Last Friday there was in the city of La Coruña a demostration against the imposition of any language. In Galicia we speak two pretty latin languages, Spanish and Galician. Galician was taking as a minor language, but with the beginning of our current democracy in Spain, there is an effort to revitalize and to impulse its use as a mayor language. And it is good.
What is the problem then? The problem is that the nationalists in the local Parliament are using the Galician language as political weapon. So they try to force to everybody to use it as part of their “one language, one nation”. Of course, the first rejection against it comes from the common people that has been speaking Galician all their life without rules. Languages belong to the people that speak them, they do not belong the parties.
The position of the demonstrators [Mesa por la Libertad Lingüistica, es] defending the freedom to choose speaking and learning in every language -Spanish or Galician- was respectable as the opposite. But some people doesn’t think that. Some extreme nationalist groups raged against the demonstrators. They fighted with the police, then they waited to the end of the meeting. Some of those cowards surrounded two young boys, then they beat them up.
And it happened in the center of the city where nobody is a foreigner…
Updated, Feb. 14th: After a new attack in Santiago against right-wing Maria San Gil in the University of Santiago, tomorrow there will be another gathering in La Coruña for freedom of language. Those extremist are in a mistake if think they can scare to everybody that doesn’t agree with them.
Tsao … just a small remark: the lawthat those people were protesting against (decreto 124/2007) was not a nationalist-only issue; it was and is supported by both parties in the government (PSdeG and BNG).
Otherwise I wasn’t in the demonstrations but I obviously don’t agree with any kind of acts of violence, no matter where they come from.
Violence is indefesible, whether commited by right wing fascists/falangists, Galician nationalists, or rascists. But that is a different issue. The current campaign to prevent the “imposition” of Galician in Galicia is nonsense. GALICIA IS BILINGUAL, everyone should speak or learn BOTH. Galician speakers understand that they must learn Spanish and THEY DO. Many Spanish speakers in Galicia do not see why they must learn Galician. Anxo Quintana (the nationalist leader) and his family are openly bilingual and the BNG has no “one nation, one language” policy.
In contrast, a large majority of Spanish speakers object to any presense of the Galician language in Galicia. Galician IS imposed in Galicia, but Spanish IS EVEN MORE SO. I live in England, were English is “imposed” even though it is not the mother tongue of millions of people who have had to go to school here. My idea of bilingualism is people being able to speak both languages — these protestors’ idea of bilingualism is divisive (in the way it is in Belgium) and nothing more than linguistic apartheid or, even worse, liguistic homicide (i.e., allowing Galician to die as a language).
Also, given that the predecessor and opposition to the current government in Galicia (i.e., Manuel Fraga) served as a minister under Franco, who sent over 20,000 troops to fights alongside the Nazi’s, (the only such rellic in anyt form of western European government for over 10 years) I find it quite ironic that you you should refer to the BNG-PSG coalition as “Nazionalista”… how imaginative…
Berto: you’re right, not only nationalist supported the law,. Even the opposite (PP) supported during a while the same law, in fact they support similar laws in Valencia .
Xoan Ingles: I think freedom must be over language policies. I defend the right to choose. If you want to learn only Spanish, do it. If you want to learn only Galician, do it. If you want to learn both languages (this is my choice), do it. Without imposition. If politicians hear to the population they would see rejection against those impositions.
Both: I’m not calling NAZIonalist to BNG-PSG coalition. I’m calling nazionalist to the extreme groups (Agir, Briga and so) that act with violence to defend those ideas.
Tsao: yeah, I know who you were calling nazi-onalists
I don’t like them either.
I didn’t mean that you were calling BNG-PSdG nazi-onalists, I just wanted to point out that if this new law (which I admit I haven’t read completely yet) is wrong then _all_ parties must be blamed for supporting it.
It’s true that BNG is probably the party that promotes most of the language-related laws, but it’s imho unfair to blame only them for every law as if the other parties didn’t have anything to do with those laws.
The truth is that this is the first time ever that we have a nationalist party in the government, but there have been people with very similar complaints as the ones from the “Mesa por la Libertad Linguistica” since the 80s, and those were laws approved during governments of PPdeG.
“I defend the right to choose.” Well, then freedom of choice should be applicable to all subjects at school, not just languages. And school shouldn’t even be compusolry either
If it were for the kids, many of them wouldn’t study some of the subjects. “If I’m going to be an engineer, why do I have to learn Latin or the works of Garcilaso, Pondal and Descartes?”. I’m sure you’ve heard things like that many times
Now, if we agree that basic education should be compulsory then imho that includes languages. At least the official ones. And then of course _freedom_ for everyone to speak their preferred language in their daily life.
But while I want freedom for people to speak in any language I don’t want a country where a citizen can say “Please speak to me in Galician because I didn’t chose to learn Spanish and I don’t understand it very well”. I’m sure that almost no one would want that. But I don’t want that situation for any official language.
So I want an education system that guarantees basic knowledge of maths, history, philosophy, etc., and also guarantees that kids are fluent in all the official languages. After that, let everyone talk in the language they want.
You and me agree in how a good education must be. But everybody doesn’t agree. Some people want a practical, specialist education rather a generalist one. I think it’s an error the current extermination of Garcilaso, Latin and Philosophy. The problem is that there is only one choice.
About the languages, as I wrote I think it’s good to learn Galician and Spanish. But it’s not a good Idea to force to study most of matters in a language that is not your usual language. It happened before with the Spanish and it happens now with Galician. The main reason is I’m seeing with the children I teach: they have serous problems with most of subjects that they are forced to study in a language they don’t speak well and they don’t use out of the school. So they fall behind in Maths or Science. The ideal is to be able to choose the main language to study and to learn the other gradually.