I wrote recently about the differences between the Spanish in Spain and the Catalan people from Catalonia; North Eastern Spain to the rest of you uninitiated. Today we personally hit upon the real differences and the direction in which these issues are heading.
When we first moved here, just north of the eastern Spanish border in France, it was 2004 and our trips just south of the border to places like La Junquera, Figueres and Girona were no trouble in that Arnold could communicate with the shop staff and locals in Castillian. The street signs, etc, were in Castillian (Spanish) as well. Today, in 2007, it is a completely different story.
Today, we ventured south to Girona to do some shopping and met with severe opposition to anything spoken in Spanish. No signs, street or otherwise, in any language other than Catalan. Shop staff ploughed ahead speaking to us in vociferous Catalan and ignoring any effort on our behalf to reply in Spanish. You could have been in any country anywhere other than Spain. And we were only 60 minutes from Barcelona. These days our Catalan guests are calling us on the phone and refusing to speak French, English or Spanish…this makes things very difficult as Catalan, as a language, is unknown outside of Catalonia itself. And you have to be ’local’ to recognise this.
Until 1975 the Catalan people were effectively banned from speaking their language and living their culture by the Franco regime. But they sure are making up for it now. And good on them in most ways. But I wonder just how things will be in a few short years time. I fear the Catalan people will have isolated themselves completely from the rest of Europe.
And those of us who live near and around them will have to learn yet another language in order to communicate with them. I think the sooner we humans realise what a barrier language can be, the better it will be for all of us to try to meet in the middle…somewhere.
Dare I suggest…english?…
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