Posted on 08/24/2005 4:16:52 PM PDT by livius
And you think our Senators and Reps are bad. BTW, Joan, pronounced Joh-áhn, is Catalan for Juan or John:
According to El Mundo [a left-wing but unpredictable Spanish paper], the assault took place on August 14th and was lead by the Representative from Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya [leftist Catalan nationalist partý[, Joan Puig, pictured in the photo on the right, carrying his Parliamentary ID card in his mouth. They confronted the guards at the home of the editor of El Mundo, breaking the arm of one of them...Joan Puig and his companions are claiming Congressional immunity to avoid prosecution.
(Excerpt) Read more at hazteoir.org ...
HazteOir means "Make Yourself Heard," and is an anti-ZP conservative Catholic forum that has lots of good stuff.
For those who are puzzled - probably most of you - the leftists are wading up the creek with their IDs in their mouths because the editor of El Mundo had criticized Zapatero! The strange thing is that El Mundo is a highly personal paper that seems to sort of hit where it hits - in other words, it's unpredictable. While its editor is quite left-wing, it is actually critical of all parties. This is clearly a no-no.
In any case, the pictures are priceless. Maybe Cindy should try this.
Ping a ling to some funny photos for Hispanophiles.
Those whacky liberals!
Too true. They felt empowered when ZP took over, but they obviously haven't gotten everything they wanted - yet. So now it's time to put pressure on anybody who disagrees with them.
Interestingly enough, I have many friends in BCN who have always been what I think of as "romantic nationalists" - and are now quite disturbed by the progress of aggressive nationalism. Jordi Pujol used it to get what he wanted, and knew when to draw the line - these folks don't.
Anyway, I think we should all chip in and buy them a gym membership if they plan to be photographed shirtless again...
At least that porky parliamentarian was wearing a bathing suit, so the photographer and security guards weren't struck blind when he climbed out of the creek.
Cute, aren't they?
Yes, it could have been worse....
BTW, I have always loved the books that mention Mahón and Spain the best.
I am actually quite fond of Catalunya, and it was a great pleasure to see it mentioned, in any way, in the O'Brian books. Very sad that they've gone from the respectable - if not the sublime - to the ridiculous, despite their glorious national anthem, Els Segadors. Go here to listen:
http://www10.gencat.net/gencat/binaris/himne_totsegad_tcm32-266.mp3
Go here for text:
http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/catala/segadors.htm
My Spanish is rusty, why are they so upset with the editor?
Those are funny photos.
They're upset simply because the paper doesn't always support the leftist Zapatero.
Zapatero governs with the support of the nationalist parties. This is very typical of a parliamentary system, where the major parties rarely get enough votes to govern on their own and have to reach agreements with splinter parties. Aznar genearlly had to do the same when he and his Conservative party were in charge.
However, most of these nationalist parties are extremely leftwing, so now that a paper is not supporting their golden boy, Zapatero, who is busy breaking up Spain and willing to give them whatever they want, they're extremely annoyed.
The photos are priceless. I'm picturing Cindy Sheehan and various flaky pot-bellied female-breasted Senators, wading up the creek (if there is one) to Bush's ranch. Before they get shot by the Secret Service, at least...
Here's a side-by-side of the Catalan anthem (written in the late 19th century and based on a traditional tune). The minor point that la Gran Cataluña would be nothing without Spain, and in fact would have been swallowed by Napoleon, who destroyed much of the province during his assualt, is clearly lost on them. But romantic nationalism eats your brain, if you're thinking of making it a program of governance:
Catalunya triomfant,
tornarà a ser rica i plena.
Endarrera aquesta gent
tan ufana i tan superba.
Catalonia triumphant
Will once again be rich and bountiful,
Drive them back, these people
So conceited and so arrogant.
Bon colp de falç,
Bon colp de falç,
Defensors de la terra!
Bon colp de falç!
A good blow with the sickle,
A good blow with the sickle,
Defenders of the land!
A good blow with the sickle!
Ara és hora, segadors.
Ara és hora d'estar alerta.
Per quan vingui un altre juny
esmolem ben bé les eines.
Now is the time, reapers,
Now is the time to be alert.
For when another June comes,
Let us sharpen our tools well.
Bon colp de falç,
Bon colp de falç,
Defensors de la terra!
Bon colp de falç!
