered that until 1951, the persecution of Catalan language was "total".[4] In some places students had to denounce fellow students who spoke Catalan.[4] During this period, The Catalan language was also prohibited on tombstones.[4] Between 1939 and 1943 book printing in Catalan virtually disappeared.[5]
With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, some of the harsh mesures began to be lifted and, while Spanish language remained the sole promoted one, limited number of Catalan literature began to be tolerated. However, works aimed at young people were restricted to limit the learning of the written language. Among these authors were those who returned from exile in 1942–1943. Their works include a Catalan translation of the Odyssey (1948) by Carles Riba, and research conducted by teacher Alexandre Galí with Història de les Institucions 1900-1936 (History of Institutions), which even today are reference works.
In 1968, in a discussion about cultural activity in Catalan language, Catalan businessman J.B. Cendrós tried to get the then Franco's Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne to lift the order to withdraw from circulation the first edition of the "Illustrated History of Catalonia". Fraga ended up glorifying the various times that Spain had militarily attacked Catalonia and that they were ready to do it again.
Later on, opening of the regime allowed a small change in the marginalization of the language, such as the broadcast in 1964 of the first Catalan television program on TVE (Teatre català), the Nova Cançó (New Song) (1961) movement, though there were limits such as the ban on Joan Manuel Serrat singing in Catalan at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968.[6][7]
After Spanish transition to democracy[edit]
The regrowth of anti-Catalan sentiment during the first decade of the 21st century was marked, among other reasons, by the reform of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia and the demands from Catalan society for the return of the "Salamanca Papers", a series of documents massively confiscated from individuals and organizations in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War by Franco's army in order to enact a harsh repression. On the other hand, in the autonomous community of Valencia, anti-Catalanism has been part of the strategy of the political right since the democratic transition.
In 2006 the Spanish conservative People's Party (PP) launched an advertising campaign against "the pact of the Catalan Statute and the grievances for Andalusia". However, 14 articles from the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia that the PP deemed as unconstitutionals had an identical wording in the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia, which was fully supported by the party chaired by Mariano Rajoy.[8]
In the 2010's, some organizations and fake news blogs such as Dolça Catalunya, closely linked to the Spanish far-right and the ultra-Catholicism, have maintained and become a vehicle of anti-Catalanism and language secessionism.[9][10][11][12]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ "The deplorable history of the Catalans, from their first engaging in the war, to the time of their reduction. With the motives, declarations, and engagements, on which they first took arms. The letters, treaties, &c. Relating thereto". 1714.
- ^ de la Cierva, Ricardo (1981). Historia general de España: Llegada y apogeo de los Borbones. Planeta. p. 78. ISBN 8485753003.
- ^ Preston, Paul (2011). The Spanish Holocaust. Base. p. 63. ISBN 978-84-15267-23-2.
- ^ a b c Aracil et al., Mundo actual 273
- ^ Manent, Albert; Crexell, Joan (1988). Bibliografia catalana dels anys més difícils (1939-1943). Barcelona: Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, S.A. p. 14. ISBN 8472029379.
- ^ Solé, Villarroya, repressió 217
- ^ Pujol Berché, Mercè (2013). "Política lingüística: lengua, cultura e identidad, el ejemplo de Cataluña". Amnis. doi:10.4000/amnis.2061. ISSN 1764-7193.
- ^ "Actuación diferente del PP en Cataluña y Andalucía". El País. 2 July 2007. Retrieved 22 May 2024.
- ^ Canela, Joan; Zaballa, Bel; Carrera, Mar; Rovira i Elisenda Laborda, Elisenda Rovira; Laborda, Elisenda (2017-03-20). "El prejudici fet notícia. Estudi Observatori del discurs d'odi als mitjans de comunicació.Estudi 2016-2017" (PDF). Grup de Periodistes Ramon Barnils (in Catalan). Barcelona.
- ^ Salvador, Xavier (2019-09-08). "Los nombres clave de 'Dolça Catalunya'" (in Spanish). Crónica Global. Retrieved 2022-07-25.
- ^ "'Dolça Catalunya': de la sátira al nacionalismo a la "agitación política radical"". Metrópoli Abierta (in Spanish). 2019-09-08. Retrieved 2022-07-25.
- ^ Conde, Macarena Hernández; García, Manuel Fernández (2019-03-22). "Partidos emergentes de la ultraderecha: ¿fake news, fake outsiders? Vox y la web Caso Aislado en las elecciones andaluzas de 2018". Teknokultura. Revista de Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales (in Spanish). 16 (1): 33–53. doi:10.5209/TEKN.63113. ISSN 1549-2230. S2CID 199318451.
Bibliography[edit]
- Aracil Martí, Rafael; Oliver i Puigdomènech, Joan; Segura i Mas, Antoni (1998). El mundo actual. De la Segunda Guerra Mundial a nuestros días (in Spanish). Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona. ISBN 978-8483380062.
- Solé i Sabaté, Josep Maria; Villarroya i Font, Joan (1993). Cronologia de la repressió de la llengua i la cultura catalanes (1936-1975) (in Catalan). Curial. ISBN 9788472569577.
- Baydal, Vicent; Palomo, Cristian (2020). Pseudohistòria contra Catalunya. De l'espanyolisme a la Nova Història. Vic: Ed. Eumo. ISBN 978-84-9766-689-3.
