Globe Corner Blogs

Barcelona--photo by Adam

If I didn’t know better, I would have said that we were in an entirely different country.  Had the train ride been just a little bit longer and the Catalan spoken here a little bit less distinctive, it would have been easy to make that mistake.  Two days ago, when I went into the train station, I was surrounded by hay fields and barnyard animals (consisting of chickens, ducks, peacocks, and a horse).  When I got out of the train an hour later I found that the hay fields had turned into skyscrapers and the animals into a population of nearly two million people.

Two days ago we took the train from the small town of Flaça into Barcelona.  The common link between the two, more than anything else, seems to be their language.  Everything else–size, shape, lifestyle, food, pace, density, you name it–could not be more different.  But despite all of their differences, it is quite clear even to the tourist that the two places are linked.  This unity, I learned, dates back to the earlier parts of the 20th century, when Franco was the ruling dictator of Spain.  Wishing to crush any Catalonian sense of independence he officially abolished their unique language and enforced his ruling with marked brutality.  Naturally, his strict laws had the exact opposite that he intended.  The Catalan language became a way to show regional pride and rebuke the harsh dictator.  Following Franco’s demise, Catalan became the required language of everything–from schools to politics to cereal boxes.  Spanish was not allowed to be spoken for more than two hours a week in schools.

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