The islanders who hid Catalan from their children

PalmIn the 1960s, some islanders were hid by their parents. This is the case of 60-year-old inquero Jaume Payeras Alzina. "My three siblings and I were spoken to in Spanish as children. Both my father and mother are very Mallorcan. The decision not to teach us Catalan was largely his own doing. He came from a shoemaking industrial family and thought that Spanish was more dignified. My mother, who was the daughter of a dentist, was a bit strange, but not at that time. It was a matter of social status."

The four siblings also ended up speaking Spanish among themselves due to the influence of a housekeeper from Murcia. "She was part of the generation of peninsular people who settled in Inca in the 1960s to work in the shoe factories. She took care of our daily lives, as their mother worked as an administrator in the family business." Very soon, little Jaime realized the anomaly: "My parents spoke to each other in Catalan. When, however, they spoke to us, they did so in Spanish. It was a completely artificial, inauthentic Spanish. Some families in our cobblestone had the same linguistic behavior with their children. San Francisco."

Linguistic Shame

Jaume's linguistic awareness was awakened especially in 1979, at the age of 14. "I asked my parents to let me start the first year of secondary school at the Berenguer High School in Anoia. It had opened nine years earlier as the first secondary school in Raiguer. All my siblings went too. It was a breath of fresh air, an oasis of freedom in the midst of the Transition, with teachers committed to ours." That year was the first in which all subjects were taught in Catalan. "Most of the teachers were from the PSM, among them Joan Lacomba and the Rayó brothers, Pere and Jerònia. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed to speak Spanish, being from Mallorca. I didn't want my classmates to think I was a foreigner." Learning came easily. "At Sant Francesc, I had already learned a little Catalan in a subject called 'Mallorcan.' And I was doing well. At Berenguer, however, I discovered there were quite a few words I didn't know. This made me very uncomfortable in class."

The next step was to speak Catalan within the family. "It was a gradual and very difficult process. I asked the parents why they had denied us their language. My mother was the one who lamented it the most. My father, on the other hand, didn't give it much importance because it was the custom at the time among a conservative-minded segment of the wealthy class. Back then, there were few people who were—few people who were, but few people went, but few people went, but few people. They have always been very liberal." Despite this Spanish-speaking environment, one day Jaime got a pleasant surprise. "On a shelf in my house, I found The Mallorcans, the essay that Josep Melià published in 1967 to spur the islanders to recover the identity that Franco's regime had stolen from us. It was a book that left a deep mark on me. In my case, the change of language also meant a change of mentality."

Another important influence on the linguistic awakening of the inquer was his older brother, Toni. "He had joined the Socialist Youth, but soon joined the PSM, which had a more nationalist component. At 16, I did the same. And, when I turned 18, I had already standardized my DNI. It sounded strange to me to be identified as 'Jaime Ignacio.'" Jaume would go on to study law at the UIB, where he became a member of the Bloc Nacionalista de Estudiantes union. "Back then, I spent my summers in Malpàs, in Alcúdia. It was a very preppy, where I felt like a rare elderly to speak Catalan. However, most of my childhood friends also ended up switching languages. And today, the use of Catalan is normal among us. However, we don't speak a fairly standard Catalan, without genuine expressions." The conclusion from this life experience is forceful: "The pressure from the State has been so strong on our culture that even Catalan speakers like my parents gave up on passing their language on to their children. Now, with them, communication is in Catalan."

A poor thing

Cristina Avilés Marí, 59, the daughter of a mother from Ibiza and a father from the Iberian Peninsula, was unable to get her mother to speak to her in Catalan. "She died five months ago, at the age of 88. I felt very bad about her linguistic desertion with my two brothers and me. She always told me that, in the midst of boom As a tourist, coming from a peasant family, I thought Catalan was for the poor. On the other hand, I saw my father's Spanish as the language that could open the most doors for us. At that time, the people of Ibiza had no linguistic awareness.

Cristina's father is originally from Jaén. He arrived in the larger Pitiusa in the early 1960s to work as a stonemason in the hotel industry. "My mother was the youngest of four siblings. She lived in San Vicente de sa Cala, in San Juan de Labritja. It was here that she met my father. They married two years later. Back then, outsiders were welcome. It was highly valued that they came to help out in a sector, construction, where Ibizans themselves thrive."

The young couple soon settled into an apartment in Ibiza Villa. "It was a big change for my mother. From living in the countryside and working with animals and making preserves, she was locked away between four walls. She would always speak Spanish to my father. He is a left-wing Spanish supporter and has never spoken to her, although he understands it." That new language would also be the one she would impose on her children. "My mother always spoke Catalan to the neighbors on the property; however, she spoke Spanish to us. As a child, I never questioned anything." This abnormality also occurred in the family home. guelos"We went every weekend. With her parents, she spoke in Catalan, but when she turned to us, she switched to Spanish. Among her siblings, we spoke in Spanish. We also did so with the boxwoods in our neighborhood. Many were also children of mixed marriages. On the other hand, the students from eight Ibizan lineages. However, at school, everything was still in Spanish."

Annihilation of Identity

This Ibizan woman's linguistic awareness was awakened in 1987, at the age of 21, when she went to study Philosophy in Barcelona. "Through my classmates, I discovered the contempt the State has always had for Catalan culture. It was then that I dared to speak Catalan. It was a natural process. Suddenly, the language I had heard from my people was awakened in my mind." guelos, who died when I was little. From them, I inherited a love for traditions and the Ibizan countryside." That newfound activism wouldn't be enough to put an end to certain family inertia. "Today I speak Spanish with my siblings. My sister knows Catalan, but barely uses it. My brother, on the other hand, doesn't. They both use Spanish with their children."

Cristina has lived in Mallorca for twenty years. "My family history," she laments, "illustrates very well the process of identity annihilation that tourism has caused in Ibiza [in the last seventy years the island, with almost 160,000 inhabitants, has seen its population increase fivefold]. In Mallorca, especially in the Part Forana, identity is kept more alive with spectacular festivals." Now, visits to Ibiza are dominated by melancholy. "The island has become a non-place. In Vila, all the world's languages are spoken except our own. The demographic substitution that globalization has brought to us in the service of capitalism has caused a linguistic substitution. I feel like a stranger in my home." Cristina still speaks Spanish with her childhood friends. "I only used Catalan with the new ones I made when I returned from Barcelona." Now living in Mallorca, there's something that infuriates him: "When Mallorcans notice my Pitiusan accent, they switch to Spanish. They usually do the same with Spanish speakers who make an effort to learn the language."