Another language that is kept in life support with the taxes of all the citizens of the country for no clear benefit to the country as a whole.
Although an AI engine would probably consider this 'better' and 'more efficient' this doesn't mean it's morally the right thing to do.
Why specially Spain?
Funny considering Catalonia pays more in taxes than Madrid.
Citation here -> https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/27/europe/catalan-referendum-exp...
Note that the nationalists have made no proposal for a Constitutional change in that way.
As a matter of fact, quite a few have been held:
* Basque Country, 1979-10-25: Referéndum sobre el proyecto de Estatuto de Autonomía para el País Vasco * Catalonia, 1979-10-25: Referéndum sobre el Estatuto de Autonomía de Cataluña * Andalusia, 1980-02-28: Referéndum sobre la iniciativa del proceso autonómico de Andalucía * Galicia, 1980-12-21: Referendum sobre el Estatuto de Autonomía de Galicia * Andalusia, 1981-10-20: Referéndum sobre el Estatuto de Autonomía de Andalucía * Catalonia, 2006-06-18: Referéndum sobre la reforma del Estatuto de Autonomía de Cataluña * Andalusia, 2007-02-18: Referéndum sobre la reforma del Estatuto de Autonomía de Andalucía
Actually, Spain forbids independence clearly in its Constitution, as it is illegal in many other countries, like the USA for example.
First, comparing the autonomous communities to states is ludicrous. The legal standing is very different.
> updating their “estatuto de autonomía”
This is technically part of the Spanish constitution, not that it matters because they're never uphold.
But in this case there was not enough international support as more countries (especially in Europe) didn't want to ignite their local independence movements.
Now, try to secede from the USA and see what happens. Almost all countries have in their Constitutions provisions against secession.
The Catalans still have a national day to remember how they were defeated by the Spanish armies and lost their institutions and laws. This will remind them at least yearly that they were once independent.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Day_of_Catalonia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Barcelona_(1713–1714)
And it is not like there are no secession movements in the USA:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_secession_movements
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_Cal...
Although I agree the case to be independent must be really strong in the USA for it to work and won't happen soon.
And see cases like Taiwan which are still in limbo.
In the end it is about acceptance by the international community which will decide what is a country and what not.
The war was not because of some “state rights” or whatever you’d like to say, it was a fight for the Spanish Crown between two European Royal Families. If Aragon nobles chose with such bad luck that they were in the losing side, that’s Human History.
The question is if this is the majority or a loud minority. But without a proper referendum we will never know exactly. But how they vote in regional elections seem to be that most are more separatist.
That's from 2021. the legality isn't in question, what was said was specifically about taxes.
Here there are some better sources: [1]
1: https://datosmacro.expansion.com/estado/presupuestos/espana-...
2: https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20211013/presupuestos-inversion...
(1) lists "Cataluña" as the first in revenue
(2) doesn't mention revenue at all, but transfers back to the region.
That doesn't make it inaccurate. It's also still true according to Spains own budget so, I don't understand the point.
> Please, be advised that the push for independence referendum in 2017 was illegal, as the autonomous communities can’t organize referendums (as per the Spanish Constitution).
This has no relevance to the discussion.
> Note that the nationalists have made no proposal for a Constitutional change in that way.
And this is actually a lie. They did, they compromised to something that could be passed, it got approved, and then it was completely ignored anyway.
especially while Spain continues to waste money on entertainment consisting of animal cruelty
What? Roads, schools, subsidised healthcare. Even the next sentence is a non-sequitur. You're talking crap.
Obviously they do provide value and that value can often be defined as indirect monetary return. There’s also value for the country that is not easy to monetize in money terms, such as more education helping voters be less manipulable.
Just because you don't see the benefit of the language and culture of a distinct region being maintained by its own people, doesn't mean there isn't any.
The world would certainly be worse off if we lost all the diversity in it because people only see things in terms of investment/gain but are blind to the richness of allowing people to maintain their heritage.
Besides which the only part of the article that mentions taxes is when aomeone mentioned Andorra being an independent nation and paying less taxes to be autonomous than the people of Val d'Aran pay to Spain. Additionally Catalonia, where they speak Catalan, has been trying to separate from Spain. If anything, these languages are not in "life support" at the cost of all the citizens of the nation, they are actually paying more taxes due to being a part of said nation and have all the right to keep their language- especially so given the history of the region when it comes to their treatment by "the country as a whole".
Nitpicking: Andorra doesn't "pay tax to be autonomous" to Spain, nor to France for that matters. Andorra is the oldest country in Europe whose borders haven't changed since it was created (1278). It's a tiny country but it's a sovereign country. It has its own parliament and its official language (which is neither spanish nor french but catalan).
Andorrans pay less taxes because Andorra is autonomous.
San Marino is older, but I'm not sure if its borders have changed.
In the las regional elections party with the most votes was a non-independence party: Ciutadans.
