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LITERATURE OF THE MODERN AGE
U
nder the umbrella term Catalan literature of the Modern Age, we can group the
different aesthetic currents that until recently had usually been classified
under the now-obsolete name of the Decadència (‘Decline’). Compared to the
latter, the former at least has the advantage of being more objective and lacking in a
priori negative connotations. The new term literature of the Modern Age presents a
merely chronological scope which encompasses works created in Catalan produced
from the last Mediaeval classics until the early Romantic works (between approximately
1500 and 1830), and includes different aesthetic schools or currents that are
more clearly defined and more comparable with the other western literatures, such
as: Mediaeval epigones, Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism,
Pre-Romanticism, Sentimentalism and so forth. Nevertheless, it should be
acknowledged that the period in question coincided not only with the Catalan becoming
increasingly secondary in status and breaking off into dialects, but also with a
decline in the quality and quantity of literary output.
On the other hand, as is widely known, the appearance and dissemination of the
printing press ran parallel to the historical beginnings of the Modern Age and was
precisely one of the factors that culturally drove it. Still, despite hopeful beginnings,
the literary production that was actually printed in Catalan was somewhat scant compared
to what has reached us as manuscripts and, more generally speaking, compared
to other neighbouring literatures. Indeed, the “literature” printed in Catalan that
was most widespread during the Modern Age entailed religious or popular works.
With regard to the aesthetic level and intentions of this output, there is no doubt that
overall it can be regarded as on a lower order; their importance lies more in the fact
that they were books that enjoyed greater circulation amongst the common people,
and that from the 16th
century until the ‘resurgence’ in the 19th
century, publications in
Catalan are distinguished by not having ceased at any time – with the consequence
that reading in Catalan never ceased either.
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First we shall survey the literary creations with certain ambitions that were printed
in Catalan during the Modern Age. In poetry, what first must be mentioned are the
books from the local Renaissance, especially the Dos llibres de Pedro Serafín de
poesia vulgar en llengua catalana (Barcelona 1565: Two Books by Pedro Serafín of
Popular Poetry in the Catalan Language) by the Catalan Pere Serafí (c. 1505-1567?)
and the poems in Catalan (although there are also some in Spanish) from the collection
of lyrical poems Flor de enamorados (Sweethearts’ Flower) compiled by the
Valencian Joan Timoneda (1518/20-1583) but published in Barcelona (1573; a publishing
success: it was reissued seven different times by 1681). From the Baroque
period we have the publication (Barcelona 1703, 1712, 1820) of the poems by the
priest Vicent Garcia (1578/79-1623), a highly popular author at the time in Catalonia
writing under the pseudonym of the ‘Rector de Vallfogona’ (rector here means parish
priest), which make up the most significant corpus of Catalan poetry from the Modern
Age.
The scant amount of cultured theatre printed in Catalan during these centuries
is virtually limited to one religious comedy by the same Garcia and several dramatic
works published in French Catalonia during the 18th
century, also on religious topics
and in a style somewhere between early Baroque (of Spanish inspiration) and Classicism
(of French inspiration), as well as a translation of Racine (Esther).
In terms of prose, what most stands out is the publication of the mystical, allegorical
novel Espill de la vida religiosa (Barcelona 1515, second edition: Valencia
1529; Mirror to Religious Life), attributed to the monk Miquel Comalada, a veritable
best-seller in its Spanish version under the title of El Deseoso and which was also
translated into other languages (German, English [Desiderius, 1604, 1971], French,
Italian and others). Also worthy of mention are certain historiographic printed works
such as: Cròniques d’Espanya by Pere-Miquel Carbonell (Barcelona 1547; Chronicles
of Spain), the Primera part de la història de València by Pere-Antoni Beuter
(Valencia 1538; First Part of the History of Valencia; the second part was – tellingly –
published in Spanish in 1550), the Crònica universal del Principat de Catalunya by
Jeroni Pujades (Barcelona 1609; Universal Chronicle of the Principality of Catalonia)
and the Sumari dels títols d’honor de Catalunya, Rosselló i Cerdanya by Andreu
Bosch (Perpignan 1628; Summary of the Titles of Honour of Catalonia, Roussillon
and Cerdagne). Other lesser works of fiction are also worth highlighting, such as the
popular and reissued Rondalla de rondalles (Valencia 1769; Tale of Tales), attributed
to the Valencian Lluís Galiana, a novella based on proverbs and sayings in imitation
of the Cuento de cuentos (1626) by Francisco de Quevedo, which reflects the richness
of the colloquial Valencian Catalan of the day. And although it is not exactly a
new creation, but is a sample of the uninterrupted tradition of translations into Catalan
since the 12th
century, we must also mention the version of the New Testament by
Josep-Melcior Prat published in its first edition in 1832 in London at the expense of
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123
the British and Foreign Bible Society, one year prior to the chronological limit we have
set for this period (this translation was reissued once again in London in 1835, in
Barcelona in 1836 and in Madrid in 1888).
However, as mentioned above, writers in Catalan in the Modern Age rarely saw
their works printed during their lifetimes. This means, especially in certain cases, that
there exists a rich tradition of manuscripts, proportional to the popularity of those
authors or of their works, such as is the case, for example, of the satirical, scatological
and obscene poems by the aforementioned Rector de Vallfogona. Given the fact
that Catalan literature during this period was not consistently recovered (and practically
rediscovered) until the second half of the 20th
century, many of the texts from the
Modern Age were not published and studied for the first time until relatively recently.
