Posted on 03/27/2019 3:54:38 PM PDT by Twotone
If you follow international issues on the news or in social media, you might have heard that Spain is currently either existentially threatened by Catalan terrorists or led by fascist dictators. While the truth is far more complicated than these extremes imply, there is no denying that Spain is experiencing serious political unrest that could have profound consequences for the future of that country and for Europe in general.
On the one hand are the Catalan independentistes, who are fighting for their natural right to self-determination. On the other is most of the rest of the Spanish state (along with many Catalans who wish to remain in Spain), who are fighting for national sovereignty and the rule of law. (As you would expect, the extremes are dominated by people more driven by hate than ideology, but I’ll just deal with the ideas here.) The current three-month trial of pro-independence Catalans on charges of rebellion is only the most recent manifestation of a broader conflict that has been cooking (at times just a simmer and at others boiling over) for years. Several indepententista leaders have been in prison for over a year and are currently standing trial for rebellion. If convicted they could face up to twenty-five years in prison.
How did we get here?
Upon the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, the role of Catalonia in the new Spanish state briefly came into question. Some Catalans called for independence, but the vast majority of them voted in favor of the constitution of 1978, which clearly affirms the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation” and paved the way for a remarkable and mostly peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Once upon a time, there was the Kingdom of Aragon and the Kingdom of Castilla. With the marriage of Fernán e Isabel, these two became what is now modern Spain.
Both benefitted, and both benefit now from this arrangement. But the left hates it.
Catalan, btw, was a dying rural language that was revived by urban intellectuals who probably had no idea that it was going to be used this way. They just thought it would be fun and enhance their Spanishness (I have Catalan friends from the catalnista generation and they have all told me this.)
Also, some of the best writers in the Spanish language have been Catalans (or Basques). So getting rid of Spanish and having to invent a modern Catalan language, is like the Irish dumping English. In English, they were supreme, but now they write in a minor language that nobody reads and few can translate and nobody cares about. Of course, like Cataluña, the Irish have a huge Muslim population, ready to take up the slack...
Franco himself was from a region with its own dialect (Gallego), yet he still outlawed that in official business in education (he never tried to prohibit the use of dialects in general). He understood the regional dialects were a barrier to unity; Americans are learning the lessons of a common language today.
As for the “peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”, Franco himself was one of the most peaceful world leaders of his time. He avoided WWII, and his country enjoyed peace even through today. In the meantime, France fought the Indochina and Algeria wars, Britain fought the Mau Maus and the Malayan “emergency”, Portugal fought its colonial war (in three locations in Africa), and we fought Vietnam.
I read Orwell’s book. Couldn’t figure who the bad guys were. Was it wirth a bullet in the neck? He dies and there’s no 1984.
Orwell realized early on who the bad guys were, when the communists turned on the group he joined/supported. They killed many and their leaders, and he realized it was all a hoax - the “new boss” was the same as the “old boss”.
He was lucky to survive; enemies in front and behind...
Exactly.
Spain is a country of neighborhoods. If you're from two blocks in the wrong direction, you going to get whacked.
It's like Boston only worse.
And if he doesn’t go to Spain he fails to experience first hand the hypocrisy and tyranny of communist ideology. He lives and there’s no 1984.
In the mid ‘70s I worked for a short time in Ireland. That was just at the start of the Gaelic language movement. Most all I talked to thought it was a stupid move.
Fast forward to Catalan. We just finished the brilliant Netflix series called “If I hadn’t Met You”. We hate dubbed movies, so we listened in Catalan.
I “get by” in Spanish and am awful in French. My wife is fluent in Spanish and “gets by” in French. We were both pretty much lost for most of the movie and impressed the hell out of ourselves whenever we could pick out a Spanish or French phrase.
Good - just what we need - another patois. We’re already bombarded with French Creole in Florida.
I live in Florida, but in North Florida, where we have few Haitians.
Bizarrely enough, Gen. Georges Biassou, leader of the bloody and hideous Haitian rebellion, is buried in St Augustine. He had fled to the Dominican Republic after his bloody rebellion failed, and the Spanish took him in because they were being attacked by the French and hated the French and because they were afraid that Biassou would be disruptive to their own relationships with the African population. Many of the Africans were free and most could be, since the Spanish did not practice chattel slavery, as did the British. The French had technically been forbidden to practice chattel slavery, but they did.
So we had Haitian visitors come up all the time. They were always very nice and fun to meet because they arrived in wildly painted jitneys...but I felt bad for them. Between the normal corruption and dysfunctional Marxism of their country and the destruction the Clinton Foundation had brought in, these poor folks had no chance.
I’m reading Federico Jimenez De los Santos book, Memorias del Comunismo, which is completely alarming, because I think the same scenario is occurring now...not in Russia, not in Spain, but in the US.
I have friends who are Catalans (that is born there from families that can boast generations upon generations) who are being excluded from society because they speak Spanish in everyday life and appreciate the culture of their country, Spain. They also speak Catalan and are even left-wing...but obviously not enough to be PC. One friend who lives in an area targeted for having “espanolistas” (sorry for lack of diacritical...my new keyboard wouldn’t do it!) is very afraid, because the Spanish government is not strong enough to protect them and obviously the “Catalan government” doesn’t want to. And the Church is completely political, left wing and catalanista, so there’s no hope from that direction.
There are many similarities today in the US with what happened in Spain in the 1930s, Russia in the early 20th century, and France in the 1790s. The cultural and religious divides between urban and rural populations, the situation (in Spain) with ethnic separatist movements (though our unassimilated minorities don’t want secession - they want to rule without contributing, while Spain’s prominent ethnic groups - Catalans and Basques - were located in industrial centers), the destruction of tradition (not only removing the monarchy, but changing the flag and such), and the general acknowledgment all around that the status quo was unacceptable (in the case of the US today, leading to Trump’s election - while Hillary could barely squeak out a primary win against old communist - and extremist - Bernie Sanders).
Spain is a country with an even lower birthrate than us; those Catalans pretending they want independence will be extinct soon enough (seriously). For all their condescending attitudes towards Spain’s rural population, in the end they couldn’t feed themselves. Sarah Palin talked about the people who “grow our food and fight our wars” - and Catalonians are apparently above such things - and such people.
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