She tells it in an interview:
The first Catalan teacher she had was "very Catalanist". Later she "was really blown away by the sense of identity". "Maybe I was looking for that", so she stayed. They liked her, she liked it. "One of the things that I felt when I lived there was that it wasn't Spain, Spain was someplace else." (That's also what Matthew Tree always says.)
Our resident proto-fascist Toni Strubell picks up on it.
But then, how strange, in his next blog entry he laments "we have to live [here] feeling every day more like strangers in our own house."
Who's to blame? "Spanish immigrants", he says. And the Fifth Column (let's not forget its Spanish origin). And Gargamel.
thanks for the feedback
ReplyDeletei have visited some of the links on the right. predominately the pro catalan blogs in order to better understand the fascist right in Catalonia. In politically correct England, Strubell and Rahola would be bedfellows of the BNP. i exaggerate a bit.
i have to give it to them though, the cataloonies as you call them are very good at presenting themselves as the voice of catalonia. look at how Barcelona football club is used to promote cataloonism etc. it appears they will use every trick in the book to try and present catalonia as a Nation that has been victimised disproportionately by the central government in Spain. whats worse is that in many articles written about catalonia, it apperas they have managed to convince alot of foreign journalists that catalans are culturally, ideologically and to an extent linguistically uniform. i give them 5 out of 5 for marketing. man the 'aryan' race are a minority but dominate the political landscape. fair dues to them, they are intellectually more advanced than the average descendant of the poor spanish speaking migrant.
historically speaking, they do have some grievances but so do the andalusians who suffered under the latifundia system etc. funnily enough the Basques had a priviledged place in late medieval Spanish society as being of noble blood untainted by the moors.
with so much mixing in Spain as evinced by the mixture of basque, catalan, castilian etc surnames in all the autonomous communities you just ask yourself did Franco fuck them up so much that some people cant let go of the past. Franco was not representative of all Spaniards, neither was he a castilian. they all need a history lesson mate.
with all due respect, if the descendants of andalusian, extremaduran, murcian migrants etc do not speak up for their rights, the Catalan fourth reich will make their children spit on them. i have already witnessed it. a crazy 'cataloonie' vehemently villifying Spain when his own ancestry is Andalusian. I mean thats what I cant comprehend. i can partially understand ethnic Catalans being nationalistic, hey they know they are up against a wall and that if they dont fight dirty adieu catalan language and identity. However, the inferiority complex thats evident in the 'new catalans' is sad and reminds me of how influential catalofascism is in catalonia. talk about brainwashing.
sorry for the rant and politically incorrect analogies.
anonimouno
Yeah, man you're being so un-pc.
ReplyDeleteAs to the immigrants, in-country ones and from abroad, each person decides where and what to belong to. If someone of Andalusian descent wants to be a Catalan I see no problem. It's not weird. It's not the result of brainwashing. Catalans are a nation. Catalonia is not.
Legally, every Spanish citizen living in Catalonia is a Catalan, and everybody has the choice to also be a Catalan culturally/ethnically/nationally. Or not. When this distinction gets lost and people get forced into categories by others that's when their rights are getting trampled on.
This is not yet fascist. And the fascist right in Catalonia is the Plataforma per Catalunya. But there's also a left that uses the ways of fascism here. And then there's the large and many times loonie centre, not fascist. All in all it's not an unusual picture, except that, as I said, the given conditions are being used by the oligarchy to keep and strengthen their grip on power.
And that, also, is quite a known phenomenon, conceptually not afar from the abuse of religion in, say, Saudi Arabia.
Oh, why didn't I point you to it before. Have a look at helpcatalonia.blogspot.com. Here you find a fine and quite exhaustive collection of Catalan nationalist views.
ReplyDeletePlease be aware of several things: a large portion of every text misrepresents the facts. Secondly, this is not what ordinary people think, they are much more moderate in their general attitude. But thirdly, ordinary people are being misinformed, which is where the danger lies.
Outlets such as La Vanguardia (or El Mundo, to name one in Madrid) have a mission, and it's not to inform the public. The whole Spanish press is partisan to such a degree that it endangers democracy.
i have already been to the helpcatalonia blog and i could not help but laugh. have you seen the 'catalan concentration camps' lol. historical innaccuracy at its best.
Deletei agree with you that people can choose to identify themselves as catalan on the basis of jus soli. however, in the case of catalonia, the choice seems to be catalan and nothing else. this seems to foster a feeling that people who are not solely of catalan ethnicity/ancestry cannot have links to their ancestral heritage if they want to be good catalans. for example, a unionist ethnic catalan will never be called a xarnego. he might be called a traitor. however, a unionist new catalan whose family has been in catalonia for two generations or less will be called a xarnego by nationalist catalans. are there two classes of catalans?
i agree that if one wholeheartedly embraces the catalan language and immerses themselves in all things 'catalan', then the mainstream nationalists will accept them as one of their own. but is it right that they are pressured by these nationalist forces? They should have a choice to retain their ethnic identity and not be afraid to celebrate their ethnic origins. many players of ethnic minority backgrounds in France, Holland, Germany and Britain choosing to play for countries that they have blood links with. This is because they are not made to feel ashamed of their ethnic identity and even feel proud to call themselves Algerians, Turkish, Senegalese, Indian, Pakistani etc.
English is my first language and England is my home. but i dont identify myself as English because i believe language or birth do not make you who you are. i have ties to the land but not to the people. i have more history with a nomad in the sahara. It would be an insult to the English to claim that I am as English as a native of the Black Country whose ancestors helped forged the English nation. when i say English i am referring to the descendants of the predominately Germanic Old English. England was not always England, it might have been Cymru before ze Germans and Vikings came plundering. However, one cannot deny that there is an English ethnic identity that was forged by the Old Anglo Saxon settlers. mind you the paddies, welsh and scots have in recent history contributed to the English gene pool but the percentage surely aint as bad as catalunya. a british identity seems more apt for these island folk. you could fly a pregnant woman to Greenland to give birth and teach the child innuit but that does not mean her child is innuit, innit. blood links matter in my humble opinion.
apart from the linguistic argument one cannot say that there is much of a distinct catalan ethnic identity/nation that is ethnically different to other Spaniards. With people of a third world background, there are obvious cultural, religious (muslims) differences and little blood ties. protect the catalan language but the bullshit about modern catalans being a distinct nation like France is mediocre. too much immigration and crossbreeding (we are animals too and can crossbreed) has changed the linguistic and ethnic make up of catalonia.
anonimouno
sorry France was a bad example. france has a loose national identity. Ireland is a better example. at least the three million or so paddies despite not speaking gaelic are predominately of irish stock.
ReplyDeleteanonimouno
The point with identity here is extremist discourse and in how far it has entered mainstream thinking. It would take a book to shed light on this.
ReplyDeleteYet to make things brief, as befits for a blog, I'd say that even though there is some noticeable degree of spillover, this is a free country. Criticism is certainly still due, and I think we can observe a backlash against ethno-centrism.
By the by, I use "ethnic" without any racial connotations. Blood-ties play the least role in the current debate. However, some ethno-centrist arguments find their equivalence in racist ones of other societies.