The recent statements by the once-powerful and feared Alfonso Guerra, asserting that the Spanish language is persecuted in Catalonia as the Catalan language was during the Franco regime, should go straight to the anthology of Hispanic nonsense but unfortunately there is a part of Spanish society that believes this, after so many years of lies from governments and media.
The fact that this harsh diatribe from the man who was deputy PM under the Socialist (PSOE) government for a decade (1982-1991) has only caused anger across the breadth of the Catalan sovereignist sector, while the Catalan Socialists (PSC) have merely looked the other way, explains the enormous damage that has been done to linguistic coexistence by a party like Ciudadanos which made waging war against Catalan language immersion in schools its raison d'être, and attracted the entire Spanish right, as well as part of the left, both in Catalonia and outside.
Guerra does not hold any effective office, but his opinions are listened to and applauded by this large and varied conglomerate that lives under the umbrella of Spanish nationalism. This has always been the case and where it used to be, it remains: that is why he is permanently invited to Spanish television programmes, in this case public broadcaster TVE. His role in the debate on the 2006 Catalan Autonomy Statute and his arrogance in explaining shamelessly that in the committee of the Spanish Congress over which he presided, they had planed off the difficult parts of the Statute to leave it smoothly digestible, was evidence of what this character is like. In fact, for younger generations a small briefing on Alfonso Guerra is required: first of all, he was the sibling of Juan Guerra, the "special brother" that he ended up abandoning due to different corruption scandals; secondly, he was the alter ego of prime minister Felipe González and a key figure at the time of the GAL, the state-led death squad, since he was number two in the government; finally, he was the tormentor of Catalan Socialists like Joan Reventós who fought to preserve a minimum of autonomy for the PSC with respect to the PSOE. That Guerra was presented at that time by the system as a scholar and intellectual is something that still leaves a bad taste in the mouth today.
The obsession with crippling Catalan, and the desire to reduce it to something marginal and folkloric, are nothing new. It is deeply-rooted in a misunderstanding of Catalan identity, which has managed to survive in conditions that have been certainly harsh at many moments of history. And this is something that is difficult to understand and assimilate for those who want Spanish to be the only language. To say that the only language that has difficulties in Catalonia is Catalan is an easily demonstrable empirical finding. It is in decline in social usage and also in schools. And the public authorities, far from trying to remedy this, ignore the problem. The need for public use of Catalan must be asserted now that it has been verified that an increase in spoken and written knowledge of the language is no guarantee. And it will be necessary to repeat campaigns such as those carried out in the eighties with immigrants. The Catalan language needs all this and much more. That is why we must not be silent in the face of reactionary figures such as Guerra.