The township of 12 people
which sells four million
cans of beer a year
Scotland
in the
heat
The Cafe 3
Quintin Jardine
Even if you’re dying in
Catalonia, you had better
not speak Spanish
Bob Cant
They must first explain the news in Catalan and, if that is not understood, they should then resort to non-verbal methods, such as a mime, or graphic methods. Only after these have failed may they resort to the use of Spanish.
There are, on the other hand, those who would prefer to see Spanish become a taboo language in the way that Catalan used to be. A prominent nationalist politician, Jordi Pujol, recently berated police officers who were striking against cuts in public spending, not so much for withdrawing their labour as for chanting slogans in Spanish.
More significantly, the health department of the Generalitat has now produced a protocol which requires healthcare employees to use Catalan at all times – in public announcements, on the telephone, in meetings and, most controversially, with patients and their families. Take, for example, doctors who are trying to explain to a Spanish-speaking couple that their teenage son, involved in a traffic accident, may have suffered irreversible brain damage and may spend the rest of his life incapable of autonomous activity. They must first explain the news in Catalan and, if that is not understood, they should then resort to non-verbal methods, such as a mime, or graphic methods. Only after these have failed may they resort to the use of Spanish, the primary language of the patient’s family.
Likewise a patient receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer has to go through all these stages before she is allowed to communicate in Spanish. It could be suggested that this policy is at odds with the requirement of the Hippocratic oath for doctors to act with ‘warmth, sympathy and understanding’. The enforcement of such linguistic politics cannot make for good healthcare.
There are those who argue that independence for Catalonia would solve such conflicts, in as much as it would then be free from what they see as outside influences from Madrid. Opinion polls show that the figure supporting full independence for Catalonia stands around 40-50% and may be rising. While independence might result in greater clarity of legislation for the education system or the healthcare system, it would be unlikely to alter the demographic balance of those whose first language is Catalan and those whose first language is Spanish.
Whatever system of governance Catalonia has, there will remain the problem of how to achieve amicable neighbourliness between different language groups. For one group to seek to make taboo the language of the other is a sure way of destroying any sense of neighbourliness. Language has become a political battlefield and while bilingualism could be an enormous asset to the future wellbeing and prosperity of Catalonia and its citizens, the argument frequently moves on to a less rational level.
I am an optimist and were Catalonia to show how bilingualism could become a tool for co-operation and mutual respect, its success could reverberate round a world where societies are increasingly multilingual.
Bob Cant was formerly the equal opportunities officer for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and is now a writer
