This is a riff sparked by a talk I saw by Noam Chomsky on Book TV & also by my reading of David Graeber's *5000 Years of Debt.* Graeber is an anarchist & anthropologist and also an activist who participated in and chronicled the *Occupy* movement. Chomsky talked about Catalonia & how when the anarchists set up a fully functioning anarchist commune in Barcelona that *everybody* in the world turned on them in order to crush them--the social democrats of the Loyalist forces, the Stalinists, the fascists & the Western powers, to the extent they were involved. Orwell spoke glowingly of the commune in *Homage to Catalonia* even though he was with the Trotskyist forces at the time. The commune was quite successful in the few months it was allowed to live.
To get to sleep, I often spend a half-hour or so obsessively surfing my kindle for books about some topic that captured my interest during the day & I came across a book by Matthew Tree about Catalonia and its current drive for independence. Tree is a Englishman, but a 26-year resident of Barcelona who speaks fluent Catalan. (I mean, I wound up staying up even later to get into the book). Catalonia already has its own parliament and its own president although it is clearly still part of the Spanish state. The Catalonian government has nevertheless already called for full independence and is trying to get the Spanish prime minister to approve a referendum for independence (in Catalonia) for November of 2014.
According to Tree, there is a huge prejudice against Catalonians and the Catalan language in greater Spain. It's analogous to anti-semitism in pre-WWII Austria where it was said that you can't be a true Austrian unless you're at least a little anti-semitic. It 's like that in Spain with respect to Catalonians according to Tree and other Catalan writers. Spanish publishers usually refuse to publish books written in Catalan unless they are translated into Spanish. Catalonians who visit in other parts of the country are often rudely confronted by Spanish speakers demanding that they speak Spanish, even if they are only speaking Catalan to other Catalonians who are with them. In fact, some Spaniards regard Catalans "as a bunch of Jews." According to Catalonians, the ancient kingdom of Catalan was as important or more important than Ferdnand and Isabella in driving the Moors out of Spain. Yet prior to that Catalonia was a relatively peaceful & tolerant place where Jews, Christians and Moors lived in relative harmony, where there was a kind of cultural syncretism where thinkers like Raymond Llul came up with a kind of semi-Christianized Kabbalah in an effort to reconcile the three religions. I believe also it was one of the stomping grounds of the troubadours.
But back to the present. In some ways, the differences in language seem slight. "Good day" in Spanish is "buenos dias," in Catalan it's "bon dia." Yet to my ear the latter has the kind of beauty I associate with the Italian language. Tree mentions that Catalonians sometimes pass themselves off as Italians to escape Spanish hostility.
According to the story in the link below, 74% of Catalonians want such a referendum to take place, although less than 50% say they want full independence. Hmm...I would be willing to bet there is a silent majority in there somewhere.
From here, according the observers I have read thus far, the Catalonians aspiration for independence look fully justified.
But I got to thinking. If you grant the legitimacy of Catalonian aspirations--and for that matter those of separatists in Wales & Scotland, what if significant number of Texans--or Southerners--truly revived their secessionist aspirations? It doesn't matter if such passions in the eyes of reasonable people are regarded as justified or not--they burn in the hearts of human beings any way.
I'm reasonably sure that's an unnecessary and baroque worry, but I sure as hell would hate to have to move to Vermont or Massachusetts in my *old* old age. I don't want to have to deal with putting chains on tires (merely a metaphor for the difficulties of Yankee winters and northern adversities in general).
And I wonder how the Basques and Galicians are doing.
R.
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/
