Catalan languague

The evolution and varying fortunes of Catalan have been shaped by historical and political factors. At an early stage in its development the close links between the Christian counts of Barcelona and the Carolingian empire brought it into contact with Provençal, the literary language of the Catalan troubadours; the union of the Catalan counts with the crown of Aragon determined its independence from Castile and Castilian; the defeat of King Pere I while defending his Albigensian subjects at the battle of Muret in 1213 put an end to any thoughts of Catalan expansion north of the Pyrenees; and the struggle with Castile over the reconquest of Spain from the Moors led Catalan to spread south to Murcia and from there across the Mediterranean to Majorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Naples, etc. The unification of the Spanish crown under Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon and the growth of a monolithic Spanish empire − centralist and authoritarian − caused the decline in Catalan culture from the 16th century onwards. There ensued a long period of decadence during which the language was restricted to private use among the popular classes and occasional use by the Church. It took the initiative of the 19th-century Romantics to revitalize the language. It was not by chance that the name of Renaixença (rebirth) was given to the movement that had such a tremendous cultural impact and restored linguistic and national pride to both speakers and writers of Catalan. Three outstanding literary figures − the poet Jacint Verdaguer (1845-1902), the dramatist Àngel Guimerà (1847-1924) and the novelist Narcís Oller (1846-1930) − jointly brought Catalan culture back to life.

Later, certain areas of political freedom were gradually restored (home rule for Catalonia under the Mancomunitat of 1914-25, and the Statute of Autonomy, 1932-39) and the economy benefited from a belated industrial revolution, success as a trading nation and the financial advantages of non-intervention in World War I to stage a massive recovery. All this meant that Catalan language and literature were virtually restored to normal for a few years. This is seen in the spelling reform of the Normes ortogràfiques of 1908 and the work of Pompeu Fabra, who unified and codified the language in his Gramàtica of 1923, and Diccionari general de la llengua catalana of 1932. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the dictatorship of General Franco (1939-75) put an end to this incipient normalization by implementing a policy of cultural genocide that sent literary activity underground: people were forbidden to speak the Catalan language in public, it was no longer taught in schools or universities, and books in Catalan or translations into the language were banned.

It was only in the 1960s, against a background of steadfast resistance and the gradual dismantling of the Franco dictatorship under the pressure of economic growth − stemming largely from the foreign currency brought in by Spanish migrant workers in Europe and the advent of mass tourism − that fresh public attempts were made to normalize the Catalan language and literature.

With the return of democracy to Spain, Catalonia’s new Statute of Autonomy (1979) established the co-officiality of Catalan and Castilian and the status of Catalan as Catalonia’s own original language. From that date Catalan became the norm in public life (outside the law, the police and the armed forces). Two key developments were the use of Catalan in education (from primary to university level) as the means of instruction across the curriculum, and the creation of public TV channels in Catalan.

Current social status

The social position held by Catalan in present-day Catalonia differs considerably from that of Galician in Spain, Breton in France, or Welsh in Great Britain. Catalan is recognized as the main language of a rich, prosperous area, an economic and political driving force within Spain. For the large numbers of immigrant workers who came to Catalonia between the 1940s and the 1960s from other parts of Spain, especially from the poor rural areas of the south, language was equated with social identity and naturalization.

Wherever it is spoken, Catalan is seen as a key element of upward mobility. The importance of this situation would be hard to understand were it not for another purely objective feature, also unique to Catalan: its undoubted linguistic similarity in morphological, lexical and stylistic terms to Castilian. So those Spanish-speakers who wish to learn it and integrate into Catalan-speaking society are not faced with an insurmountable barrier, as can be the case for a speaker of Spanish or English confronted with Basque, or Irish or Welsh.

At present anyone living in Catalonia with a basic level of education has few difficulties in understanding Catalan (officially, the number of people who understand it is more than 95 per cent). They are less likely, however, to use it socially, since even though speakers of Castilian may have a good passive knowledge of Catalan there is little reason for them not to go ahead and speak in Castilian: all Catalan speakers understand it and historical circumstances have accustomed them to replying in Castilian (the level of knowledge is 100 per cent).