2023-09-22 04:03:54
After several days of confrontation, Congress approved this Thursday the use of co-official languages in the chamber. The vote was rejected by PP and Vox, in a controversial measure that can be considered historic and that did not even occur in the Second Republic. A change in the position of the PSOE, which in the last legislature defended that Spanish, the common language of all Spaniards, was the only language that should be used in the Lower House. However, the need for support among the pro-independence parties for his investiture has finally made Pedro Sánchez change his mind.
From now on, Catalan, Basque and Galician can be used, thus overturning the amendments proposed by the right and granting these languages the same status as Spanish in the chamber. It has been achieved with a very small margin of votes, with 180 in favor and 170 against. The controversy, however, is not new. In 1931, when the Republic was established in Spain, it was one of the topics most debated by deputies, although the result was different. “The amendment that proposes the mandatory use of Spanish and the prohibition of imposing regional languages is accepted,” ABC reported on September 19 of that year.
Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, historic nationalist leader, tried to convince Congress to allow the use of the languages in which he and many other deputies had been raised. “Language, more than a means of expression, is a source of art, it is the vehicle of the original soul of a people and, above all, it is in itself a great work of art that no one should destroy,” he argued. None of those languages, of course, was Spanish. However, his proposal was rejected under the speech of an immovable Miguel de Unamuno, deputy of the Republican-Socialist Conjunction (CRS), an electoral coalition created by the republican parties and the PSOE during the reign of Alfonso XIII.
According to Wenceslao Fernández Flórez in one of his famous parliamentary chronicles, Castelao insisted on his idea: «Of all the problems of the region, none is as important as the recognition of the language, which is why he asks that [el gallego] be declared as Spanish as Castilian. He adds that Galicians want to know Spanish perfectly, thinking about emigration, but taking into account that they must aspire for Galicia to stop being a breeding ground for emigrants. As the son of villagers, he went to school with a piece of corn bread for all his food. Then he did not know Spanish and that is why he feels such a tender evocation of Galician. He asks the Chamber not to forget the Galician language in the drafting of the new constitution.
The constitutions
In the 19th century, Spain had been governed by five constitutions, but none of them addressed the linguistic issue. At the same time, however, the demand for the other languages of Spain, in addition to Spanish, was taking place within civil society. That trend was a consequence of the romantic movement that had emerged at the beginning of the 18th century and had spread throughout Europe. One of its foundations, formulated by Hegel, was that of the volksgeist, the “spirit of the people”, for whom languages were a fundamental expression. Catalanism, in fact, can be considered a late romantic movement that assumed nationalist demands at the beginning of the 19th century.
At the end of that same century, the ‘Renaixença’ (Renaissance) also emerged, another cultural movement with bourgeois roots that tried to instill in the Catalans the existence of a language associated with their own culture and history, which were in danger of extinction. For his followers, Catalonia was a different nation that had to be preserved from outside pollution, in a feeling that was not exclusive to that region. Sabino Arana wrote that “Basque is dying” with the Spanish invasion, and that this would bring about the disappearance of the purity of the Basque race. AND Prat de la Riba He added that the Catalan language was the historical link of their nation, and that they could not tolerate Spanish replacing it. His political struggle, therefore, involved banishing Spanish.
All these issues were not discussed in Congress until the aforementioned sessions of the Republican Congress, where everything concerning the common language and vernacular languages was discussed for the first time. In the 1931 Constitution it was made clear that Spanish was the “official language”, and no one could be required to know or use any regional language. Initially, this article four did not appear in the draft law of July 1931, but when the president of the Generalitat, Francesc Macià, approved a draft Statute that established the official status of the Catalan language in Catalonia and the use of Spanish Only in their relations with the central government did they change their minds.
Unamuno
Only at that time was the aforementioned article introduced to preserve Spanish throughout Spain, in a bitter debate that took place on September 17 and 18. One of the greatest defenders of this idea was Unamuno, who declared in Congress that he did not believe in the “co-official nature” of regional languages and that “knowledge of these should not be imposed on anyone.” “We are undoubtedly at the heart of national unity,” the writer warned on this matter.
The discussions in the Lower House focused on three topics: guaranteeing the knowledge and use of Spanish throughout the territory, establishing the term “Spanish language” and not “Castilian language”, to underline its true national character, and preventing the imposition of those regional languages, just as the author of ‘Niebla’ said. That is to say, a Catalan, a Basque or a Galician could not be forced to speak in the local language, wherever they were, because that was the key to national unity. Unamuno also defined Basque as a “conglomerate of dialects” that not even his four grandparents could understand.
Under this belief, the State set out to guarantee teaching in Spanish in Catalonia. According to the writer, it was the best way to defend the homeland and the rights of all citizens, regardless of the region in which they were born. Allowing the opposite was “cultural suicide” and the Republic had to prevent it. That is why they included article 50, which established the obligation for Spanish to be “the teaching instrument in all primary and secondary education centers in the autonomous regions.” In this sense, even two deputies from the radical left of Lerroux’s party wanted to add the adjective “common” to strengthen the unity of the country based on the language and, likewise, “justify the official and spiritual primacy of Castilian.”
Ramón Menéndez Pidal also got on this bandwagon, when he published in ‘El Sol’ a few months earlier an article titled ‘Federating is something similar to divorcing’. The philologist stated that the “young regional generations”, the nationalists, considered “language as a weapon and not as an instrument.” This surprised him because with the Republic there was no longer “linguistic oppression” and nationalists could express themselves freely. However, the nationalists’ obsession was to increase “the differential fact” with language, violating the naturalness of bilingualism.
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