Thus, it was not until the 19th
century that, for example, Los col·loquis de la
insigne ciutat de Tortosa (The Colloquia of the Distinguished City of Tortosa) were
published, a work by the Tortosan writer Cristòfor Despuig (1510-1574), the most
interesting prose work in Catalan during the Renaissance; nor was there publication
of certain parts of the poetry and plays written by the Barcelona playwright Francesc
Fontanella (1622-1681/85). In fact, the majority, or all, of the oeuvre by Fontanella
himself did not appeared until the 20th
century, nor did the three plays and poetry by
the Minorcan Joan Ramis (1746-1819), or the sweeping memorialistic prose of the
Calaix de sastre (Tailor’s Box) by his Barcelona contemporary Rafael d’Amat, Baron
of Maldà (1746-1819). More specifically, noteworthy works in Catalan literature from
the Modern Age include the two ambitious Baroque plays by Fontanella: Lo desengany
(The Deception) and Tragicomèdia d’amor, firmesa and porfia (Tragicomedy of
Love, Steadfastness and Obstinacy), as well as the literary – and especially dramatic
– output written in British Minorca during the 18th
century and in French Roussillon
(since 1659). Namely, between the 17th
and 18th
century in French Catalonia there
was a plentiful output of plays on religious themes in the Baroque style, following the
Spanish tradition; and on the island of Minorca what most stands out is the figure of
Joan Ramis, mentioned above, and his plays, especially his Neoclassical tragedy
Lucrècia o Roma lliure (Lucretia or Free Rome), the masterpiece in 18th
century Catalan
literature influenced by the author’s readings of Corneille and Racine. With more
cultural (scriptural, theological, linguistic) than literary importance, mention must be
made of the Evangelis d’Oxford (c. 1725; Gospels of Oxford) translated into the Catalan
of Valencia for use by the British Minorcans by a former Roman Catholic priest
who had converted to the Church of England.
Finally, one special case is the theatre and musical play called Festa or Misteri
d’Elx (Festival or Mystery of Elche, proclaimed by UNESCO as a “Masterpiece of the
Human Oral and Immaterial Heritage” in the first edition of this distinction in May of
2001). Profoundly reworked during the 16th
century based on prior texts, this sacred,
extremely popular opera, which currently generates a great amount of tourism, is
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124
based on the subject of the death and ascension to heaven of the Virgin Mary and
has been put on for centuries now every 14th
and 15th
of August in the city of Elx (in
the south of the Land of Valencia).
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THE SHIFT
FROM THE 18TH
TO THE 19TH
CENTURY
A
t the end of the 18th
and beginning of the 19th
centuries, the spread of some
expressions of the Enlightenment (the cosmopolitanism of the elites) and the
emerging liberal ideology (uniformity within a nation) resulted in a lack of sympathy
for minority languages among the intellectual and political classes. Even
amongst the ruling echelons of Catalan-speaking societies, with few exceptions, a
broad consensus considered Catalan to be a merely “provincial” language, as was
said then, on the verge of becoming a declining, irrecoverable patois. Thus, the
advisability of replacing the Catalan language with another more prestigious and
“useful” one, such as Spanish – and French in Northern Catalonia – was openly
preached.
In light of this scenario, stances opposing these trends, such as those upheld by
the Spanish politician and writer Gaspar-Melchor de Jovellanos (1744-1811) were
clearly in the minority and exceptional for the time, not only because of their rarity but
also because of their lack of prejudices. Autors’ confinement in Majorca between 1801
and 1808 enabled him to find out the sociolinguistic situation on the island firsthand,
which led him to claim that insular Catalan had to be granted “greater importance
than what we have given it until now”. He also openly recommended cultivating it in
all spheres of life, including teaching it at schools “since that way,” he wrote in his
Memoria sobre educación pública (Memorandum on Public Education), “we will open
the doors of the Enlightenment to the masses of Majorcans whose fate is bound to
their ignorance”. However, the reaction to the French Revolution in 1789 and to progressive
proposals such as those of this enlightened reformer and his companions,
far too advanced for the spirit of the day – not to say even against it – brought the
Spanish Enlightenment to the brink of collapse and were ignored. (Indeed, if they
had been heeded and spread through around the Catalan Linguistic Domain as a
whole, they would have rendered groundless certain current radical arguments as to
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126
a supposed “historical” supremacy of Spanish, according to which maintaining Catalan
would have meant leaving broad echelons of Catalan-speaking society illiterate
during the Contemporary Age.)
In the passage of the 18th
and 19th
centuries, then, Catalan seemed to have
reached its death throes as a language of culture. And yet, despite the weakened
state in which it was found itself, it is precisely after the first few decades of this latter
century when Catalan language and literature began an upward swing of recovery
which would gradually be defined and spread at differing rates throughout all the
Catalan-speaking territories as the century went by. This trend would crystallise with
special force especially during the second half of the century in Catalonia, and ultimately,
it could be claimed that this resurgence has not ceased since then. This
process was also noteworthy because it was at the foundation of the emergence, at
least in this latter region within the Catalan Linguistic Domain, of a political manifestation
(Catalanism) and of an untarnished particularist awareness, and with time a
national awareness.
Yet how can such significant changes in the course of just a few decades be
explained? The motive for this change has been traditionally put down to the broad
movement known by the name of the Renaixença (‘rebirth’ or ‘resurgence’; literally
‘renaissance’). It has often been claimed, not inaccurately, that the foundations of
the Renaixença are intimately tied to the spread of Romanticism, yet we clearly cannot
ignore two other components which are undoubtedly more important than they
have traditionally be considered. The first is the vitality of the popular Catalan language,
which as we have mentioned survived, for centuries and in a natural way,
without great difficulty throughout the entire linguistic domain; and secondly the
“regionalist” seeds that were planted during the Enlightenment.17
On this last factor, Ernest Lluch, the aforementionend scholar, accurately pointed
out that “the language continued as a logical conclusion of a process launched by
men [i.e., enlightened Catalan-speakers] who did not much believe in the viable
future of Catalan, but as they set into motion a Catalan project, they laid the foundations
for ensuring that future”. For example, starting in the last third of the 18th
century,
one can also detect in the bibliography an increasing predisposition to deal with
specific issues of the country. Furthermore, although those intellectuals from the
Enlightenment did indeed show an ambiguous interest in the Catalan language,
17
A third element, which is often cited, is the official use of Catalan – along with French,
and at the expense of Spanish – in Catalonia when it was annexed to Napoleon’s France by
the occupying authorities during the Peninsular War (1808-1814), in an attempt to attract
Catalans towards the French Empire. This would have indirectly acted as a catalyst as it
recalled the past, prestigious uses of the language, in addition to awakening awareness of the
“new” possibilities of Catalan.
