Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the Royal Spanish Academy, received his peers from the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Teresa Cabré, at a round table at the International Congress of the Spanish Language; and from the Royal Galician Academy, Víctor Freixanes, in a historic meeting: never before had the academies of Spanish languages ??had a public or private meeting. The event, which Adolfo Arejita, secretary of the Euskaltzaindia, was unable to attend at the last minute, ended with Freixanes’ invitation to repeat the event every six months. Something like the one who goes to dinner with some friends and when saying goodbye he says “hey, we have to see each other more”.
The act could not have been friendlier. Muñoz Machado opened the session with an explanation of the language policy of the Kingdom of Spain in the last 46 years of democracy. He summarized what the Constitution says and what the autonomy statutes say, explained what the concept of linguistic normality is and what legal reasons it responds to and, above all, recalled that the courts have supported almost all regional policies dedicated to promoting this normalization. The conflicts, focused above all on educational policies, were exposed with a professional distance. Only at the end of the colloquium did Muñoz Machado leave legal language behind and move on to political-moral language: “We regret any aggression [against your languages]. We feel that you are fellow travelers. To the extent that you have that feeling of discrimination, [we will do what possible for] the debt to remain settled”
In the middle, Cabré and Freixanes made their exposure of historical grievances with the same reasonable and fraternal attitude, without much emphasis. Cabré wondered “how to structure linguistic coexistence in Spain” and described a reality outside of politics in which the vast majority of Catalan citizens do not feel that Spanish and Catalan culture are confronting realities. “If the reality is like this and we all defend plurality, why don’t we get this to be a really implanted and generalized idea? Perhaps there are factors that we need to delve into. We are not doing something right.”
And Víctor Freixanes, a powerful and good-humored speaker, gave him the answer a few minutes later, recalling an Andalusian exile who explained his experience in America, alongside Galicians, Catalans, Madrid and Aragonese: “We all make the same trip. We are very different but as we get to know each other, prejudices and fears end.The day a child from Almería understands that Salvador Espriu and Álvaro Cunqueiro belong to him, without this meaning that he has to learn to speak Catalan or Galician… That One day we will have solved the basic problem”.
Freijanes explained the concept of dysglossia (the idea that there is a language for domestic use, a second language, and another for public life) and applied it to the case of Galician. But no grudges. The director of the Royal Galician Academy referred to Spanish as a “sister language” and later said that “see you in six months.” Made.
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