Subject: on language and separatism

on linguist vol-6 - 955 , jelly julia ( julia @ let . rug . nl ) says : " basque and catalan separatism is not based on language . why do we never hear " anything about galician separatism on the iberian peninsula ? galician is a " language very different from spanish ( and not so different from portuguese ) . " the name of the region is galicia and is part of spain . galician is a language " much older than spanish itself : it was used for poetry and by the kings in " ancient times . still , we do not hear a lot about galician separatism . neither " do we hear anything about leonese separatism , aragonese separatism , andalusian " separatism , simply because it does not exist . separatism on the peninsula has " nothing to do with language . it has everything to do with historic rights of " old kingdoms . galician separatism exists . it just simply does n't reach the news because galician separatists ( a minority ) have n't killed people , even though they ' ve tried to on a couple of occasions . on the contrary , galician separatists ( and federalists ) have been killed by the spanish army and police ( during franco 's uprising and regime ) . there are galician separatists in the jails of the spanish kingdom . the spiral of stret and institutional violence is benefitial to the western democratic states . separatism in the iberian peninsula , as elsewhere , has to do with the way peoples view ( or are led to view ) their own identity in opposition to other identities . language is most often , if not always , an issue . as for galiza , to the extent that the spanish state is able to keep the lid on the language issue by taming the language of galiza ( portuguese ) and turning it into a domestic " galician " , no problem - - galiza won't reach the news . galiza , as many other minorized cultures of the world , is caught between two states : spain and portugal . what the kingdom of spain and , particularly , its representatives in galiza ( the majority of the local political and intellectual elites ) can't cope with is the fact that another state 's language , portuguese , is spoken ( and written as such , by a small fraction of the elites ) within spanish territory . legislative , administrative , and judicial measures have been taken to silence some intellectuals , writers , and teachers who support , with rational arguments , the view that " galician " is just a set of regional and social varieties of portuguese , and therefore it should be written with the portuguese orthography . these acts of actual repression , discrimination and censorship by the mechanisms of the spanish state do n't reach the news either . the situation of the " language question " in galiza nowadays is the furthest one could imagine from a civilized , technical and political debate on how to articulate and reconcile galician identity / ies with galiza 's language . it is discouraging and worrisome to see how the term " reintegrationist " , which refers to those who seek the effective recognition of galician as a part of its natural linguistic domain , portuguese , is being thrown around as an insult in public and academic discourse . i should clarify that the separatist / reintegrationist lines intersect each other . that is , there are galician separatists or nationalists who are reintegrationists and use the portuguese orthography , and then there are other separatists and nationalists who are very happy with the institutionally-supported view of galician as a " separate language " to be written , however , with a spanish - based orthography . in the meantime , galician portuguese is being learned less and less as a first language . but that 's not the real issue . celso alvarez - caccamo lxalvarz @ udc . es
