"by mere chance"
Is that your opinion, or do the Catalonians and people outside Spain agree?
Is that your opinion, or do the Catalonians and people outside Spain agree?
Franco, being the same horrible dictator that killed a lot of innocent people, favoured actively Catalonia's economy over other provinces, for decades.
Is true that he discouraged them to speak in Catalonian language, but also discouraged people to speak in Galician language (and Franco was born in Galicia). At the same time give them priority in the efforts to rebuild industry and infraestructures after the civil war. Catalonia is richest than other parts of Spain, in part because Franco wanted 1) having a cluster of industries next European frontiers and roads to trade and obtain foreign divises easily, 2) money from tourism 3) conjurate the revolts giving the area a special silk-hand treatment after the first iron years passed.
Specially in the late stages of franquism, a massive exodus of workers from other parts of Spain migrated and stablished in Catalonia atracted by the favourable conditions to work and live and the "smell of freedom".
I'm aware that this counts as black heressy for millions of young people in the area, but well... nobody will stop them to read history books about post-war if they want. Ask your grandpa. Everybody in Spain has an uncle or some cousins in Barcelona.
Oppression is not something allowing you to became one of the more modern and rich places in the country; oppresion, to me, is what happened to Extremadura in the same period for example.
Anyway, I wasn't completely aware of that part of the history, thanks.
That said I don't quite agree that Catalonia wasn't oppressed. I'm not qualified to say which regions were oppressed the most, but economic prosperity isn't the opposite of oppression. If anything the real dark truth is that oppressive authoritarian dictatorships can be quite effective, and even prosperous.
Part of my family is Galician, I'm Portuguese myself. Still, instead of breaking Spain apart I would actually prefer to see the whole of Iberia working together as a union.
The main problem seems to be where the capital would be placed since only Castilians would want Madrid. I only wish that we could agree on a small but memorable place like Santiago de Compostela as centre for that union.
Fragmented even more, our Iberia has little voting power in regards to negotiating with France and Germany in the European Union. If Catalunya has to separate, so let it be. In the end of the day we are all together on the same boat, can only wish that we could row together too.
This was the reason why Portugal split from a joint Spanish kingdom centuries ago.
Then we should see the foreign interests. France and UK profit from fragmentation in Iberia. Smaller countries are easier to place against each other instead of being an economical threat to them. Portugal remains a strong UK ally over the centuries while Spain sides with France, and now further fragmented as Madrid doesn't open the hand to a decentralized model.
Really sad. People in Iberia consider themselves more or less as part of the same family (which is true to large extent). We should be working together.