A good blow with the sickle,
A good blow with the sickle,
Defenders of the land!
A good blow with the sickle!
Que tremoli l'enemic
en veient la nostra ensenya.
Com fem caure espigues d'or,
quan convé seguem cadenes.
Let the enemy tremble
To see our banner.
Just as we cut down stalks of wheat,
When the time is right, chains will follow.
Bon colp de falç,
Bon colp de falç,
Defensors de la terra!
Bon colp de falç!
A good blow with the sickle,
A good blow with the sickle,
Defenders of the land!
A good blow with the sickle!
I can hobble along in Romance languages with the assistance of my Latin . . . I once had a hysterically funny conversation with an Italian client who had a little English (which is more than I have of Italian) - we wound up speaking mostly in Latin . . . who knew that would ever be useful?
Catalan has many points of similarity to Italian, Portuguese and Gallego in its structure, but obviously also shares some words (not structure) with French, probably because of proximity.
The best explanation I have heard was that Rome, not long before the fall of the Empire, had settled many retired Roman soldiers in the coastal region of Northern Spain/Southern France. Any soldier who survived the very long conscription got his equivalent of 40 acres and a mule there.
By that time, the earlier Latin that was the foundation of Spanish - because Spain was an important and early Roman colony - had changed considerably in Rome itself. The Visigoths swept through in the midst of all this, but for some reason, they had virtually no effect on the development of Spanish, even in areas that were dominated by them for centuries.
However, about the time the newer Latin might have consolidated its influence, the Muslims invaded, thus paralyzing the change in the south and center of Spain. (Arabic languages had only a lexical effect on Spanish, and never affected the grammar in any way.) Hence, you had an infusion of a later Latin that was free to develop in Northern Spain and the border regions, but not in the center and south, which were the administrative/intellectual centers of Spain and hence became the source of modern Spanish.
Incidentally, the modern language that is closest to Latin is Romanian, which has a large number of Slavic words in its lexicon (just as Spanish has Arabic nouns) but little or no Slavic grammatical influence. This is because Romania (Dacia) was very isolated.
Also, Catalan had a significant effect on the Sicilian dialect, because Spain (mostly through the Aragonese) controlled southern Italy for long enough to make a difference. Pretty complicated, no?
In general all latin languages are quite similar and if we talk easy and slow we can understand each other easily. In my business meetings with italians for instance, they speak italian and I speak catalan, no problem. Inside this, catalan is more similar to italian and french than spanish and spanish is more similar to portuguese than catalan but you only have to take a map to understand why, it's a proximity matter.
All that you say about our story is true but I think you miss one of the main points that makes that we have 4 offical languages in the country plus a couple more that are not official and gradually dissapearing, and that is geography. In the days when these languages splitted from Latin (let's say between V and X centuries) natural barriers were not easily overpassed and they had a great influence in wars and economical relationships.
Muslims, for instance, only were able to go through the mountains in the north and east of Madrid from time to time and never permanently.
If you take a map of Spain you'll see that there are some areas that are isolated from the rest by rows of mountains (Galicia, Asturias, Vasques, Catalunya&Aragon and the northern part of Castilla). The part of Spain that remained free of muslims was divided in several kingdoms that had an exact coincidence with these areas, each one of these kingdoms had its own language derived from latin (excepting vasq which has unknown origin) and that linguistic structure has remained until now.
The concept of Spain didn't appear until the queen of Castilla (Isabel) got married to the king of Catalunya&Aragon (Fernando) in XV century. They were still 2 countries for a while but with a common management. Isabel&Fernando made 3 actions that were basic in conforming nowadays Spain, they recovered the rest of the Peninsula from the muslims, they funded Columbus expedition to find America and they expulsed all non catholic population from Spain (that's why they are AKA as the Catholic Kings). With time these 2 kingdoms "melted" in one and gradually invaded or made agreements of submission with the northern kingdoms.
In those days Castilla was the "big daddy" mainly because it controlled all the business with America and because Isabel had much more character than Fernando. Catalunya only got the relevant position that it has now in XIX and XX centuries because it was the first region of Spain in going into the industrial revolution and because of all the business we made along WW I&II with the contendants (once again geographical position was a big issue).
