MONEY for old rope

One un­usual piece of local news that doesn’t seem to have made it into the for­eign media is the gift that the par­ties which cur­rently hold sway in An­dalu­sia have de­cided to make to Va­len­cia and Cat­alo­nia: one hun­dred thou­sand euros for An­dalu­sian res­i­dents or their de­scen­dants in the lat­ter com­mu­ni­ties who have ’suf­fered the ef­fects of lin­guis­tic im­mer­sion’, a term re­fer­ring to the use of Cata­lan (which in Va­len­cia they call Va­len­cian) as the main lan­guage in schools. Now, this is odd, to put it mildly. For one thing, in the País Va­lencià par­ents can choose be­tween three ed­u­ca­tional mod­els, only one of which in­volves lin­guis­tic im­mer­sion. In Cat­alo­nia, on the other hand, all state ed­u­ca­tion is in Cata­lan. In both cases, full knowl­edge of Span­ish is guar­an­teed and, as the teach­ers’ trade union USTEC never tires of point­ing out, in Cat­alo­nia is two points higher than the av­er­age for the whole of Spain. In other words, every­one who comes out of the Va­len­cian and Cata­lan school sys­tems at 16 or 18 is bilin­gual, at the very least. But what makes the An­dalu­sian of­fer­ing even odder is that nearly all first gen­er­a­tion An­dalu­sians ar­rived in Va­len­cia and Cat­alo­nia be­tween the mid-six­ties and mid-sev­en­ties – when Cata­lan was banned in schools – and are now se­nior cit­i­zens (or de­ceased). Many of them, by the way, began to learn Cata­lan when they re­tired, as I know from per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence when giv­ing talks at Cata­lan lan­guage cen­tres in towns like Hos­pi­talet de Llo­bre­gat, where many An­dalu­sians set­tled. Their de­scen­dants – the vast ma­jor­ity of ’An­dalu­sians’ in Cat­alo­nia – are de facto Cata­lans, and if they’re under 40 can speak, write and read Cata­lan and Span­ish with­out any prob­lems what­so­ever. What is more, know­ing both lan­guages is a plus for a whole va­ri­ety of jobs (in the media, in town coun­cils, in the ad­min­is­tra­tion…). So to de­prive peo­ple of Cata­lan – which is what would hap­pen if lin­guis­tic im­mer­sion were not manda­tory – is to give those who do speak it an un­fair ad­van­tage. Not to men­tion that non-speak­ers would also miss out on Cata­lan lan­guage TV pro­grammes, news­pa­pers, lit­er­a­ture, music, etc. And it goes with­out say­ing that any­one of An­dalu­sian de­scent who wishes to cel­e­brate their An­dalu­sian roots can do so freely, and not just at the Feria de Abril, the big An­dalu­sian fes­ti­val held every year in Barcelona: An­dalu­sian cul­ture is not il­le­gal or even frowned upon in ei­ther Va­len­cia or Cat­alo­nia, quite the op­po­site.

Of the three par­ties who have dreamed up the said hand­out, two form the coali­tion that gov­erns An­dalu­sia: the right-wing Pop­u­lar Party and Cit­i­zens (which is also right-wing but in­sists it isn’t). The third party, Vox, is not in power but has enough lever­age to make pacts with the gov­ern­ment which con­form to its own agenda, which is misog­y­nis­tic, racist, ul­tra­na­tion­al­ist, neo-Fran­coist and vis­cer­ally anti-Cata­lan.

At around the same time as the hand­out was de­clared, the in­cum­bent Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, pre­vented the most voted party in the re­cent mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions, the pro-in­de­pen­dence Cata­lan Re­pub­li­can Left, from tak­ing of­fice, by mak­ing a pact with both the union­ist, au­thor­i­tar­ian Cata­lan So­cial­ist Party and also with Manuel Valls, the for­mer prime min­is­ter of France who, dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, was the front man for none other than Cit­i­zens, the party that, in An­dalu­sia, makes pacts with the fas­cists of Vox. Ms Colau was put under ex­tra­or­di­nary pres­sure – not least from Valls – to make this cu­ri­ous pact (dur­ing a live radio in­ter­view she broke down in tears when the sub­ject was men­tioned). As for Valls, no one quite knows how his cam­paign, in­clud­ing a €20,000 monthly stipend for him­self, was fi­nanced. Faites vos jeux.