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TOTHE19TH
CENTURY
127
which was oftentimes practically archaeological in nature, and although the language
used in their publications was almost invariably Spanish, it is also true that they were
the ones who contributed to strengthening the foundations of a certain regionalism,
as well as of a certain recovery of interest in Catalan based on its rich ancient litera-
ture.
In the pre-Renaixença, then, we can already find a significant and varied publishing
output, such as erudite works in the realm of Catalonia, the Land of Valencia,
the Balearic Islands and even Aragon (on history, literature and philology, law, natural
sciences); publications on language (apologies, dictionaries, the first printed grammar
of Catalan [1813]), and literature in Catalan of widely differing tones and genres
(cultured and popular; poetry, theatre, translations). Popular press written in Catalan
even makes its first appearance. Forcing the categories a little, since many of the
forerunners of the Renaixença cultivated many different genres at the same time,
among scholars of the second half of the 18th
century and first few decades of the 19th
we can highlight Antoni de Capmany, Fèlix Torres Amat and Pròsper de Bofarull
(Catalans from the Principality of Catalonia); Gregori Mayans, Marc-Antoni Orellana
and Antoni-J. Cabanilles (Valencians); Joan Ramis (Minorcan); Jaubert de Paçà and
Josep Tastú (Catalans from Northern Catalonia); and Braulio Foz (Aragonese). In
terms of those who showed a special concern for the language, we should also mention
Baldiri Reixach, Fèlix Amat and Josep-Pau Ballot (Catalans from the Principality
of Catalonia); Carles Ros and Manuel Sanelo (Valencians); and Antoni Febrer and
Joan-Josep Amengual (from the islands of Minorca and Majorca, respectively).
Finally, amongst those authors who cultivated literature in Catalan, we should point
out the aforementioned Joan Ramis and Antoni Febrer (Minorcans); the so-called
drama group from Tuïr (in French, Thuir; Catalans from Northern Catalonia); Antoni
Puigblanch and the anonymous author of the pre-Romantic poem Lo Temple de la
Glòria (The Temple of Glory; Catalans from the Principality of Catalonia); Joan-Baptista
Escorihuela, Lluís Galiana and Tomàs Villarroya (Valencians), the Count of Aiamans
(Josep de Togores) and Guillem Roca i Seguí (Majorcans) and even Bartomeu
Simon (from Alghero).
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THE RENAIXENÇA
OR “RENAISSANCE” IN CATALONIA
(19TH
CENTURY)
V
iewed in retrospect, the 19th
century in the Catalan-speaking territories, with
the consolidation of the unitary liberal state and the parallel development of
what was called the Renaixença, are key to understanding the subsequent
relations between language and society during the 20th
century, which to a great
extent continue down to today. More than with the Ancient Regime, which was
more concerned with other types of unity, such as the religious homogeneity of the
subjects (“one king, one religion”), the new liberal regime was seriously concerned
with national unity and for this reason attempted to linguistically unify and equalise
its citizens (“one nation, one language”). The desire to impose official or at least
majority languages thus took place not without conflicts, precisely coinciding with
the resurgence of minority languages and cultures all across Europe in the heat of
the Romantic movement, a re-birth that in certain cases would end up coming
hand-in-hand with a corresponding political correlate (at times no less national in
nature).
Romanticism was a broad movement that was not just literary, which during the
19th
century also unleashed a true passion for languages. Whether great or small, or
with a greater or lesser literary tradition, at that time they came to be regarded as the
representatives par excellence of what was called the “spirit of the nations” (in German,
Volksgeist). Many European cultures and languages, which for centuries had
gone more or less unperceived, claimed their place under the sun from that time on;
this was the case not only of Catalan but also of many other languages on the Old
Continent, such as the Baltic and Celtic languages, the different Scandinavian languages
including Finnish and Icelandic; the Slavic languages, such as Bulgarian,
Czech, Slovak, Polish and Serbo-Croatian; Greek; Hungarian; the Dutch spoken in
Flanders, Belgium; and Romance languages such as Galician, Occitan and Romanian,
amongst others.
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This overall Romantic movement was closely intertwined, within the Catalanspeaking
lands, with another particular movement – the Renaixença or “Renaissance”.
With the latter, the process of recovering Catalan as a community language of prestige
is considered to have begun, starting with its literary uses. This movement is conventionally
thought to have begun in 1833 upon the publication of the ode La Pàtria (The
Fatherland) by Bonaventura-Carles Aribau, an author from Barcelona (but who spent
most of his life in Madrid). Throughout the 19th
century, increasing awareness, especially
literary and linguistic, gradually blossomed, but starting in the middle of the century
it also became political and regional-national awareness amongst writers and intellectuals
in Catalonia, and to a much lesser extent amongst natives of the Land of Valencia,
the Balearics and Northern Catalonia. This heightened awareness, as has been
claimed, generated a veritable cultural renaissance. The emulation of the mediaeval
models first enabled poetry to be reborn from its ashes, to later be followed by other
literary and journalistic genres, and even the beginnings of a certain scientific prose.
The restoration in Barcelona of the so-called Jocs Florals (‘Floral Games’) contributed
notably to the scope and penetration of the Renaixença movement. This
was an annual literary event that rewarded the best poetry works in Catalan. These
“games” were extraordinarily popular and sociolinguistically and even civically important,
widely popular since their first edition in 1859. They ended up becoming a formidable
means for consolidating and expanding the new social and literary prestige
of the Catalan language.
Additionally, the Renaixença came to reveal and spread a mediaeval history and
literature that were little or poorly known, and the splendid language of a rediscovered
and independent past began to be viewed with new eyes by the bourgeoisie in
Catalonia, who ceased to regard it as an unimportant language. One of the main
themes of the Renaixença was, precisely, its aim to revive the past glories of Catalan
literature. The scientific quality of the first projects in the editing of ancient texts
was somewhat wanting, but there is no doubt that they contributed to the diffusion of
authors and works that until then had been little and insufficiently known, and that
they served to lay the foundations of the more serious and methodical practices and
publications to emerge during the 20th
century. This interest in Catalan, on the other
hand, led the followers of the movement, called renaixencistes, to also study the history
of the language and its geographical varieties, to propose various models for the
written language, and to study the local literary tradition and publish the first monographs
on classical authors and works in Catalan. Impelled by the Romantic spirit,
the renaixencistes also soon showed a lively interest in the history, geography and
nature of the country, in its exclusive law, in the arts and in all types of folkloric
expression, such as popular songs and dances, customs and so forth.