Anyway all the controversy between Catalunya and the rest of Spain came from a war between 2 kings that pretended the trone of Spain (I think in XVIII century but not sure now) we supported the wrong guy and he punished us after the war by erasing all the particularities of the territory. On the other hand the vasques supported the right guy (one of the ancestors of Juan Carlos, Felipe V) and that's why they still have different laws than the rest of the country, because the king at the end of the war granted them the privilige of keeping their traditions and laws.
In general, all these areas that used to be countries still have a strong sense of community (which for me is good) and a share of the population who aim for independence again (which for me is stupid). My guess is that this is more a romantic feeling of "hey, we are different and nicer" than a ideology. I mean they'd have no or few support if someone tries to take it into reality. I call it "ghost independentism".
"They're upset simply because the paper doesn't always support the leftist Zapatero."
That's not exactly true, these people only support and care for themselves. The real reason was that El Mundo was critic about the local management in Mallorca that belongs now to this party, ERC (that stands for Republican leftists of Catalunya, where do you go with that name?).
This party has always been a "clown party" with no or few representation in the congress, neither in the catalan nor in the spanish one. They are used to make these kind of clowny things to look for appearance in the media. (it works, they are in FR now!!!)
I never worry about them because they are a bungee party, I mean their extremism and naive reasoning give them a push when they are down because some people see them as outsiders but once they get some chairs in parlament and have to play in real world their lack of coherent ideology and their lack of sense of state shows off and then loose votes and go down, and again and again.
They are not in fact associated with Zapatero since they only have a few congressmen in the Spanish Congress thus ZP doesn't need them. Anyway ZP has to be kind with them because even though they also have a short numbers of chairs in Catalan congress they hold the Catalan President Maragall who belongs to PSC the Catalan Socialist party that is confederated with ZP party PSOE, the Socialist party of Spain. So the real chain is, ZP needs Maragall who needs ERC. But there's no sympathy at all from ERC to ZP since they openly hate anything that smells to Spain.
PSC on its side is not nacionalist but claims for a federal state similar to that in the US.
The catalan party that actually has more influence is Covergencia&Unió that is now in a very low moment but they hold the presidency of Catalunya for almost 20 years. They are considered conservative and called pseudo-nacionalist because they try to encourage the sense of catalan community but they don't support independence. They have even had a real influence in spanish congress in the past when their chairs were the ones that Gonzalez missed to be president of Spain.
The main nacionalist parties of Galicia (BNG) and vasques (PNV) are also conservative.
This is a scent of Spain, in number most of the nacionalist parties are leftist but in influence the ones that count are conservative.
Sorry, Livius, for the long posts but I know you are interested in all these things of Spain.
My daughter just returned from a home stay in Spain - she was living in Galicia, in Vigo (and now she has a smattering of Gallegan to confuse her Spanish, on top of the influence of a Mexican and an Argentine teacher!)
She had a wonderful time and loved her family - finished her visit with a week on the Camino de Santiago and loved every step.
Despite the politics (and that's just as true of the U.S.) it's a great country!
Thank you for your nice words.
Galicians are lovely people and the food there is just smashing. I suppose she has got some pounds because their food, besides being delicious, is a social interaction so most of the times you can't refuse it because you would offend them. It's their way of welcoming someone, feed him.
If you are an adult, home made alcoholic drinks (orujo) are also a must.
It's true that in the areas with 2 languages the spanish spoken there is all mixed with spanish versions of local words, as well as the opposite case.
The good part is that she has now a little bit of portuguese because gallego is very similar to it. Everyone here understand mexican and argentinian words and accent but it is always taken as a low class way of talking.
You are right about what you say of politics. On my side I go to the US as much as I can and enjoy every second there despite what administration is on duty.
It is hard to be pro american in Spain, on the good side is that all the persons that are against it... have never been there!!! I have seen spectacular changes of mind in people who hated the US and after spending some time there tell to me (in private of course) that they loved it and can't wait to go back.
Shouldn't we start a foundation to promote crossed travel of our teenagers? I think that would improve a lot the official relations between our countries in the future.
If you or your daughter ever want to visit all the rest of corners of Spain you are more than welcome.
LOL! Great way of putting it.
Never thought I'd long for the days of Jordi Pujol, but you can certainly see what an adept politician he was. He managed to get the most mileage out of "nationalism," that is, the most benefit for Catalunya, without shooting himself in the foot and looking like he really wanted independence. The Catalan mainstream party has not been doing very well since Pujols retired.
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