What Rhymes with Catalonia?

A guest column from Peter Harvey on parallels between Catalonia, Scotland and Yorkshire

"IndyRef - Catalonia & Scotland 01" by byronv2 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Today’s column is a guest post from Peter Harvey, an English-language teacher who has lived in Barcelona for almost 40 years. He takes a keen interest in Spanish and international history, as well as political affairs. He describes this article as “somewhat Whiggish.” You can check out the books he has written for non-native speakers of English here.

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” as Mark Twain is reputed to have said. That is true not only when events rhyme with others that occurred earlier but also with contemporaneous events in different places. For completely different reasons, the royal houses of Spain and Great Britain had a change of dynasty at the beginning of the 18th century, following a dynastic war in Spain and the extinction of the Protestant Stuart line in Britain.

The Bourbons and Hanoverians respectively set about modernising their countries but the advance of the liberal values of the Enlightenment encountered absolutist opposition in both cases: Carlism in 19th-century Spain and Jacobite Toryism in 18th-century Britain, each linked to the fate of a particular part of the country. The strength of Carlism lay in Catalonia and the Basque Country, while the Jacobites’ stronghold was in Scotland.

With the Act of Union in 1707 the Scottish Parliament voted by a large majority to abolish itself. The new government in what was then called Great Britain imposed its modernising authority, breaking the feudal power of the medieval warlords who held sway in the north and west of Scotland, introducing modern enlightened systems of land management and governance, and allowing Scottish merchant shipping to trade with the English colonies in America. Something similar happened in Catalonia in 1714, with what was known as the Nueva Planta.

Catalonia had been a part of Spain since the union of the Crowns of Aragon and Castile by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469, and Don Quixote had no doubt that he was in the land of King Philip III of Spain when he visited Barcelona in 1616, but this measure incorporated the Crown of Aragon fully into a unitary, centralised kingdom, modernising the administration by, for example, imposing Spanish rather than Latin as the language of government (which Catalan had never been). Catalan traders and industrialists went on to do very well for themselves in Cuba.

In both cases the nationalists date their nostalgic grievances from these events, although the truth is that the opening of trade and other economic advances enabled these two lands to make extraordinary progress. Catalonia developed industry, unlike most of Spain, and the Catalan textile manufacturers set up a system of internal tariffs and monopoly that guaranteed them a protected internal Spanish market that voluntarily excluded itself from the free (and thus cheaper) market for Manchester cloth. Scotland had a vigorous Enlightenment: Adam Smith and David Hume stand out in philosophy, while Scotland’s contributions to science and engineering are numerous.

For these reasons a parallel is often made between the cases of Catalonia and Scotland in discussions of nationalism and possible independence. However, while the Scottish National Party (SNP) certainly gave its open support to the sedition and coup d’état in Catalonia in 2017, there are differences that are also often ignored.

Firstly, and leaving aside romantic tartan-worship, old-style Tory Jacobitism is a spent force in Scottish politics; a return to the religious absolutism of the House of Stuart is not on anyone’s political agenda. In Catalonia however, Carlism is very much a living force in the shape of ultra-conservative Catholicism. This was seen in the Spanish Civil War and explicitly again in 2017.

Secondly, Scotland has no relevant language issue. This is not to ignore the Gaelic language or Scots English, but to recognise that the political importance of these languages is negligible compared with that of Catalan.

Moreover, in Catalonia an ethnic minority of people, identifiable by their language and their surnames, govern the rest. As Marta Ferrusola, wife of former Catalan political boss Jordi Pujol, once put it, “Sometimes, when my children were playing in the park, they would come up to me and say, ‘I can’t play today Mum because they’re all Castilians.’” When asked if she was bothered that Andalusia-born José Montilla had become premier of Catalonia, she replied, “An Andalusian who has kept his name in its Spanish form, yes, a lot,” which is ironic given that the Catalan translation of Montilla (which means “hill”) would be Pujol – her own husband’s surname!

Catalonia led Spain’s industrialisation, with many people coming from poorer parts of the country to find work, just as the Irish and others flocked to the North of England. They worked in the factories and mills and produced wealth for the Catalan bourgeoisie who owned those businesses. But even to this day power remains in the hands of those old families, whose names are almost the only ones to be found at the top of politics and business: Puigdemont, Pujol, Ferrusola, Colau, Forcadell, Turull, Forn etc.