Despite all this, and despite what has been mentioned about the constant rise in
the consideration and esteem of Catalan, the weight of tradition in linguistic practices
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CENTURY]
131
should not be left unmentioned. Thus, it should come as no surprise that until well into
the 19th
century, the very authors who wrote literature in Catalan (which mainly consisted
of poetry) continued to preferentially use Spanish (and French in Northern Catalonia)
for the remaining written functions of language. This held true in everything from
the most formal uses (which included scholarly subjects on the Catalan language and
literature themselves) to their own private correspondence. (In terms of the latter, it is
well known, for example, the phenomenal commotion caused by the dramatist Àngel
Guimerà – in as late a date as 1895 – when he delivered his presidential speech entirely
in Catalan, inaugurating the academic year in the most reputable club in Barcelona,
the Ateneu Barcelonès – a “daring act” that had never taken place before.) On the other
hand, we should also consider the relative paradox represented in the fact that at the
same time that the revival of Catalan was taking place and claims for its use were growing,
especially in Catalonia, there was also a clear advance in familiarisation with Spanish,
and even a certain regular use of this language amongst certain echelons of society,
thanks mainly to the spread of schooling, to the businesses and interests of the
bourgeoisie in the rest of Spain, America and the Philippines, and to the emergence of
an incipient immigration of Spanish-speakers. (For males, the compulsory military service
also played an important sociolinguistic role, both in France and in Spain, and it
has been defined – with a humorous edge yet not inaccurately either – as “one of the
first language immersion courses, free of charge and obligatory”.) A typical characteristic
of the 19th
century is the diglossic division of the functions of the languages: within
the Catalan-speaking lands in Spain the language used orally was usually Catalan,
while – with the exception of the most committed writers and intellectuals – the written
language par excellence was Spanish, at least until the early 20th
century, or French in
the part of the linguistic domain under French rule.18
But there was even more. While the paralysed and ineffective monarchies of the
Ancient Regime, concerned about other types of unity (such as religious unity) and
with their complex class-based society and chronic lack of financial resources,
offered their subjects multiple loopholes to allow them to avoid strictly complying with
the laws (including the provisions on language policy), the reinvigorated and more
18
On this point, it should be especially borne in mind that during the 19th
century, and
even in vast rural areas until well into the 20th
century, without the current communication
media and with relatively low levels of schooling and high levels of illiteracy, the probability of
children, and even adults, throughout the entire Catalan Linguistic Domain being able to learn
and practise or simply just hear Spanish, French or Italian was frankly minuscule. More
specifically, in the rural setting, which is where most of the population lived then, people who
mastered these languages in the villages were often a mere handful of individuals: the schoolmaster,
the priest or civil servants from elsewhere such as the municipal clerk, agents of the
law (the Guardia Civil), or certain educated freelance professionals, such as the notary,
the lawyer, the doctor, the chemist or the veterinarian.
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132
Provision issued by the governor of the Balearic Islands (1837) prohibiting the use of Catalan
in schools and instituting the system of “the ring”. This humiliating method of punishment,
broadly known throughout the entire Catalan-speaking territories, consisted of making an article
of proof (the ring) circulate around the student body marking the students who were
caught speaking Catalan; the last student to have the ring in his or her possession at the end
of the day was punished.19
19
The provision reads as follows: “High Political Government of the Balearic Islands // Given
that the exercise of the scientific languages is the first instrument for acquiring and conveying the
sciences; that Spanish, in addition to being the national language, is required to be observed in
schools and public establishments; and that having ignored this part of instruction many talents
who could enlighten not only their country but the entire nation now live in obscurity; wishing that
such felicitous provisions not remain ineffective; and finally given that it would be as difficult to correct
this negligence in adults as it would be easy to emend it in the ensuing generations, may it be
observed in all public schools for both sexes in this province the simple method that is described
below and that has been adopted in other provinces with great success [!]. Every teacher will have
a metal ring that he or she will turn over to one of his or her disciples on Monday, warning the others
that once they have crossed the threshold of the school none may speak a single word that is
not Spanish, under the punishment that if whomever has the ring hears them he or she will pass it
on at that moment, and the guilty party may not refuse it; but with the understanding that in the
same venue if the guilty part hears another classmate committing the same mistake, he will pass
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THERENAIXENÇAOR“RENAISSANCE”INCATALONIA[19th
CENTURY]
133
on the ring, and this student to another in the same case, and so on during the week until Saturday
afternoon, when at the chosen time whosoever bears the ring will suffer the punishment, which
in the first trials will be quite light; but which will gradually increase just as the venue of prohibition
will also enlarge in order to make it easier for students to gradually learn to express themselves in
Spanish, and in order to achieve this soon it would also be wise to give the more advanced students
some type of reward, such as not being given the ring on Mondays, or being the judge in the
complaints that will naturally arise on the identity of dialect of the word being disputed. // In this
way, unconsciously, without any work on the part of the teachers, and with the punishments being
incomparably lighter than the mistakes, not only we will achieve that within a certain time of constancy
the Majorcan youth will come to be familiar with the Spanish language in which the doctrines
and knowledge they are learning are written, and to express themselves easily and fluently
in it, but students will also be more quiet in the school for fear that each will have to inadvertently
suffer the punishment of the ring and expose themselves to punishment or at least to the anxiety
that would precede it. // The conscientious efforts of the teachers in implementing and sustaining
this simple measure and the advancement of their students will be an individual merit for
many and a special subject of examination in the annual visit which I will make to all the schools
in the province; and as an ongoing reminder and observance of this provision, the present edict is
therefore to be posted in a fixed place inside the schools. // Issued in the City of Palma [Island of
Majorca], on 22nd
February 1837”.
rational administrative apparatus of the liberal state would more effectively affect the
lives of the new citizens. During the 19th
century, the measures for linguistic assimilation
in favour of the dominant languages in each country would not only have a
much more refined ideological load than before, as we shall see, rather — more
importantly — these provisions would lead them to be enforced more effectively than
in the preceding century. It is worth noting that the emergence of numerous and
repeated regulations on specific language uses (prohibitions from using Catalan)
during the 19th
century show, on the contrary, that Catalan continued enjoying a certain
“normal” life despite the linguistic diktats unleashed since Philip V. That is to say,
if Catalan had not been used with a certain degree of normality until then, these prohibitions
would have been entirely unnecessary.
