Language in Spain

Language is always a hugely defining feature for both individuals and groups. Language defines and blurs ethnic and national boundaries. Language brings people together and keeps them apart. And in Spain, language is goddamn complicated. Officially, Spain's solo national language is Castilian Spanish, but in reality Castellano shares that pedestal with Galician, Basque, and Catalan, plus a whole gang of regional dialects.

In this way linguistic and dialectical differences exemplify the regional identities and nationalist/separatist movements within the country. Under Franco's severely nationalist regime there were many efforts to crush the languages competing with Castellano. In fact, the Catalonians have spent most of the time since Franco's death trying to make Catalan a universally used language in the region. In this way, language is a function of identity in the would-be separatist regions of Spain. Language is one of the most frequently cited arguments by Catalan and Basque separatist movements. (Interestingly, it could be argued that the Catalan language with its dramatically apparent similarities to Castellano proves a level of similarity between Catalonia and the rest of Spain while the complete lack of shared roots between Castellano and Basque highlights just how separately the two peoples have developed. Does this mean that Basque separatist movements are more justified than Catalonian separatist movements? Not so much, mostly because I would feel antsy about ranking levels of justification for peoples' identities. As an outsider, really not my call. However it is interesting to note that when Spain was drafting a constitution during their transition into democratic governance Catalans served on the committee that wrote the constitution while the Basques refused to take part in it. But that's a story for another post.) However, only about 30-some% of Catalonians speak Catalan as their first language. They are actually pretty severely outnumbered by native Spanish speakers. 

How does this happen? How does a region that very vocally doesn't even see itself as a part of Spain end up with a majority of its citizens speaking Spanish at home? Because their economy is booming. Just like in the US, industry and manufacturing in Spain have always been based in the north. Interestingly (and probably not coincidentally) so have the two main separatist groups, the Catalans and the Basques, but again, that's an issue for a separate post. Catalonia not only does most of the country's manufacturing, it also sells most of the goods it manufactures back to the other regions of Spain, meaning that economy it hasn't suffered nearly as much as the rest of the country during the global financial crisis. And where there is prosperity in a struggling country, where there are jobs in a country with staggering unemployment, there will be immigrants. Some from other countries, but far more from other parts of Spain. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon; there has been a massive intake of domestic immigrants into Catalonia since they started to re-industrialize the region in the 1950s and 60s. One of the largest contributors to this population flood has always been Andalusia, home to Granada, temporary home to me.

That's how we get to our next category of language as social division. Andalusia has a very distinct accent. It's almost more of a slurring of words actually, with native Andalusians dropping consonants and sometimes whole syllables, whittling conjugated verbs down to their roots, and generally confusing the crap out of Americans who think they speak Spanish (read: me). However, the Andalusian accent is something of a joke in the rest of Spain; to be told that you speak like an Andalusian is a few steps south of a compliment. It's treated much like a thick Southern drawl in the United States. It denotes a region that has struggled economically for a long, long time. In this way language is also a function of class, which shouldn't be surprising because language is a function of class everywhere. Americans can tell rich kids who went to east coast prep schools from down-home country Southerners, from kids who come from the projects, from the Mid-Westerners with their near-Canadian levels of courtesy. These linguistic differences aren't just about geography, they're judgments of class and of education and by extension, often they are judgments of character. I have seen this is the US and I get this sinking feeling that travelling more in Spain will bring me back to these judgments. 

That's all for now. Until next time, 

Isabel