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Nov. 20th, 2003
Recently, there was an interesting article in the New York Times on Catalonia,"Catalonian Political Rivals Agree on Seeking Autonomy":
By DALE FUCHS
Published: November 16, 2003
MADRID, Nov. 15--Madrid, Spain's official capital, has government ministries and the headquarters of multinational corporations. Fashion-conscious Barcelona, a short train ride from the French border, calls itself the country's most "European" city and cultural heart. It is a longstanding rivalry.
But the regional elections on Sunday in Catalonia--Barcelona is the region's capital--have pushed the competition, usually confined to good-natured ribbing, to a new level. The two top candidates trying to help their respective parties win control of the regional Parliament have both campaigned on promises to break away from the political and financial orbit of the central government.
( Read more... )
Catalonia is, politically, an autonomous region of Spain. It is unique among all of these autonomous regions in that it is a nation, with a distinct history as a social and political entity stretching back to the 9th century, as the core of the late medieval Kingdom of Aragon and as historically one of the wealthiest regions of Spain. (The Basque Country of Spain was assembled from the disunited Basque Provinces after the transition from Franco's dictatorship.)
The Catalan language is very widely spoken in Europe; the Paisos catalans, centered on the modern autonomous region of Catalonia but including adjacent regions in Spain (Aragon, Balearic Islands, and Valencia regions), France (Roussillon, or North Catalonia) and even Italy (the Sardinian communtiy of Alghero), are home to almost 11 million people. The Catalan language is unique among the languages of stateless ethnolinguistic groups in Europe in that it is doing fairly well; Catalan might be fading, giving way to French or Spanish or Italian on the fringes of the Paisos catalans, but in the Autonomous Region of Catalonia the language seems to be doing quite well, with near-universal fluency in the language. The language might not be the home language of the majority of Catalonians, and national legislation requires that all Catalonians know Spanish; on the other hand, the past efforts of the Catalonian government (the Generalitat) to revive the Catalan language seem to have had some success, and Catalonia's current efforts to make Catalan the main language of immigrants.
As the Economist article "Europe's rebellious regions" explains, Catalonia under its post-Franco nationalist government has been strongly European, in the belief that the European Union could serve to encourage the regionalization of Europe generally and the federalization of Spain.
( Read the article. )
This has changed. This probably shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, for the regions of the current fifteen member-states of the European Union are distinct. The Länder of Germany and Austria fall in an entirely different category from the counties of England and the provinces of Sweden, and these are in turn different from the autonomous community of Spain and the regions of France. (The new member-states of the EU circa 2004 will be rather centralized.) Catalonia is distinct from all of these regions; in all of the rest of the European Union, it is probably most similar to Scotland. Catalonia has no parallels in post-Communist Europe, but in the 1980s its situation was most similar to that of the republics of the Socialist and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, particularly Slovenia and Croatia.
Catalonia, in short, is rather more than a simple region, being in fact a nation in the process of self-constitution. Only time will tell whether Catalonians will decide to take this process to what might once have seemed its inevitable conclusion in independence.
By DALE FUCHS
Published: November 16, 2003
MADRID, Nov. 15--Madrid, Spain's official capital, has government ministries and the headquarters of multinational corporations. Fashion-conscious Barcelona, a short train ride from the French border, calls itself the country's most "European" city and cultural heart. It is a longstanding rivalry.
But the regional elections on Sunday in Catalonia--Barcelona is the region's capital--have pushed the competition, usually confined to good-natured ribbing, to a new level. The two top candidates trying to help their respective parties win control of the regional Parliament have both campaigned on promises to break away from the political and financial orbit of the central government.
( Read more... )
Catalonia is, politically, an autonomous region of Spain. It is unique among all of these autonomous regions in that it is a nation, with a distinct history as a social and political entity stretching back to the 9th century, as the core of the late medieval Kingdom of Aragon and as historically one of the wealthiest regions of Spain. (The Basque Country of Spain was assembled from the disunited Basque Provinces after the transition from Franco's dictatorship.)
The Catalan language is very widely spoken in Europe; the Paisos catalans, centered on the modern autonomous region of Catalonia but including adjacent regions in Spain (Aragon, Balearic Islands, and Valencia regions), France (Roussillon, or North Catalonia) and even Italy (the Sardinian communtiy of Alghero), are home to almost 11 million people. The Catalan language is unique among the languages of stateless ethnolinguistic groups in Europe in that it is doing fairly well; Catalan might be fading, giving way to French or Spanish or Italian on the fringes of the Paisos catalans, but in the Autonomous Region of Catalonia the language seems to be doing quite well, with near-universal fluency in the language. The language might not be the home language of the majority of Catalonians, and national legislation requires that all Catalonians know Spanish; on the other hand, the past efforts of the Catalonian government (the Generalitat) to revive the Catalan language seem to have had some success, and Catalonia's current efforts to make Catalan the main language of immigrants.
As the Economist article "Europe's rebellious regions" explains, Catalonia under its post-Franco nationalist government has been strongly European, in the belief that the European Union could serve to encourage the regionalization of Europe generally and the federalization of Spain.
( Read the article. )
This has changed. This probably shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, for the regions of the current fifteen member-states of the European Union are distinct. The Länder of Germany and Austria fall in an entirely different category from the counties of England and the provinces of Sweden, and these are in turn different from the autonomous community of Spain and the regions of France. (The new member-states of the EU circa 2004 will be rather centralized.) Catalonia is distinct from all of these regions; in all of the rest of the European Union, it is probably most similar to Scotland. Catalonia has no parallels in post-Communist Europe, but in the 1980s its situation was most similar to that of the republics of the Socialist and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, particularly Slovenia and Croatia.
Catalonia, in short, is rather more than a simple region, being in fact a nation in the process of self-constitution. Only time will tell whether Catalonians will decide to take this process to what might once have seemed its inevitable conclusion in independence.