Intense campaign by Catalan separatists

Press, 4 December 1985, Page 20

Intense campaign by Catalan separatists

By

LUIS CARLINO,

of Reuter, in Bacelona, Spain

Banned for nearly four decades under General Franco, Catalan is rapidly regaining lost ground in a revival of nationalist fervour which is rekindling a centuries-old fight by Catalonia for autonomy, from Madrid. The years after the dictator’s death, more than 60 per cent of the region’s six million people speak the ancient language, which is related to Spanish, Italian, and Provencal French. The Generalitat, Catalonia’s nationalist-controlled autonomous Government, is making full use of 1979 home-rule statutes to enforce bilingualism, a principle supported by all political parties, including Spain’s ruling Socialists. The process is not without its rough edges, however. Separatists are waying an aggressive campaign to impose Catalan as the region’s only language, in spite of the facts that those born here of Catalan parents are outnumbered by Spanishspeaking immigrants and their children. Non-Catalan civil servants and teachers are resisting what they see as excessive linguistic zeal, and the Generalitat’s controversial policy to Catalanise schools has been challenged before Spain’s Supreme Court. Antoni Badio i Margarit, rector of Barcelona University, said he was optimistic for the future of Catalan, whose literary tradition dates back to the Middle Ages, in spite of “so many difficulties that sometimes we wonder whether it will survive.” Catalan was now an official language, the Generalitat was in control of education and all-Ca-talan television channel drew a

wide audience, he said. The promotion of Catalan in public administration and schools — under a 1983 law, Catalan is taught in all primary and secondary schools — has met stiff resistance from sectors of the Spanishspeaking population. Some 15 per cent of schools are all-Catalan, teaching Spanish separately, and a Madrid-born lawyer has challenged the mandatory teaching of some subjects in Catalan in a five-year legal battle to be settled by Spain’s Supreme Court this month. Esteban Gomez Rovira, who has already obtained compensation from the court for a Catalan school’s failure to ensure his children’s right to be taught in Spanish, told Reuter tha the expected an earlier ruling of unconstitutionality to be upheld. He said his stand had sparked a campaign of harassment by nationalists which had turned into death threats after he had agreed to represent a group of Spanishspeaking civil servants suing the Generalitat for discrimination. In September, two guerrillas of the tiny Terra Lliure (Free Land) separatist group held his children at gunpoint in his flat and planted a bombwhich failed to explode. He said Catalan Separatists were fighting a subtle version of the guerrilla war launched 17 years ago by Basque radicals. “The idea here is to chase out people who think like me. Terra Lliure cannot plant bombs properly, but they’ll learn.” Radical nationalists agree that armed struggle is unlikely to take hold among the practical Catalans — Mediterranean merchants, industrialists, and small farmers.

Their tactic is to pressure the established political parties in what they hope will be a gradual move towards a “national liberation front,” says Angel Colom i Colom. “Those who do not love this country will either have a very rough time or will have to leave, because they will be treated as invaders.”