Tag Archives: Francisco Franco

Revisionist history: Catalan under the dictatorship

Catalonia, Politics, Spain, , , ,

“I never physically beat anybody and you can see film footage showing me not beating anybody!”
Peter Cook, Why Bother? “Prisoner of War”

Proving a negative can be rather tricky. As we all know, an absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence and so as epistemology shows us, anyone who states that x categorically does (or did) not exist holds the burden of proof.

The legend of how the Catalan language was treated during Franco’s dictatorship comes in two forms. The first and more widely subscribed to says that Catalan was effectively outlawed from public life, that people speaking Catalan in reception rooms and shops were often told that they should “Háblame en cristiano!”, and that it was only with the death of Franco and restoration of democracy that Catalan could be heard once again in the streets of Catalan towns and villages. The second, more recent version – we may call it a revisionist version because it is most certainly at odds with the first, received version – says that Catalan wasn’t repressed during the dictatorship at all. That books were published in Catalan, kids could speak Catalan in the school playground, official business was conducted in Catalan, that the Catalan language was valued and that the received wisdom of the first version was imposed after the restoration of democracy as part of Pujol’s infernal nation-building operation.

Proponents of both versions of this history bear the burden of proof, and both versions have some tricky questions that they need to answer. The question for me, as an outsider, is which version has the most convincing evidence.

It is clearly not enough to say simply that Catalan was outlawed during Franco’s dictatorship. This must be proven with facts. And there are facts that lend support to that claim. Throughout the dictatorship, but particularly in the early years, laws and regulations were established to reduce the presence of Catalan in public life almost to zero. It was no longer taught in schools. Civil servants were prevented from speaking Catalan at any time (whether in public buildings or not), under pain of instant dismissal. The Civil Governor of Barcelona asked the publishers of a Catalan language magazine “Do you really think we fought the war so that Catalan could return to public use?”. Telegrams couldn’t be sent in Catalan. A friend of mine was slapped in the face any time he and his friends spoke in Catalan in their Barcelona schoolyard. Kids had to be given Spanish language names (probably the source of the ‘Arturo Mas’ legend). People were fined for speaking Catalan on the telephone. Streets and squares were renamed in Spanish in every Catalan city, town and village.

But at the same time, other things happened. In the 1960s especially, Catalan culture started to grow in official acceptance. Children’s magazines were published in Catalan from 1961. They were even legal from 1968 onwards. Prizes were given for Catalan language books. Radio stations started to broadcast cultural or folkloric programmes in Catalan. Some schools (mainly either for the Catalan alta burgesia, or in distant villages) started to teach some Catalan language classes.

When you look at the evidence, it seems fair to say that in the early years of the dictatorship, there was widespread official repression of practically all use of the Catalan language in public life but that after a couple of decades in power, the regime rowed back somewhat from its initial position. Expression in Catalan never seems to have been wholly free under the dictatorship – but then it wasn’t really free in Spanish either. At the same time, there seems to have been a tacit message in the regime’s softening position on the language: that you may speak this language by the grace of our goodwill, and only for the purposes of cultural and folkloric expressions.

Of course, Catalan’s use never completely died out in the home which is why you’ll find plenty of people in their 50s and 60s here who can speak Catalan perfectly but are unable to write in anything but Castilian Spanish. But its absence from schools, particularly in the industrialized areas of Catalonia which welcomed hundreds of thousands of workers from other parts of Spain in the 50s, 60s and 70s, helped to guarantee that Catalan became a minority language and certainly one in decline. Excluding the regional language from the education system and pretty much all mass media left Catalan as a language of shepherds, fishermen, villagers, poets and die-hard patriots. But ideally not factory workers, bank managers or government officials. I can’t prove it but I get the feeling that the intention was not to waste any more time repressing Catalan but instead to leave it as a culturally interesting but politically non-threatening rump of a language. Not erased from history but on its way to being left there.

