Catalonia first, Spain second

Press, 27 April 1984, Page 13

Catalonia first, Spain second

From the National Geographic News Service

Freed from the repression of nearly 40 years under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, able to use their native language once more, and with their 800-year-old governing body restored to authority, the six million residents of the autonomous region of Catalonia are enjoying what one of them calls “the sweetest liberation in Spain.” The liberation is especially sweet because it comes after a period in which Catalans had only a few major symbols — the Barcelona soccer club, the 1000-year-old monastery of Montserrat — by which to preserve their cultural identity. Yet they persevered, cherishing their language as a unifying force, and now those who live where Mediterranean Spain meets France are luxuriating in their hard-won freedom. A trade centre since antiquity, Catalonia has periodically been ruled by outsiders, including Spain’s dominant Castilians, who excluded the port of Barcelona ’from the lucratijjp New World

trade until 1778. Still, the region thrived at a variety of times in a variety of ways, especially in the way Barcelona, in which half the Catalans live, took advantage of its Mediterranean setting. The Catalans are descendants of a succession of invading Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, and Visigoths. The Moors attempted to dominate Catalonia in the eighth century, but the Catalans held on, and by the late Middle Ages the counts of Catalonia had expanded their mercantile and military empire into Provence, Valencia, Sardinia, Sicily, and Greece. “The tide began to turn against Catalonia in 1469 when Isabella of Castile married Ferdinand of Aragon and Catalonia,” says Randall Peffer. “Gradually the Catalan nation slipped under the control of Spanish monarchs from the Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties. The land lost its last vestiges of independence Jwhen King Philip V

of Spain vanquished the Catalan forces in 1714.”

Peffer, a teacher at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, spent nine months in Barcelona for the “School Year Abroad.” He writes that the Catalans chafed under autocratic kings and military leaders for two centuries. A short-lived republic was proclaimed in 1931, but the bloody Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 led to its downfall, and Franco’s Nationalists took'control of all of Spain. Franco outlawed the Catalan language and folk traditions, intent on destroying the strong regionalism that has always divided Spain. But the Catalans maintained their identity, singing forbidden songs and chanting in the forbidden language at Barcelona soccer matches, drawing inspiration from a magazine of Catalan culture and history published by the monks of Montserrat. After Franco’s «eath in 1975, the

proud and free-spirited — that is the region’s greatest wealth. There are Catalan poets and writers, Catalan artists like the late Joan Miro, Catalan singers and musicians. And there is a basic level of earthy practicality in the way Catalans view the world, an attitude that helped see them through the hard centuries. Peffer tells of one Catalan who predicted that his people would one day rule the Western world: “We are like potatoes simply sitting here in this rich earth, not bothering anybody, taking care of business.” Ultimately, Peffer found, Catalans have “seny,” a word in their distinctive Romance tongue that also is spoken in the Balearic Islands, in Valencia, and in parts of Sardinia and southern France. “It describes a trait usual in Catalans,” a Catalan woman told Peffer. “When persons have seny, they are proper they know what they want, have good sense; some people think they are

Spanish government recognised Catalan as co-official with Spanish. The region was declared autonomous, and its traditional governing body — the Generalitat — was given the right to rule in regional matters of trade, primary education, industry, and housing. Autonomy has not solved all of Catalonia’s problems, Peffer says. Inflation stands at an annual rate of 12 per cent, unemployment at 22 per cent. The region’s workers and managers, after decades in which their factories were ruled by a faroff regime, are not used to taking pride in their work. Many factories face huge deficits. Still, the region’s economy is booming in many respects. There are canneries and agricultural cooperatives, chemical factories and oil refineries, and on the Costa Brava, a thriving tourist industry that attracts visitors from all over Europe. Apart from economics, however, it is the culture of Catalonia —