> Pro-independence parties gained a majority of the votes for the first time in an election and increased their parliamentary majority
You might be thinking about the 2017 election, but even then, the fact that Ciutadans had the most votes had to do with the pro-independence parties being split.
In the last election, the parties with the most votes were PSC (23,04%), ERC(21,3%) and JxCat (20,04%). PSC is unionist, where ERC and JxCat are separatist. Ciutadans (radically unionist) merely got 5,57% of the votes.
You can check the results at https://www.lavanguardia.com/elecciones/autonomicas-cataluna... or https://resultados.elpais.com/elecciones/2021/autonomicas/09...
There is a Georgian saying for this type of behaviour: do not disgrace your whole nation(with your personal arrogant attitude).
I don't disagree with your position in the abstract, but I think its a little too rigid for a world growing both increasingly "small" and contactable in all spaces, yet parochial in terms of people wanting to hold onto their local traditions.
The two can in fact coincide, if everyone realizes that seeking total homogeneity isnt that great of a goal, even if it helps 'scaling'.
I'm not, but I speak 7 languages. I can tell you they are not just "tools for communication". They are expressions of culture and you can see in them how people think.
There are things I can say in Spanish that I can't say in German or Japanese, not because of lack of vocabulary (well, that too) but because the concepts just don't translate. And this happens in both directions.
Even my behavior changes when I'm speaking some languages.
Edit: it goes without saying but I believe that that diversity of cultures is a great thing we should cherish.
This is something that’s really difficult for folks to comprehend if they don’t speak more than one language but it’s a known phenomenon.
https://qz.com/977356/being-bilingual-makes-you-experience-t...
English is one of my native languages yes.
> I'm not, but I speak 7 languages. I can tell you they are not just "tools for communication". They are expressions of culture and you can see in them how people think.
> There are things I can say in Spanish that I can't say in German or Japanese, not because of lack of vocabulary (well, that too) but because the concepts just don't translate. And this happens in both directions.
> Even my behavior changes when I'm speaking some languages.
People attribute these differences to language, but I think that's mixing up cause and effect. Learning Japanese has meant learning a whole new culture and new ways of thinking - but those ways of thinking seem to be far more part of the Japanese culture than they are part of the Japanese language - e.g. even when speaking English, Japanese people will generally express those same concepts and modes (quite successfully, even when they're "objectively" untranslatable).
Put it this way: not only would I say that the difference between my behaviour and interaction pattern when talking to a Japanese person in English and a Welsh person in English is bigger than the difference between talking to a Welsh person in English and a Welsh person in Welsh, I'd say that the difference between talking to a Welsh person in English in Wales and talking to a Welsh person in English in Japan (in a culturally Japanese context like a workplace - perhaps not in the tourist spots) is bigger than the difference between talking to a Welsh person in English and talking to a Welsh person in Welsh.
> Edit: it goes without saying but I believe that that diversity of cultures is a great thing we should cherish.
Hmm. I think many cultures have valuable things that are worth preserving, and in some cases valuable things from different cultures are incompatible with each other and so must be preserved separately, and a monoculture carries a risk of catastrophe. But I don't believe in diversity as an end in itself; if there's some cultural practice that is simply bad and has better alternatives, I think it would be crazy to insist on preserving it just for the sake of it.
The language you speak when you grow up forms your cultural identity. I'm not sure which came first, that the language structure formed the culture or that the culture formed the language, but I think there's some truth to the statement.
A language is the key to another culture, and it's the first step to understanding them.
Anyway, braf gweld siaradwr Cymraeg arall yma! (nice to see another Welsh speaker here!)
I agree that there's a mix of cause and effect in what I said. Language and culture are intertwined and I don't know how to describe them in a "systems" perspective (how one affects the other). It's just my experience that language has a lot of the culture embedded in it, and even if you didn't grow up in the culture you acquire some of its traits when you speak it.
> But I don't believe in diversity as an end in itself; if there's some cultural practice that is simply bad and has better alternatives, I think it would be crazy to insist on preserving it just for the sake of it.
Having multiple ways of looking at one situation is enriching by itself. This is because it's a case of not knowing what you don't know, so you a priori you should aim to maximize your exposure to different cultures. There are some exceptions (e.g. I don't think it's worth it to keep or spread the Spanish practice of bullfighting), but they make a small part of what the world's cultures can bring us.
Not really. Or, they are, but that's not their primary purpose. (When we need to communicate precisely we use highly specialized technical jargon or math, not natural human languages.)
Nowadays, taxpayers money funds institutions that preserve and promote Castillian.
Maybe don’t try to kill languages and life support won’t be needed.
Also, it makes more sense to spend in preserving something fragile than to promote something already popular and strong.
I am inclined to think it is not the taxpayers money that you are after
Unfortunately, most don't see it that way. All those partisan attitudes make me sad.