Thus, in Spain by the 1820s criminal procedures before the courts could only
take place in Spanish, and the 1881 Law on Civil Procedure only accepted the use
of the Spanish language in civil trials. In 1862, the Law on Notaries also established
Spanish as the sole language authorised to be used for public deeds, while it also
prohibited contracts in any other language. Eight years later, the Civil Register Law
also required the use of Spanish in official registrations (only Spanish names were
allowed, leading many Catalan surnames to be adapted to Spanish, thus changing
their spelling). In schools, in turn, any language other than Spanish was banned, and
the use and cultivation of Spanish became compulsory (the Quintana Plan of 1821,
the Bravo Murillo Regulation of 1849, and most importantly the Moyano’s Law on
Public Instruction of 1857). Despite the fact that in the 20th
century (specifically in
1902), the Spanish government had already gone as far as promulgating a decree
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requiring the Roman Catholic catechism to be taught in Spanish (a measure which
was repeatedly attempted, which pursued a far-reaching goal, given the fact that for
many children catechism was their only chance at becoming literate, albeit barely so).
Some of the government provisions, however, may even seem shocking seen from
today, such as the Royal Order of 1867, which picking up on the previous provisions
from 1799 and 1807, clearly forbade plays written exclusively “in dialects from the
provinces of Spain”, or the Regulation on Telephones dating from 1896 that startlingly
prohibited telephone conversations that were not in Spanish. Finally, some measures
were particularly unfortunate, such as the Royal Edict of 1837, which imposed
shameful punishments on children who did not speak Spanish at school. Provisions
such as this served as a legal foundation for the humiliating yet effective system of
the ring, the stone or the plaquette, documented throughout the entire Catalan Linguistic
Domain yet unimaginable in monolingual countries, which has been described
as follows for a school in French Catalonia: “When the teacher in the morning surprised
a student who was speaking Catalan with a classmate in the classroom or on
the playground, he passed him a little ring. From then on, the student had to use his
wits to find a peer who had committed the same sin, in order to pass the ring on.
Whichever student had the object at the end of the day was punished”.20
Nevertheless, it should be added that not all these restrictions on the free use of
Catalan were always impositions by the central government, rather that there were
also some cases of limiting its use that were driven by the local authorities themselves.
One example of this was the Barcelona City Council’s 1833 agreement,
reached after deliberation, stating that municipal treasury forms had to be filled out
in Spanish; or the decision by the Palma de Majorca City Council in 1863 to change
the language of street signs from Catalan to Spanish.
As can be seen, however, the provisions with the greatest scope and significance,
wore often laws issued from a central political power with a new conception
of state, the 19th
century version of the liberal state. This state was more obsessed
by its citizens’ legal and theoretical “equality” of opportunities, which would include
homogenising them linguistically even at the expense of infringing upon or legally
curtailing one of the fundamental rights of individuals – freedom of expression.
Profoundly convinced of the goodness and progress brought about by their egalitarian
and unifying (or more accurately, homogenising) solutions, the liberal state of
the 19th
century was concerned about spreading the concept of unified nation-state,
20
Apparently obsolete and anachronic, this “pedagogical” method still reappeared in our
times. Thus, in early 2001 the press exposed a lawsuit against a school in Villaviciosa (Asturias,
Spain) that fined its students 25 pesetas (0.15€) for each word in Asturian they uttered (La Nueva
España [Oviedo], 15-1- 2001).
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which was in fact more founded on an ideal notion of the sovereignty of the nation
than in the true sovereignty of the people. Thus, the nation-state would propose
achieving citizen equality based on promoting the suppression of the particularities
that were developed and that coexisted during the Ancient Regime, without any
exceptions among social, legislative, geo-historical, cultural or linguistic particularities.
In this extreme egalitarian agenda, which implicitly entailed the formation and
spread of the corresponding national mythology (frequently idealised and based
exclusively on the hegemonic culture), a major focus was the veneration of the features
regarded as common (which it would be much more accurate to regard as
those of the majority), with the correlating frequent disparagement or hiding of the
particular or minority features. In the case of Spain, the promotion of a newly-minted
national mythology included, for example, the creation or spread of national
heroes such as the mediaeval Cid Campeador, Don Pelayo and Santiago Matamoros
(Saint James the Moor Slayer) or the 16th
century conquistadores of Mexico and
Peru, as well as the observance of national holidays such as the Discovery of America
(coinciding with the day of the Virgen del Pilar [Our Lady of El Pilar], the patron
saint of Spain). These were quite often the particular cultural patrimony of the Crown
of Castile, but thanks to such a “national program” as this, they were confirmed as
the cohesive nucleus of the state. This agenda also included the reinforcement of
everything that was considered to have to be shared by Spaniards as a whole (often
with debateable foundations, which were more ideological than scientifically provable),
such as the unity of Spain since the Catholic Kings, if not since the time of the
Visigoths or even since the far-distant times of the Pre-Roman Celtiberians – both
Celtiberians and Visigoths being thus historically manipulated in the search for the
first “Spaniards”.
In short, within the prevailing logic of the time, the zealous unifier itch could in no
way avoid promoting and spreading the language of the state institutions and the literature
expressed in this language (Spanish), regarded as the literature tout court of
Spain. In this way, Spanish language and literature were definitively wielded as
instruments basic to the cohesion of the nation and as signs of adherence to it – this,
if need be, at the expense of different, equally current, linguistic and literary traditions.
(On this point, it is symptomatic that it was precisely during the 19th
century,
especially through schools, when the name “Spanish”, referring to the majority language
of the country, spread and became popular, at least in a good part of monolingual
Spain and even in America, thus marking a significant retreat in the use of the
historical and traditional term “Castilian”.)
