Spanish conferences, like the one held in Cadiz last week, bring together diverse people. On the one hand, there are those who are dying to occupy one of the RAE seats. Whether they have managed to be invited as speakers, or whether they have had to settle for the category of assistants, they queue up to be seen and take pictures.
On the other hand, there are the guests who want to make history with a ten-minute speech in the midst of almost three hundred others. They are people from all Spanish-speaking corners, who give human photography colors that contrast with the European greyness.
And finally there are those who go there to sell their project. They scratch their pockets to pay for tickets and hotel and make their way through a crowd of chauffeured luxury cars every time they go to the conference palace to hear a debate.
One of these people is the philologist José Antonio Sierra. At 86 years old, the teacher from Ãvila is pursuing a dream he had when he was young: that all the languages ​​of Spain be taught in the language schools of the State. Voluntarily, of course, and as long as there is enough demand, because Sierra claims that all these languages ​​are Spanish.
The professor founded the Spanish Cultural Institute in Dublin in 1971, which he directed for more than two decades, until it became the Cervantes Institute. During Franco’s time, he was already considered an enlightened person, because he wanted to offer Catalan, Galician and Basque courses in Dublin, when there were none in Spain – and there are none – outside the bilingual lands. At the Cádiz congress, he told me that it was paradoxical that many interventions talked about the coexistence of the peninsular languages ​​and, on the other hand, in Andalusia, for example, there was no official place to learn Catalan.
Professor Sierra’s approach appeared in some of the sessions that addressed coexistence between the languages ​​of the State. Those who formulated it were people who, like him, are looking for a solution of respect and understanding for non-dominant languages ​​and cultures. They are a minority, needless to say.
Politicians continue to ignore the problem. The mess caused by the autonomous communities where Catalan is spoken does not belong to the central government, they say. However, when it comes to the marginalization suffered by the 50 million Spanish speakers who live in the United States, then they will use all possible tools to combat it. Faced with this double measure, it seems that the Spanish political class is delighted with the minoritization of Catalan and, therefore, avoids studying it.
As long as linguistic coexistence is not addressed as a constructive and enriching debate, Pell de Brau will continue to run into new obstacles.
