"catalanophobic" also it's your own damn fault for hosting illegal referenda
wow sorry for doing an “illegal” referendum in 2017 which apparently justifies the systematical erasure of our culture and language for centuries.
Obviously the Count Duke of Olivares was just planning ahead for the referendum when he called to “work and think with secret council to reduce these kingdoms that form Spain, to turn them to the style and laws of Castile with not one difference”. in1624.
Remeber the words of Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), one of the most important Spanish writers of all times: “While there’s one remaining Catalan in Catalonia, and stones in the deserted fields, we shall have enemies and war”.
King Felipe IV in 1712, when ordered the corregidores (Castilian ruler in their colonies) of Catalonia to “take the highest care in introducing the Castilian language", the Drecretos de Nueva Planta, done from 1701 to 1719, when Spain banned Catalan being spoken in public, books to be printed in Catalan, made obligatory corporal punishment for children who were heard speaking Catalan in school, eliminated all Catalan people in the administration and replace them with Castillian (Spaniard) governors, closed all universities in Catalonia except for Cervera which was directly controlled by the Spanish government, etc. Not even only in institutions, theatre plays, dances, and songs in Catalan were banned and persecuted too (specific law published in 1799).
And remember the Quintana Plan from 1821 and the Colomade Plan from 1825, persecuting and punishing even more Catalan at school? And these laws never stopped, they’ve been coming, each one stronger than the one before or just to reminds us that we’re still invaded, for centuries. Like the royal edict in 1837 that forced all teachers to impose corporal punishment to children who were heard speaking Catalan and also forced students to denounce their classmates to the teacher if they heard them speak Catalan. Or the Moyano Law from 1846.
Even in cementeries you banned us! 1838: royal edict that no epitaphs can be written in Catalan.
And when the telephone was invented, what was one of the first laws made about it? Yep, you guessed it! To ban the Catalan language from being used on phone (law from 1899). And later, in 1961, they also banned Catalan from being written in telegraphs.
And in 1931, Manuel Azaña (president of the Second Republic of Spain) said “A person I know assures me that it is a law of Spanish history the necessity to bomb Barcelona every fifty years. The system of Philip V was unfair and harsh but solid and convenient. It has worked for two hundred years”.
And when they banned the jocs florals (a poetry competition, which was banned for the sole fact that it was an element of Catalan culture) in 1902, the elimination of l’Estatut d’Autonomia in 1938, the banning (yet again) of Catalan from being used in public in the areas occupied by the Francoists since 1936, the words of Franco that said (in 1939) “We want the unity of Spain to be absolute, with only one language, Spanish, and only one personality, the Spanish one”, and once again destroyed all street signs, newspapers, magazines, and other public displays of Catalan and replaced them by Spanish ones.In the same year they also started more rigurous control in factory workers and even in prisons to stop anyone from speaking Catalan or doing anything related to Catalan culture. Even sardanes, our traditional dance, was banned! And still in 1939, Spain made a law prohiiting to consider Catalan even as your second language, teachers and professors (such asBel·larmí Rodríguez i Arias) were arrested for having spoken in Catalan at class, and the banning of Catalan names. Just names. You can’t be called by your name anymore if it’s not in Spanish (my grandma, who was named Llibertat, had to change her name to María de la Encarnación).
And do you remember the “Cara al sol” (the anthem of the Francoist regime)? It includes the line “Catalan, Jew, and renegade, you will pay for have you have done!”.
And the words of Manuel Fraga (Spanish politician) in 1961: “Catalonia was occupied by Philip IV, Philip V, was bombed by the general Espartero and we occupied it in 1939 and we are willing to occupy it as many times as it is necessary and for that I am willing to pick up my rifle again”.
Oh and after the dictatorship supposedly ended in 1975, Catalan is legal to be spoken again but still looked down upon, and the government uses every opportunity they can to reduce the moments where we can use it.
From 1976 to 2008 more than 149 Royal Decrees and other normatives have been published making it mandatory to label all products in Spanish, even those only sold in Catalan/Basque/Galician-speaking areas. And 1986: Sentence 83/1986 of the Constitutional Tribunal against the Law of Linguistic Normalisation in Catalonia, which wanted to use Catalan in official acts of the Catalan government, officially use the Catalan names of places in Catalonia instead of their Spanish translations (except in Val d’Aran, where the Occitan name would be used).
And the massive jailing and repression against Catalan activists in 1992 during the Olympic Games Barcelona.
And in 2012 the Supreme Tribunal of Spain declared that Catalan must not be the main language of education in Catalonia, and that it must have the “same” importance as Spanish.
Also in 2012, the Spanish minister of education said in congress “our interest is to turn Catalan kids into Spanish kids.”
These are just some things, not even half of it. I will link you to a few posts, so you can learn some history. Here is a list of laws prohibiting the Catalan language from the 16th to the 19th century, and here’s 20th and 21st centuries. And here is some of the signs that used to hanup in classrooms.
So yeah, as you said, catalanophobia is our fault for organising a referendum. All this centuries of systematical oppression and erasure were just planning ahead. And yet did not succeed, we voted.
DON’T BLAME US FOR YOUR IMPERIALISM.