However, it should be stressed that since the mid-19th
century the nationalism
supported on the majority language and culture, and promoted and fed by the
machinery of the state (the [majority, hard ] nationalism of the state), coincided and
collided with – as was foreseeable – other nationalisms that were also gestating
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THECATALANLANGUAGE
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around the same time (the stateless [minority, soft ] nationalisms). The latter, such as
that of Catalonia or the Basque Country, were largely linked to the languages, histories,
cultures, civil laws and traditions that, unlike the ideal language of the state,
were not only hindered from enjoying and sharing the protection and power of the
state structure (which since the Spanish Habsburg dynasty had tended to identify
itself exclusively with the majority language and culture, Castilian in essence), but
that also came upon the de-legitimisation by the state, if not with its direct opposition
despite being an integral part of it — or even, in the majority of its early manifestations,
despite its desire to form bodies within the shared state. Deep down, to a great
extent a conflict was unleashed then between two conceptions of Spain (“unified
nation” versus “diverse nation of nations”), which, with greater or lesser vigour in
terms of Catalonia’s political fit within Spain, spanned the 19th
and 20th
centuries and
even today still endures.
More specifically, in terms of relationships between language and society during
the 19th
century, the state deemed that the Spanish language (or French in France)
would be the sole language worthy of being known, recognised and fully used (in and
by the law, the schools, the political magistracies, the courts, the army, the administration
in general, the press and serious literature). That is, the language par excellence
would be the language of the official state institutions and it would thus be the
only one regarded as official – even if not officially proclaimed. In contrast, the country’s
other languages would be viewed as slightly disarrayed, not to say “incomplete”
entities, and in the best of cases as a fragmentary mosaic, hardly or not at all worthy
of high culture and modernity, and thus relegated to the realm of folklore, ethnology or
local colour.
This hegemonic – not to say official – linguistic ideology, enforced through legally
restrictive measures (language policy) and school instruction, spanned the 19th
century
and continued during the 20th
, especially in France, but also in Spain, although in
the latter it has been tempered over the years, especially since the entry into force of
the 1978 democratic constitution. (It should be stressed that in both countries, this ideology
has left in its wake a heavy mark on society, especially the monolingual society,
both amongst the lesser educated classes but also amongst the educated, as well as
amongst political classes of all leanings). If to all this we add the fact that in certain
cases (such as Catalonia) claims in favour of the local language were often closely
bound to political claims, these languages ended up often being perceived as a threat
to the territorial integrity of the state (and undoubtedly on some occasions this was
indeed the aim), such that the unitary state’s reaction could be none other than what
was predictable by the logic of the time. On the one hand, it was believed that the
most rational course entailed simplifying the linguistic scene of the country and
spreading amongst citizens a single language that would not only strengthen the ties
amongst the different members of the nation (or even, perhaps, forcing these ties to
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be created), rather that this would also help to equalise them for the sake of equal
opportunity, at least in theory. Naturally, this sole language could be none other than
the “useful” national language, that is, within the Catalan Linguistic Domain, or Catalan-speaking
territories, the French or Spanish languages – which, in turn, were thus
consolidated as predominant and encouraged to play such a role. Indeed, for the ruling
echelons in Spain, usually with Castilian roots and the extremely strong imperial
tradition of Castile, it was simply unthinkable that the country could allow for several
languages, in spite of the most benign contemporary models such as Switzerland,
the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Canada.
Likewise, the country’s unofficial languages would be regarded by the liberal
state as ballast inherited from the Ancient Regime, which thus had to be combated
and overcome. In the extreme case, linguicide was precisely, as we have seen, one
of the strong ideas of the extreme homogenisation advocated by the French
Jacobins, whose most illustrious proponent was the aforementioned abbé Henri
Grégoire. The liberal state characteristic of the 19th
century, in Europe and Latin
America based largely on Jacobin tradition that reigned victorious during the French
Revolution, thus adopted whatever tactics it deemed opportune in order to remove
this irritating “obstacle” inherited and put into crisis the secular loyalty of the “different”
citizens that maintained other languages when speaking. These tactics included
planting the seeds of linguistic insecurity and low self-esteem as differentiated
communities.
Thus, the state not only refrained from protecting (not to mention promoting) these
languages and put up repeated obstacles for their normal use, as we have seen in this
chapter and shall also see in the following for Northern Catalonia, rather it spread linguistic
ideas that strove to lower the dignity and reality of the minority languages,
which simultaneously served to ennoble, in contrast, the official language. The tactics
employed, even if they did not come from explicit instructions, were broadly inspired
by the hegemonic linguistic ideology (which can be summarised in the phrase: “one
nation, one language”), and were largely – though not solely – linked through the
moral authority of the schools. The citizens thus educated (which accounted for relatively
few in Spain, albeit more in France, which had a more highly developed educational
system), additionally, went on to reproduce this ideology around them and
helped to popularise it in turn amongst their uneducated countrypeople.
One of the most widely used systems, particularly from the classroom setting,
was leaving the unofficial languages bereft of a serious and unique name that accurately
reflected their linguistic and geo-historical reality, and thus differentiated them
clearly for their own speakers and from those of other languages – first and foremost
from the official language. (The relative lack of development of the incipient Romance
philology in the 19th
century – in turn influenced by the liberal ideology rooted in
France – as well as that of certain scientific concepts such as ‘language’ or ‘dialect’,
THERENAIXENÇAOR“RENAISSANCE”INCATALONIA[19th
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contributed in no small way to this lack of an appropriate nomenclature.) Often,
these minority languages were purposely confused with each other, and all of them
(at times, along with other varieties of the national language itself) were clustered
together under ambiguous and pejorative labels such as patois (in France) and
‘dialect’ (in Spain). Andalusian, panocho from Murcia, Canaries Spanish, Catalan,
Valencian, Majorcan, Minorcan, and Ibizan (Catalan), Basque, Galician, Aragonese,
Asturian/Leonese: they were all designated in general with the indistinct, disparaging
name of dialectos, and this gained even greater resonance in the case of France with
the clearly contemptuous name of patois, the use of which, especially in schools, has
meant that it still comes down to us as such, even today.21
As was predictable, another procedure also used – and still used today – was
the application of the classical maxim of “divide and conquer”. Bolstering themselves
on local traditions, at times secular (such as in the case of the Catalan spoken in the
Land of Valencia), and on the dearth of accuracy provided by the Romance philology
of the day, the state did nothing to recognise the unity of many of these dialects.