In Catalonia as a whole the 20 most common names are Spanish: they end in -ez like Hernández and Pérez as well as García (itself a Basque name) but very few of them are to be found at the top. Of the 16 ministers of the Catalan government, only two do not have traditional “Cathar” names as they are sometimes known. The people whose families originate from other parts of Spain, and who overwhelmingly speak Spanish, feel discriminated against.

Despite the parallels that are made with Scotland various reasons, including Scotland’s unquestionable openness to outsiders, make it impossible to transfer this situation to a Scottish context. Nevertheless, an analogy – purely imaginary of course – can be made with Yorkshire. It is as if power in that county were in the firm grip of the Arkwrights, Oldroyds, Sutcliffes and Hardakers while the Joneses, Robertsons, Murphys and Patels are scarcely visible. And a good knowledge of Yorkshire dialect is essential for employment.

Let there be no doubt: Catalan independence is driven from the top by the wealthy classes, and this elite controls the language. In open defiance of court rulings that require the Spanish language to be used for teaching, the Catalan government persists in imposing Catalan as the only language used in schools in any situation, including informal interactions outside the classroom. As a result Catalan-speaking children are at an advantage, being taught in their own language, while Spanish-speaking children grow up speaking neither language properly. Moreover, schools routinely display pro-independence propaganda in a way that would be unthinkable in Scotland.

Catalan is the only language used in government communications, including important and sensitive information from the Catalan health service. Businesses are affected too. Whatever the owners and managers may think about language, commercial communications from private businesses such as banks are routinely made in Catalan with no option for Spanish. The reason is obvious: using Spanish would prejudice relations with a government that holds the whip hand in issuing licences and generally easing matters for the day-to-day operation of private business.

A qualification in Catalan is required for any public employment. Protectionism is hardwired into the Catalan upper class who became rich behind huge tariff walls on textiles. They can’t do that now so they use language as a non-tariff barrier to employment of non-Catalans.

The print and online media are fed with direct cash subsidies (around EUR 3m this year in a population of 7m people) as well as juicy government advertising and publicity. Not surprisingly, they follow the government’s pro-independence line slavishly. Media that reject such subsidies in order to maintain their editorial independence are excluded from government publicity contracts.

Catalan TV (TV3) is funded directly out of taxation. It gobbles up EUR 245m of public money and employs 2,356 people. It is used shamelessly as a propaganda station. It works with a loyalty that makes the old Soviet Pravda and Radio Moscow look like positive models of pluralism.

Shopkeepers and other business-owners are required to label their businesses in Catalan at least. In practice that means Catalan only and hefty fines are applied to even the most humble tradesman who puts up a shop sign that is not in Catalan – unless it’s in Chinese or Urdu. The main thing is that it must not be in Spanish.

To return to Scotland, there’s another historical rhyme that may be made, albeit a thoroughly hypothetical one. Scotland obviously has no territorial ambitions outside its own clearly defined historical borders, but the Catalan nationalists claim four separate parts of Spain as well as Catalonia proper, parts of France and Italy, and all of Andorra.

This can perhaps be more easily understood as if an independent Scotland should include Northumberland, Berwick-upon-Tweed, County Antrim, the Isle of Man, the Faroe Islands and the southern part of Norway. This claimed territory, which is shown on Catalan TV weather maps, is based on nothing but a language criterion; these are the areas where the Catalan language is spoken. Vladimir Putin once expressed a similar view, equating language unity with political unity.

No analogy can be precise in history or politics. Scotland may rhyme with Catalonia or it may just be blank verse. Yorkshire may have something to contribute to the debate. But whatever the situation, what is going on in relations between Catalonia and the rest of Spain is woefully misunderstood – and deliberately misrepresented – in Europe and other parts of the world.

Many thanks to Peter for a great column. Since this article deals with Catalonia, I am turning off the comments for the week. See you next Saturday!

Further Reading

The Celts: A Sceptical History by Simon Jenkins (Rupert’s suggestion)

Ten Catalan separatist myths, debunked (Peter’s first suggestion)

An article from 2018 on the ethnocentric views of the leading Catalan nationalists (Peter’s second suggestion)

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