"The problem with some Catalans is that they understand [cultural] differences as superiority." That was the comment from Spain's new culture minister, José Guirao, in a January 2017 interview with the newspaper ABC de Sevilla. He was responding to an alleged comment from former Catalan president Jordi Pujol that Andalusians "live in a state of cultural poverty". Guirao has been nominated after today's resignation of Màxim Huerta over alleged tax evasion.
"It seems to me to be in bad taste to talk about other cultures like that", said the former director of Madrid's Reina Sofía Museum. He added that: "You can talk of them in terms of differences or admiration. Doing so in terms of scorn seems to me to be a sign of ignorance".
Continuing, Guirao boasted about Andalusian, in contrast to Catalan, culture: "Moreover, the great writers of the 20th century (Picasso [sic], Lorca, Cernuda, Machado, Alberti...) were Andalusians. There's no comparable movement in Catalan letters. Nor in music... I believe that these Catalans are confusing level of development with culture".