To me, claims that the Catalan language was completely outlawed during the dictatorship are problematic most of all because by failing to recognise that some Catalan was permitted, some of the time, and in limited contexts, they are easily challenged with a handful of books, poetry prizes and posters for the Orfeó Català. Exaggerating the crimes of the dictatorship is wrong, albeit understandable. The revisionist claim, on the other hand, strikes me as more pernicious because it seeks to deny that the language was repressed – an entirely insupportable claim. The facts that the revisionists cling to are facts. But they always remind me of that wonderful Peter Cook line at the top of this post, which was his character’s response to being accused of violence against the men under his command. Yes, there is evidence that Catalan wasn’t always repressed. That doesn’t mean that in general, and certainly in most professional, educational, civil and legal contexts, Catalan wasn’t effectively banned through much of the Franco dictatorship.

The revisionists have a place in this story, most of all to remind us that history can never really be black and white and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. But their narrative is wrong because at heart it seeks to diminish the harm done by the dictatorship to the people of Catalonia and the rest of Spain. I don’t doubt that now these revisionist myths are established, they will grow and mutate into fascinating new forms. How long before we hear that actually, if it wasn’t for Franco, Catalan would have died out? I expect my mysterious friends at Dolça Catalunya are already drafting that one.

And what about Catalan under the 2nd Republic? Now that’s another story….

State of alert: How the PSOE used Franco’s strike breaking tactics

Capital, Politics, Spain, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

[I intended to write this sooner but I’ve been rather knocked out with flu since Saturday.]

The press was full of it: on the evening of December 3rd, the Spanish military ‘took over’ air traffic control towers across Spain at the request of the government. Air traffic controllers (ATCs) had, we were told, abandoned their duties en masse, calling in sick in a wildcat strike that brought the ‘public infrastructure’ of the airports to a grinding halt. But once again, the story we were being told was a narrow and distorted version of events. One that omitted key details intentionally. So it was little wonder that Spanish workers fel little solidarity for the ATCs.

The truth is that the air traffic controllers strike of December 2010 was precipitated intentionally by an agressive PSOE government, and then dealt with by that same government using the weapons of Franco’s dictatorship.

Step one is always to demonise the strikers, removing the risk that solidarity poses.

  • We were told that ATCs had an average state-funded salary of €370,000. LIE. ATC salaries are paid out of airport levies. Last available figures point to an average salary of €138,000. Which sounds like a lot, but bear in mind that ATCs are held criminally responsible for mistakes, and the awful stress that this must put on people. There are plenty of other people who earn a lot more than ATCs but few with such a horribly stressful and injurious type of work. Spanish ATCs are among the lowest-paid in Europe.
  • We were told that ATCs phoned in sick, en masse, asking for more money. LIE. On December 3rd, the government announced plans to partially privatise Spain’s airports (the ‘public infrastructure’ that the government fought so hard to protect the very next day). Simultaneously, AENA (Spanish airports management agency) had been engaged in a policy of cancelling vacations, demanding that people ‘pay back’ sick leave. AENA also intentionally named fewer personnel than were necessary for rotas that week, knowing that the puente weekend would see increased air traffic. AENA, without question, intentionally precipitated the situation.
  • We were told that the ATCs operate a closed shop and keep numbers down in order to keep their pay up. LIE. AENA is responsible for all hiring. AENA has not announced public entrance procedures for four years.
  • We were told that ATCs carried out a strike. LIE. After AENA deliberately sabotaged air traffic control, delays were always going to happen. But AENA publicly claimed that ATCs had walked out. These false accusations led to verbal and physical attacks on ATCs.

So the stage was set for interior minister Alfredo Rubalcaba to deal a vicious blow against the ATCs. And that he did. On December 4th, he declared a ‘state of alert’ (you could also use the term ‘state of emergency’ but that lacks something of the nuance of the various ‘states’ Spain can be in, like alerta, excepción, etc). It was the first time in Spain’s current democracy that such a measure had been used. And unless you’d been here in the 60s and 70s, you might well think it was a pretty standard, if very grave, response to a crisis.