Thus, the demographic, historical or even political potential that might come from the
existence of a single language such as Catalan was undermined and fragmented into
an indeterminate number of “minor languages”, or “dialects”, such as “Catalan”
(exclusively spoken in Catalonia), “Valencian”, “alacantí” (spoken in Alicante), “Majorcan”,
“Minorcan” and “Ibizan”. There were even other more local options such as, for
example, within Catalonia itself, “tortosí” (from the region of Tortosa) and “lleidatà”
(from the region of Lérida).22
21
One of the most vivid ways of putting this method into practice was by calling some of the
languages or their geographical variants (normally the most vulnerable due to their extreme peripheral
situation or their scant demographic and political-social weight) with names even more negative
than the semi-scholarly term dialect, such as patués (taken from the French name patois) to
refer to certain Aragonese speech forms, or chapurreado to refer to the Catalan spoken in Aragon,
though also used for the Galician spoken in the provinces of León and Zamora and for the archaic
Galician spoken in the Valle de Ellas in the province of Cáceres, both near Portugal. The inappropriateness
of these terms could simply be gathered at first glance by their undifferentiated use
to refer to languages so distinct and distant from each other. The consequence of this was that
names like these, repeated consistently by the authorities and schools, and with the dearth of other
more appropriate and well-defined names, ended up being popularly, and even naturally, accepted
(and interiorised) by the respective community itself, once awareness of the disparaging origins
had been erased.
22
An extreme case, especially widely used in the Aragon Strip, or eastern Aragon bordering
Catalonia, which has traditionally hampered a clear overall vision of the community of Catalan
speakers in this zone (yet which helped to confirm the hegemony of Spanish as the high language,
which has endured until today) was not only to call its local version of Catalan “chapurreado”, as
we have seen, but alternatively to sustain, in a display of parochial localism, the existence of
improbable municipal languages, such as fragatí (of Fraga), maellà (of Maella), and mequinensà
(of Mequinensa [in Spanish, Mequinenza]), and so on.
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Finally, yet another variant on the aforementioned strategy was to insidiously categorise
the languages other than Spanish between some that might reach this category
of “language” (typically, Basque, because of its ancestral nature and its total lack
to resemblance to Spanish), and others that could not aspire to this recognition rather
could only achieve vague recognition as “dialects” (Catalan, Galician). It should be
pointed out that this erroneous classification was assimilated and used mimetically at
the same time in some of these languages (more precisely, by some of their elites),
such as was the case of Catalan itself. Thus, the Catalan of Catalonia might aspire
to being regarded as a “language”, while the Catalan of the Land of Valencia and the
Balearic Islands had to be content with the lesser category of “dialect”. (Ultimately,
this would be akin to claiming that the Spanish of Spain, and only that version, can
be a true language, while the Spanish spoken in Mexico, Cuba and Argentina, for
example, would simply be dialects.)
In short, then, it can be said that wherever the Renaixença did not take root or
succeed (such as – to varying degrees – the Land of Valencia, the Balearics, the Catalan-speaking
part of Aragon and Northern Catalonia, unlike what is commonly known
as Catalonia), the ultimate outcome of the language policy of the 19th
century liberal
state (especially so in France) was an overall severe debilitation of the languages
other than the official ones through the gradual collapse, as mentioned above, of the
feelings of self-esteem and the linguistic loyalty of their speakers. Finally, it should
be added that this agenda of linguistic homogenisation powerfully influenced the ideology
of the succeeding Spanish and French states in the 20th
century, both democratic
and dictatorial.
With the Industrial Revolution, which left a profound mark in 19th
century Spanish
Catalonia, there appeared the working and bourgeois classes. This historical
process, which was spearheaded in Catalonia primarily by the textile sector, barely
spread, however, through the rest of Spain with the exception of the Basque Country
(heavy metallurgy). As yet another important political and economic difference,
it should be mentioned that the Catalan bourgeoisie professed a lively protectionist
stance, contrary to the prevailing free trade position in Spain, and for this reason,
to a large extent, the Catalans ended up gaining, or strengthening, their awareness
of belonging to a differentiated group within the Spanish socio-political system.
Although this social class shared the growing regionalist-nationalist feelings, and
especially the middle and petty bourgeoisie played a key role in safeguarding and
claiming the rights of the Catalan language, the working class, the other social class
to emerge from industrialisation and, more generally, the popular classes as a
whole, played a no less important role in maintaining loyalty to the language. Thus,
while the latter decisively helped to conserve the massive use of Catalan throughout
the entire linguistic domain (as can be witnessed, for example, in the resounding
success of Catalan popular theatre and the great circulation achieved by newsLLIBRE
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papers in colloquial Catalan), during the second half of the 19th
century the petty and
middle bourgeoisie, unlike the meagre high bourgeoisie, which was often broadly
diglossic or Spanish-speaking, decided to recover for Catalan its ancient prestige
and confer on it the normality that other more or less neighbouring contemporary
languages enjoyed.
This is when the theorising began on the relationship between the Catalan language
and the Catalan nation, between the independent linguistic-literary tradition
and Catalan nationalism. The bourgeoisie in Catalonia wasted no time in generating
its own political groups, both Catalanist and branches of the major Spanish parties,
unlike their counterparts in the Valencian Country and Majorca, which were very
loosely organised on territorially-related community issues. Although the latter
accepted the options offered to them by the Spanish bourgeoisie (the alternating conservative
and liberal parties of the day, during the Restoration: 1874-1931), the Catalan
bourgeoisie felt uncomfortable in the centralist and oligarchic Spanish system.
