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Linguistic and cultural crisis in Galicia, Spain
Abstract
To truly understand Spain, one must have more than just a basic knowledge of the country's physical features or general traditions. If one investigates further into the history of ethnology of the name that is Spain, one discovers an intricate network of individual worlds that somehow revolve around one center, Madrid. Each "patria chica" or "miniature country" is a product of its location within the Peninsula, and each conserves its own institutions, values, and idiosyncracies. Today, the autonomous regions of Spain maintain and cherish their individuality with a certain degree of liberty thanks to the Constitution of 1978. Soon after the Reconquest of Iberia, the Catholic Sovereigns attained the unity of Spain. Consequently, the Castilian dialect of Latin became the official language of Spain and its overseas territories. The central power of Castile began its persecution of the regions. Castile succeeded greatly in homogenizing Spain by suppressing the very source of identity of its ethnic peoples--language. The installation of the Castilian language marked a new era in Spanish history. The linguistic supremacy of Castilian effectively arrested the cultural growth of the "atrias chicas" until very recently. Ample evidence of this is the virtual loss of the Leonese, Aragonese, Asturian, Navarrese, and Andalusian dialects of Latin along with the 400-year-old dialectalization of the Galician, Catalan, and Basque languages. Castilian dominance of Spain greatly degraded the state of education in Catalonia, Euzkadi, and Galicia. Not only did people from these regions lose an enormous part of their heritage, but Galicia, in particular, became the unwilling victim of generations of illiteracy and poverty. The year 1975 has come to represent the renaissance of the ethnic Spanish regions. Today, the historic autonomies of Spain can finally step out of the Castilian shadow and rediscover their pasts. One objective for them is certain--they must place their own languages at the forefront of their efforts to preserve their cultures. Their languages are their past, present, and future. Just how they will use them in this age of increasing global unity may make the future an interesting new era in Spain's history.
Subject Area
Cultural anthropology|Romance literature|European history|Multicultural Education
Recommended Citation
Arias-Gonzalez, Pedro, "Linguistic and cultural crisis in Galicia, Spain" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9132811.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9132811