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Comment by username223 | Hacker News Reader

Not just protectionism, but a sort of micro-nationalism that Americans haven't seen, because we don't have much history. For example, Spain calls itself a nation, but Catalonia recently tried to secede, and if you visit, you'll hear most people speaking Catalan. The Basques were recently blowing things up (ETA). And Leon resents Castile enough that you will see road signs spray-painted with "solo Leon" (only Leon), because "Castilla y Leon" was made into a single province.

Europe is an old place, for better and worse. I question this stuff, but I won't judge it.

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In Barcelona, capital of Catalunya, most of what you'll hear is Spanish, not Catalan. That does happen in some smaller cities or towns, though.

Thanks for the correction. Most of my time in Catalunya was in the Pyrenees, which would explain my bias.

" In Barcelona, capital of Catalunya, most of what you'll hear is Spanish, not Catalan."

Sorry if I may seem pedantic, but there is no such thing as "Spanish" language (at least not inside Spain).

The language you are talking about is actually called "castellano" (Castilian).

Spanish language is Castilian spoken by non-castilian people.

While the Basque conflict was mostly about identity, and the Catalonian one is half about identity and half about economics, the Leon conflict is sheer economics.

The region took an economic hit during the 80s as the country transitioned to a tertiary-sector-heavy economy, which lumped together with the lack of investments from the new regional government and their inability to perform any sort of industrial restructuring quickly turned Leon from one of the most prosperous regions in the country to one of the least.

Basically the same issues and politics you see in coal country in the States.

Small correction: Castilla y Leon is not a single province, it is an autonomous community that consists of nine provinces, one of which is Leon.

Thanks. That sort of proves my point: when you have millenia of history, things are complicated.

While that is factually correct, the reference in the name of the autonomous community isn't to the city or the province, but to the Leon region [0], which expands to the south of the province, following old demarcations, and older language areas and finally the borders of the Kingdom of Leon [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3n_(historical_region) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Le%C3%B3n

Castile and Leon is an autonomous community, not a province.

I don't know if you're from Castile or from Leon, but I clearly screwed up by calling it a province instead of an autonomous community (or "nation," "mini-nation," or "sub-nation"?). As I wrote above, we (mostly) depopulated and repopulated a continent only a few centuries ago, so our history weighs much less than yours.

>micro-nationalism

Isn't that called regionalism?

It is, but in Spain's case it is sometimes nationalism too, as the Spanish Crown rules over several different old independent kingdoms which have cultural differences and languages that stem directly from Latin (ex. Euskera).

I don't know where academics put the bar, but in my mind any area that has its own non-dialect language or was once an independent entity for a good while can claim to be a nation. Though not sure what the claim would mean in practice.

That said, I'd rather see all these things die down and have a strong EU of federated states of whichever size helps democratic and economic progress. Tall order, I know.

>languages that stem directly from Latin (ex. Euskera).

Euskara is a language isolate. It is is unrelated to any other known living language.

>in my mind any area that has its own non-dialect language or was once an independent entity for a good while can claim to be a nation.

Dialect vs language is often a political decision, so even that criteria is subjective.

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