Controversy over an RTVE program about the history of Spanish
The deputy Vicenç Vidal accuses the public channel of spreading an "Spanish ultranationalist" narrative and demands a rectification or the withdrawal of the program
PalmaThe deputy for MÉS per Mallorca and Més per Menorca in Congress, Vicenç Vidal, has called on RTVE to rectify or eliminate the program La gran aventura de la lengua española, broadcast in collaboration with the Royal Spanish Academy, considering that it disseminates a narrative that is “Spanish ultranationalist” and “contrary to the multilingual reality of the State”.
Vidal has registered several parliamentary initiatives to demand explanations from the public corporation and has focused on what he considers a worrying drift of a medium financed with public money. In this regard, he calls for an immediate rectification, or withdrawal, of the program.
According to the ecosocialist deputy, the content of the series presents the history of the Spanish language in a way that “whitewashes processes of linguistic colonization” and undermines the cultural and linguistic diversity of both the State and Latin America.
“The most serious thing is that this is done by a public medium that we all pay for. RTVE cannot become a loudspeaker for Spanish linguistic nationalism that presents Spanish as a superior language and others as an anecdote,” he denounced.
Vidal maintains that the program contradicts the academic consensus in sociolinguistics and decades of studies on linguistic minoritization of languages such as Catalan, Galician, Basque, Asturian, Aragonese, and Occitan of Aran.
“When the expansion of Spanish is presented as an epic adventure without explaining the prohibitions, persecutions, and assimilation policies, it is not disseminating information; it is making propaganda,” he added.
The Majorcan deputy also argued that Catalan, “spoken by millions of people and native to territories such as the Balearic Islands,” cannot be subordinated to a narrative that identifies Spain with a single language and culture.
Finally, he expressed support for the entities and citizens who have criticized the program and insisted that RTVE must act responsibly as a public service.
