the catalan question, or what not to say in Madrid

As you may know I am a hardcore babelist, which is a term I just coined for someone who stubbornly supports the preservation of the world's tenuous linguistic diversity. On the eastern coast of Spain they speak another language Catalan, which the relatively autonomous regional government recognizes as its official language but the federal government does not recognize as a n official language of Spain. I tend to sympathize with the catalinistas, even though the language preservation I support gets tangled in with some closed-minded nationalist bullshit. Okay, thanks for bearing with the abstract intellectual intro, now we can move onto the anecdote...

Last night I was hanging out with Jose, Ismael from school, and some of their friends, and they started digging into Catalunya. If I have been a little too hung up on stereotypes lately, maybe it is because many of the Spaniards I have met like to go on and on about how a certain group is. Los chinos son así. Los marroquís son así. If one of my friends from the US starting going on about, "The Chinese are like this." I would feel compelled to stop him or her and say, "ummm actually Chinese people are a collection of diverse individuals." Here though I'm more inclined to take it with a grain of salt, though it always makes me squirm. But anyway they got going on the Catalans. The Catalans are much more cold and distant than other Spaniards. The Catalans are so closed minded. The Catalans just shoot themselves in the foot by requiring all of the university professors to speak Catalan. Albert Einstein couldn't teach at a Catalan university. I sat on my hands and listened like a good little foreigner trying to learn the lay of the land before he threw himself into a sensitive, controversial topic.

But when me and Jose got home, I couldn't hold myself back. This one of my core beliefs after all, granted one of my most impractical and idealistic core beliefs. Always hedging with "well, I may not really understand the situation but as a linguist," I told him that it might not make sense to him, but given the long term repression of the Catalan language, I can see why they would take radical steps to bolster it now that they have more regional autonomy. There was of course no way I was going to change his mind. He's right there is a lot of political posturing involved and it does mean more qualified professors who only speak Spanish will be turned away. But in my mind it's a kind of linguistic affirmative action, and it's worth the costs.

In other news I officially have lived in Madrid for more than a month. There are still a lot of ups an downs as I continue to adjust. Hell I could stay here ten years and still be adjusting, but it's safe to say it's the end of the beginning and that feels pretty good.

Now I think I'll go try and survive the free afternoon at the Prado. Wish me luck.