The Catalans have always taken advantage of Spain when it has interested them
(Bad luck to have had these people in Catalonia)
Catalonia and Spanish nationalism LA VANGUARDIA 03/13/2017
Juan Luis Marfany, historian.
Was the “Renaissance” in Catalan resurgimiento?
On the contrary, the intellectuals of the Renaissance were the precursors of modern Spanish nationalism.
Because?
Because they were looking for a patriotic justification to help Catalan manufacturers, who already dominated the Hispanic market, close it to the next English competition. This Spanish patriotism began in Catalonia at the end of the 18th century when the Catalan bourgeoisie saw the opportunity to dominate the Spanish market in the process of unification and began to manufacture and sell there.
Was this how the mythical Catalan traveler was born?
The Catalans cross the Peninsula and establish new ties between cities in Spain and not only with Barcelona, but with Catalan towns such as Calaf or Copons.
Catalonia was filled with factories and Spain with Catalans selling products.
This economic takeoff was creating a network of commercial and personal relationships that accustomed Catalans to thinking of Spain not as a kingdom, but as a nation.
And the heart always follows the wallet.
Marx said that nationalism is learned in the markets, and this would be another example.
It was becoming a Spanish homeland.
It was created, yes, but when the Catalans became Spanish patriots without hesitation, it was when they defeated the French in the War of Independence.
Any documentary example?
The case of Torelló de Igualada is paradigmatic. They had been written in Catalan for decades and suddenly, overnight in 1809, the notary Albert Combelles, his brother-in-law and custodian of the great Catalan fortunes, switched to Spanish. And with him, everyone. Because? For patriotism. Spanish at that time was the language of the homeland in danger from French. And also many other families of the Catalan upper bourgeoisie.
And the common people?
Many still speak Catalan, but those who are moving up the social ladder are also switching to Spanish. We are talking about a process of generations, of course, and with innumerable and diffuse stages and borders.
Were the people also Spanishist?
Being that it was the most popular then. A callista named Navarro, for example, advertised in a Barcelona newspaper in 1840 as “Spanish Callista.” He made his country with his feet
Also indicative of that dominant sentiment is another Catalan manufacturer that advertises its Spanish trusses as “National Industry.”
They responded – apparently – to feel popular.
And the history of the educated elites: you can see it if you review the literature of the time.
We’ll see.
A fact would be that Milá and Fontanals were the creators of Spanish nationalism and Aribau, the creator of the Ode to the Fatherland…
What gives its name to a main street…
Well, actually it was neither ode nor homeland. Aribau wrote, in good Spanish, a careful work that was very celebrated at the time, as Joaquim Rubio i Ors or Víctor Balaguer also wrote in Spanish.
What was the Spanish project of the Catalan industrialists and intellectuals?
They wanted to build an efficient, modern and industrial Spain.
Well, nowadays they are not widely read.
Because this literary production by Catalan authors in Spanish has remained in no man’s land: here it is not considered proper and outside of Catalonia it has not been valued like that of other authors.
That’s the bad thing about staying in the middle.
It’s just that they weren’t in the middle then. Spanish nationalism and its patriotism were widely shared in Catalonia.
But it didn’t last forever.
Noucentisme arrived, the Mancomunitat, and then the failure of Spain’s regenerationist attempts from Catalonia.
That’s another history…
For which Catalan intellectuals recreated another nationalist narrative: Catalan nationalism.
We are manufacturing cracks and also selling nationalisms.
Not only. Catalanness has been expressed in Spanish and Catalan in very different ways: betting on a king; believe in regionalism at the service of Spain or, in short, in one’s own nationalism.
House builders.
Catalonia was also the first Spanish cultural market and its great printing industry.
And, since then, Barcelona continues to be the world capital of Spanish-language publishing.
But everything I have explained does not prejudge the future. History is not prescriptive; It doesn’t dictate anything: it explains how we got to where we are, but nothing more.
But those who want to dominate the future try to change history.
I’m afraid you’re right about that and it’s fatal for history and politics.