For this reason, taking advantage of the tremendous spiritual and political crisis in the
aftermath of the 1898 disaster (loss of the last Spanish colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico
and the Philippines) and the sudden disappearance of four centuries of Spanish
empire, it rallied around a new political party that existed solely within Catalonia: the
Regionalist League (Lliga Regionalista). This league, which was socially conservative,
was the predominant party in Catalonia until the advent of the Second Spanish
Republic in 1931, and upon its creation in 1901, it unabashedly dismembered the
political system of the prevailing caciquismo in Catalonia,23
which was characterised
by its corrupt and petty local leaders and would endure around Spain as a whole until
the end of the Restoration. It is also towards the turn of the century when the term
nationalism, which one way or another views Catalonia first and then Spain, began
to be widely used, referring more consciously to political Catalanism, largely replacing
the previous term regionalism.
However, political Catalanism was increasingly popular and went beyond its conservative
current, something that became crystal clear as of the proclamation of the
Second Spanish Republic on 14th
April 1931, when the Republican Left Party of Catalonia
(Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) became the hegemonic political party in
Catalonia until the dramatic end of the republican period in 1939. Thus, in the early
20th
century, Catalanism encompassed a wide variety of trends and nuances, many
of which would lay down their roots in the beginnings of this political movement half
a century later. In addition to the regionalists (today, in Spain, perhaps, they should
be called autonomists because of the present-day political system of the ‘autonomous
23
Translator’s Note: caciquismo (from the Taino language of the Dominican Republic cacique
‘tribal, small king’): a kind of local despotism, clientelism.
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communities or lands’), and the nationalists (the most radical of whom demanded
independence), there were also federalists, many of them republicans and even the
extreme-right Carlists or legitimist branch of the Spanish Bourbons. As proof of this,
the unitary candidacy of Catalan Solidarity (Solidaritat Catalana), which included this
broad spectrum with the exception of the two traditional Spanish pro-monarchy parties
– the liberals and conservatives – and the populist republicans of Alejandro Lerroux,
became a Catalanist wave that swept the general elections of 1907 and gained
41 of the 44 seats at stake for Catalonia. Since then and up to the present times, the
map of the political forces in Catalonia throughout the various democratic periods has
always, constantly and significantly, been different from that of Spain, and is one of
Catalonia’s most notable particularities.
In a parallel fashion, throughout the 19th
century the Catholic Church in Catalonia
had gradually forged close relations with Catalanism, in addition to ideologically
influencing it (as did, for example, the Bishop of Vic, Josep Torras i Bages), and also
supported many of their causes, such as the conservation of Catalan civil law and the
recovery of the Catalan language. In addition to the clergy who studied the language
(Antoni M. Alcover, from Majorca) or cultivated the literature (Jacint Verdaguer, from
Catalonia proper), in the shift from the 19th
to the 20th
century we can witness the
activities of bishops who stood openly in defence of the Catalan language as a language
of preaching and catechism, both before the Spanish government and before
the Vatican itself.
Nonetheless, despite the widespread popularity that Catalanism enjoyed at the
dawning of the 20th
century, the influence of the working class should not be forgotten,
as it was often resistant to regionalist-nationalist causes. Thus, the anarcho-syndicalist
movement, very influential in Catalonia in the first few decades of the 20th
century,
would in general scorn the Catalanist projects in favour of more or less utopian
self-sufficient communes, proletarian internationalism and the disappearance of
states, while some radical politician, such as the aforementioned Lerroux, would
attempt to fashion himself as the champion of a demagogic Spanish nationalism and
use the Catalanist ideology with the aim of dividing and even opposing Catalans by
birth and by adoption.
In summary, we can claim that it was in Catalonia where the movement of the
Renaixença reached its full potential. Not only did it increase the literary cultivation
of Catalan, but also the social and public use of the language ended up becoming an
external sign of prestige and began to spread throughout all areas of life, with the
exception of the official spheres. This realm continued to be reserved exclusively for
Spanish until the second decade of the 20th
century, when the so-called Commonwealth
of Catalonia (Mancomunitat de Catalunya: 1914-1925) was formed, an association
of the four Catalan provincial councils (in Spanish, Diputaciones Provinciales)
which would become the first test run at political autonomy in contemporary CataloLLIBRE
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nia. Starting with the Renaixença, then, Catalan and the culture it encompassed
would be viewed afresh, and this movement, originally literary in nature, would manage
to have a significant translation into the political realm and was accepted not only
by the ruling bourgeoisie of Catalonia but also by very broad sectors of the popular
classes.
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THE RENAIXENÇA IN THE LAND
OF VALENCIA, THE BALEARICS,
NORTHERN CATALONIA
AND ALGHERO (19TH
CENTURY)
A
s discussed in the previous chapter, the renaixencistes’ programme did not
spread equally around all Catalan-speaking lands. Thus, while it is not difficult
to discover the profound mark that the Renaixença left on many of the
cultural and political changes that took place in Catalonia between the end of the 19th
and beginning of the 20th
century (and which in some ways endure until today), on
the Balearic Islands and especially in the Land of Valencia, and Northern Catalonia
this movement had considerably fewer consequences because of far less solid ideological
and popular ground.
Interestingly, the first halting steps of the Renaixença in the Land of Valencia
were consolidated thanks to the efforts of a Majorcan, Marià Aguiló, who, taking
advantage of his stay in the city of Valencia as director of the provincial library,
organised Jocs Florals or Floral Games in 1859, the same year in which they were
restored in Barcelona, which led the renaixencistes from the three main Catalanspeaking
regions to converge for the first time. On this occasion, the Catalan Víctor
Balaguer was awarded, along with the young Valencian poets Teodor Llorente and
Vicent W. Querol. Nevertheless, as of 1865, Llorente, who would come to be
viewed as the patriarch of the Valencian Renaixença, began to clearly distance himself
from the attempts of some Catalan activists, such as the aforementioned Balaguer,
to channel the literary renaissance into a possible political resurgence. Thereafter,
relations between the Valencian Renaixença on the one hand and the Catalan
and Majorcan Renaixença on the other hand would cool, while in a parallel fashion
the coinciding ideologies of the Valencian Renaixença and the Provençal Félibrige,
headed by Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914), who envisioned the literary cultivation of
the language more as a pleasant aesthetic and practically private entertainment,
would be enhanced. This attitude, however, led these two Valencian poets of bourgeois
extraction, despite their prestige, to be regarded locally as elitist snobs, and
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