The truth is that the state of alert is a peculiar item of Spanish law that has its roots in Franco’s fascist dictatorship. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Franco’s government used the state of alert to smash strikes. It works by declaring all workers of a specific convenio (like metro drivers or, in this case, ATCs) as ‘mobilised’ military personnel. So you start the day an ATC and before you know it, you’re a military ATC with orders from military staff to attend work as and when they demand it. It doesn’t matter when your shift was supposed to start because the army can tell you to start when it wants you to. And if you fail to do so? Because you’ve just become a member of the military, failure to turn up for work on their command means that you are committing sedition. Mutiny. And anyone who does this is sent to court martial and can end up in a military prison for up to 7 years.

So the state of alert is a method controlling workers by bringing in the army. Thus, ATCs were forced to work at gunpoint in some Spanish airports.

The lessons here are clear. Firstly, whenever there’s a labour dispute, the last people to trust are (a) the government, (b) the management, and (c) the media. This should have been clear before but it bears repeating. Secondly, the failure of the general strike on September 29th had one major effect: as we warned, the government felt it could move on and get away with anything. Thirdly, the PSOE has once again displayed a flagrant disregard for workers’ rights. The state of alert has set a nasty new precedent. By breaking one of the last taboos of Spanish democracy (the army permitted to take command of civilian infrastructure and the militarisation of civilian staff), the PSOE has made Spain a less just, more dangerous country. Now the cat is out of the bag, we can only wait and see when the state of alert will next be used.

We’ve been warned by the PSOE not to undertake more strikes against its dismantling of Spain’s social system and public infrastructure. Now is the time for another general strike. This time, lets make sure it works.

Reference links:

http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2010/11/28/razones-atasco-acabado/623975.html

http://www.corrientemarxista.org/estado-espanol/9-estado-espanol/348-decretado-el-estado-de-alarma.html

Vatican: we heart fascists

Politics, Spain, , , , , , , ,

In an utterly unsurprising move, the Vatican has beatified 498 Roman Catholics who died ‘as martyrs’ in the Spanish Civil War. These men and women died at the hands of leftist (mostly anarchist) fighters during that terrible conflict.  The Catholic Church has been criticised for not recognising victims from the other side in the war: but why would they? After all, the Catholic Church in Spain openly supported Francisco Franco’s  mutiny: that’s the main reason Catholic officials were attacked. Before you apologists-for-fascism start foaming at the mouth,  I’m not trying to justify the fact that monks, nuns and priests were killed. I will, however, point out that plenty of Catholic officials were agents of the fascists, and that when the Church (or its officials) took sides in the war, it had to expect casualties.

The timing of this beatification is also somewhat mysterious (read: very well planned). It coincides with the introduction of a new law here which will change the way the crimes of the Civil War and dictatorship are officially remembered. Apparently, part of the new law demands that churches remove Franco-era memorials. Don’t forget: however many died at the hands of the disparate Republican forces, there’s no question that the fascists killed far more innocents, both during and after the Civil War. The Church was also arguably the greatest victor of the Civil War: it was handed total control of education and morality in Spain for decades.

That the Vatican should indulge some of its more right-wing supporters in a move clearly aimed at dividing opinion in Spain, should surprise no one.  This is, after all, the same organisation which is led by a former Hitler-youth member, an organisation which  persists in claiming that European countries are intentionally spreading HIV-aids via wicked condoms in African countries.  It seems a shame that such an antiquated and morally dubious body should  hold sway over so many people around the world. In fact, over the last century it is very likely that Christianity has been responsible for more death and unhappiness than Islam. The sooner we rid ourselves of the lot of them, the better.

On the Catalan language

Catalonia, Language, Politics, ,

One of the big points for debate here is language. Here – as in many other places around the world – language often seems inextricably linked to culture, politics and identity. The issue of Catalan versus Castilian Spanish is probably the most abused and  over-discussed issue in Catalonia. I’m not really interested in prolonging this pretty irritating debate but I would like to try to clarify a couple of the key sticking-points.

First, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) – the Catalan Republican Left – and their language policy. ERC are the fourth biggest party in Catalonia (and third partner in the regional government, la Generalitat) and their policy is pretty much totally dictated by nationalism. Culture and language, of course, play a major role in their strategy. And from time to time, they propose policies or laws which  are frankly unbelievable. Take, for example, the proposal that it should be illegal for teachers to speak in any language but Catalan while they’re on school premises. That’s a ridiculous policy which regularly earns the well deserved moniker ‘fascist’. It is clear that their policy is directed against speakers of Castilian Spanish and thus anyone who is ‘non-Catalan’.

As far as I see, ERC consists of several different movements. I have some sympathy for the ‘republican/left’ element of the party because I’m a left-winger and would rather live in a republic than a kingdom. Unfortunately, the dominant front in ERC is extremely nationalist and sometimes verges on the racist. I get the impression that they probably wouldn’t much like me as a member, because I use the odd Spanish word when speaking Catalan. I’m not from here, remember.

The crazier of ERC’s policies are reminiscent of laws passed by Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship in Spain. Under the Generalissimo, the country was reinvented as the home of Catholicism, empire and homogeneity. Of course, this was  revisionism gone mad. Spain has always been an amalgamation of different kingdoms, peoples and cultures. Passing laws to cancel that out has never worked.

This is another sticking point. If you read other English-language blogs from Catalonia, you might get the impression that the story of Catalan being banned under Franco was made up by Catalan nationalists. This is completely untrue. Certain bloggers seem to have a perverse interest in undermining the history of Catalan, Catalonia and the repression during the Franco years. Make no mistake: under Franco, hundreds of laws and judgments were passed which effectively outlawed the use of the Catalan language. At best, the blogs which promulgate this myth are disingenuous. I reckon that they’re aiming for an audience-pleasing tone of contrariety, which is, after all, the natural tone for successful blogs. Doesn’t make it true, though.

Reial Madrid

Catalonia, Politics, Spain, , , , , , , , ,

I’ve just read an interesting article in Sapiens, the molt Catalanista history and current affairs magazine, about how the football club Real Madrid was in fact founded by two Catalan brothers. Carles and Joan Padrós i Rubió were born in Barcelona, but moved to Madrid to pursue their business interests. On the 18th of April 1902, the two brothers put the finishing touches on the statutes of a new sports association: the ‘Madrid Foot Ball Club’.

For those who are unaware of the animosity between Madrid supporters and Catalans over the last sixty or so years, Real Madrid is deeply unpopular here in Catalonia. Seen as an emblem of everything that is bad about Spain, Madrid fans (or merengues as they are disrespectively termed) are thin on the ground in this most avowedly un-Spanish corner of the country. Real Madrid was the favourite team of fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, and – sometimes in openly unsportsmanly ways – had the best of domestic and foreign players and league success under the dictatorship.

For these reasons, the fact that Real Madrid was actually created and managed by two Catalan brothers will come as a shock. It certainly seemed to shock many Real Madrid officials, both during and after the years of the Genaralissimo’s patronage. On the death of Carles Padrós i Rubió in 1950, no mintue’s silence was held at the club’s ground. No one connected with the modern club attended its founder’s funeral. Similarly, during the club’s centenary celebrations five or six years ago, the families of Carles and Joan weren’t contacted to play any part – or even watch – the club’s triumphal spectaculars.

The fact that Real Madrid’s fans, a small number of whom are openly neo-Nazi and anti-Catalan, are left in the dark about their beloved club’s origins is an interesting reminder of how politics and football have been intertwined in Spain’s modern history. There’s no reason that Madrid supporters should choose to like Catalans any more simply because their club was founded by two. But perhaps it would give them food for thought enough to realise that they owe a lot to their polako cousins.

Interestingly, the Sapiens article ends with another snippet of information. Atletico Madrid, arguably the bearers of a far greater hatred of Catalonia and FC Barcelona, was founded by Basques. But that’s another can of worms, best saved for another day.