Scorched language policy
Enric Sòria
On 21 January the termination of Catalunya Ràdio broadcasts
into the Valencian Country (País Valencià) added insult to the injury as the Catalan
TV3 has been banned and the local TV and Radio Canal 9 were both shut down. In
the words of Vicent Climent’s, spokesperson for the Vice-chancellors of
Valencian universities, as of today “there is no audiovisual broadcaster,
whether public or private, covering the whole of the country’s territory
broadcasting in our own language”. This is a very serious matter. Apart from a handful
of municipal broadcasters, in a very short time the language of the Valencian
people has lost its presence in the most influential mainstream media, radio
and TV.
The Deputy Leader of the Valencian Government (Generalitat),
José Císcar, has claimed his government has nothing against Catalunya Ràdio, but
that it is against illegal broadcasting – that is, against the signal being
received here in the País Valencià. The illegality occurs mainly because the
government has for decades done their best to make it illegal, as they did with
TV3, by hindering any possible sensible solution to the issue. However, there
are at present about 300 radio stations in the País Valencià in either an
illegal status or a legal loophole, yet none of them have been silenced. No
leniency has been shown to Catalunya Ràdio. Mr Císcar also claimed that radio
stations in the Valencian language can obviously exist in the País Valencià only,
where the language is spoken. By the same token, if Spain is the country where
Spanish is spoken, Latin American books, films and TV series should have been
banned, as it is not possible for them to be in the very same language as that
spoken by Spaniards. When it is about the Spanish world, the Popular Party know
perfectly well that borders and states are one thing, but languages are
another. But accepting the fact that Catalans and Balearics speak the language
spoken by Valencians, just like a denizen of, say, Teulada in Alacant? NO WAY!
One feels such arguments are but examples taken straight out of the Bad-Faith
Book – which in José Císcar’s case is not at all impossible – and the issue
here has been to switch our own language off the radio.
Doubtful arguments were proffered in the case of Canal 9,
too. The Generalitat Premier himself,
Alberto Fabra, asserted it was necessary to close down the broadcaster, in
order to avoid shutting down schools. Yet schools have been closed down all the
same, most particularly those schools that offered tuition in Valencian. That
is to say: no TV, no radio, and increasingly less education in the local
language. This is the way our government complies with the constitutional
mandate of rendering special respect and protection to the native languages in
every autonomous community. For a very long time now, the kind of respect and
protection the Generalitat renders the local language has by far no
correspondence elsewhere in Spain. That is why our country is the only one
where the use of the local language keeps decreasing. Just the opposite of what
is happening to our language in Catalonia or the Balearic Islands (or in Galicia,
the Basque Country and Navarre with their respective local languages). It is
here and only here where the language is evidently becoming an endangered
language; this situation is absolutely the government’s doing. But recently,
the mistreatment that the language of the Valencian people suffers at the hands
of our own institutions has worsened. It must also be pointed out that the
Popular Party has recently begun a process whereby the Balearic Islands are
fast being deprived of the common language, using the very same methods we are
accustomed to here, and also in the area Aragon where our language is spoken –
where, it needs to be reminded, our language has been officially reduced to a
miserable acronym.
Thus, it is necessary to ask ourselves what our language has
done to these people. Why do they have this fixation with the language, to the
extent that they have obliterated it from the audiovisual map of the country
and seem intent on wiping it out from schools and elsewhere? There are those
who suspect this hastened campaign of de-valencianising
the country is a reaction against the growth of the Catalan push for
sovereignty. Once the language has been eradicated, the separatist virus will
also be neutralised. It is not unthinkable that something like this might be
the case (with these people, one must not discard any options). While we have
been speaking Valencian for centuries, it is evident that the pro-independence option
amongst us has been supported by a negligible minority. Moreover, the
marginalisation, suppression and the various endeavours to achieve the
eradication of the language occurred much earlier than these recent political
trends. There has to be something deeper to the contempt and fierce dislike
they show for our language. Why does it annoy them so much? A possible explanation
is that, in the notion of Spain these people have had their brains engraved with
– an idea diametrically opposed to the Swiss model – languages that according
to the Constitution deserve respect and protection should in fact not exist at
all, and the sooner they become extinct, the better. One language, one nation. This
is the idea they have in their mugs. The Valencian branch has proven it can out-Herod
Herod; it must be acknowledged that their tenacity and efficiency are
extraordinary. They don’t need the language, and therefore they stifle it.
