Anti-Catalan sentiment

Anti-Catalan sentiment is the collective name given to various trends in Spain, France and Italy that expresses disdain, discrimination, or hatred for Catalonia, to Catalans, Catalan culture, Catalan nationalism, Catalan language or its history. It can also be referred to as Anti-Catalanism (Catalan: anticatalanisme, IPA: [ˌantikətələˈnizmə]) or Catalanophobia.
In a historical context, anti-Catalanism expresses itself as a hostile attitude towards the Catalan language, people, traditions or anything identified with Catalonia. In a political context it may express itself as the reaction to a perceived intrusion of Catalan political nationalism into the area. In its most extreme circumstances, this may also be referred as Catalanophobia, though it is not a phobia per se. Several political movements, known for organising boycotts of products from Catalonia, are also actively identified with anti-Catalanism. Anti-Catalan sentiment often expresses the denial of the existence, in any degree or form, of Catalan national identity, whether in the past or in the present.
Sometimes, Catalans abroad or within Catalonia have experienced verbal harassment or denial of provision of goods and services, often in reaction to the use of Catalan language.
Historian Antoni Simon states that between the 12th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon's military expansion into Sicily, Sardinia and southern Italy and the entry of Catalan merchants into these markets generated a deep sense of hostility against the Catalans - often identified as Spaniards. Reflections can be found in the literary works of Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca, Luigi Alamanni, Pietro Aretino or Serafino Aquilano. He states that it was an anti-Catalan sentiment that was more cultural-linguistic than political-territorial, due to the protests over the election of Alfonso de Borja in 1455 as Pope Calixtus III for being "barbaric and Catalan".
The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile with the Crown of Aragon took place through the Catholic Monarchs. The Castilian hegemony in the newly established Monarchy of Spain left the peripheral realms under a royal government located in Madrid since 1561, a government composed of people mainly of Castilian origin.
At the beginning of the 16th century, King Ferdinand II of Aragon was called, in a derogatory manner, "viejo catalanote" ("old Catalan fool") by the Castilian nobility, being expelled from Castile and seen as an intruder after the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile.
In accordance with the Nueva Planta decree of 1716 promulgated by Philip V after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), most of the public legislation and institutions of the Principality of Catalonia was abolished, leading to the marginalization of the Catalan language and culture, favoring instead the Spanish language. The administrative use of the Catalan language was replaced it with Spanish. While theoretically the replacement solely affected the Royal Audience, the king provided with secret instructions to the royal officers in Catalan territory: they "will take the utmost care to introduce the Castilian language, for which purpose he will give the most temperate and disguised measures so that the effect is achieved, without the care being noticed."
The Nueva Planta decrees were royal measures aimed at suppressing those who were defeated during the Succession War, and it initiated the creation of a French-style Spanish centralized state in accordance with the laws of Castile, and for the first time founded the Kingdom of Spain. This centralization took quite some time during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reaching maximum levels during the dictatorship of Franco and the White Terror.
In the 19th century, the Spanish economy was largely dominated by agricultural production such as cereals from Castile, intended for sale on European markets. In these regions, the bourgeoisie and the landowners, supported by the central state, were favorable to free trade policy. On the contrary, the Catalan bourgeoisie was largely industrial and a producer of textiles, therefore interested in significant customs duties. This fight mobilized most of Catalan society. This struggle creates “in the rest of Spain the image of a selfish and interested Catalonia, determined to achieve its ends even at the expense of any Spanish interest”.
The dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), not only saw the suppression of democratic freedoms, but also the Catalan language and culture were crushed at an unprecedented level, being excluded from the education system and relegated to the family sphere. Castillian (Spanish) became the only language of education, administration, business and the media. During the Spanish Civil War period, despite the presence of Catalans serving in the Rebel army, the rhetorical use of Catalanophobia by the Rebel faction led directly to menaces and outbreaks of ethnic conflict of genocidal nature, as Paul Preston points out in "The Spanish Holocaust":
"In the days following the occupation of Lleida (...) republican prisoners identified as Catalans were executed without trial. Whoever they heard speaking in Catalan was very likely to end up arrested. The arbitrary brutality of the anti-Catalan repression reached such a point that Franco himself had to issue an order stipulating that mistakes that could later be regretted should be avoided”..."There are examples of the murder of peasants for no other apparent reason than that of speaking Catalan."
Even the Falange member Maximiano García recorded the extreme forms of Catalanophobia from the Rebel Faction:
"You could frequently hear in certain media the statement that Catalonia should be sown with salt. It reaches such high levels of xenophobia that it would be General Franco himself who would issue an order to stop the genocide that was being committed."
On 15 January 1939 Tarragona fell to Franco's troops and the victors celebrated a solemn Catholic mass in the cathedral led by the cleric of the cathedral of Salamanca José Artero who in his homily said: "Catalan scum! You are not worthy of the sun that shines on you." Arrests and summary trials immediately began. On 26 January Franco's troops took Barcelona. According to the testimony of the British military attaché to Franco's government, the first ones to enter the Catalan capital were the troops of the Navarre Brigades of General Solchaga "not because they have fought better, but because they hate better. Especially when the object of hatred is Catalonia or a Catalan."
Scholars Rafael Aracil, Joan Oliver and Antoni Segura considered that until 1951, the persecution of Catalan language was "total". In some places students had to denounce fellow students who spoke Catalan. During this period, The Catalan language was also prohibited on tombstones. Between 1939 and 1943 book printing in Catalan virtually disappeared.
With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, some of the harsh mesures began to be lifted and, while Spanish language remained the sole promoted one, limited number of Catalan literature began to be tolerated. However, works aimed at young people were restricted to limit the learning of the written language. Later on, opening of the regime allowed a small change in the marginalization of the language, such as the broadcast in 1964 of the first television program in Catalan on TVE (Teatre català) and the Nova Cançó (New Song) (1961) movement, though there still were limits such as the ban on Joan Manuel Serrat singing in Catalan at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968.
In 1968, in a discussion about cultural activity in Catalan language, Catalan businessman J.B. Cendrós tried to get the then Franco's Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne to lift the order to withdraw from circulation the first edition of the "Illustrated History of Catalonia". To the contrary, Fraga ended up glorifying the various times that Spain had militarily attacked Catalonia and that they were ready to do it again if necessary.
In 1992 the police operation known as "Operation Garzón" saw the arrest of 45 Catalan pro-independence activists and politicians on the eve of the Summer Olympics held in Barcelona, under the accusation to be members of the armed Catalan pro-independence organisation Terra Lliure without real proof. 25 of the arrested were kept in solitary confinement. They denounced torture at the hands of the Spanish police and threats of violence and rape to them and their families, as well as constant Anti-Catalan and Catalanophobic insults.
The regrowth of anti-Catalan sentiment in Spain during the first decade of the 21st century was marked, among other reasons, by the reform of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia and the demands from Catalan society for the return of the "Salamanca Papers", a series of documents massively confiscated from individuals and organizations in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War by Franco's army in order to enact a harsh repression.
In 2006 the Spanish conservative People's Party (PP) launched an advertising campaign against "the pact of the Catalan Statute and the grievances for Andalusia". However, 14 articles from the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia that the PP deemed as unconstitutionals had an identical wording in the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia, which was fully supported by the party chaired by Mariano Rajoy.
On the other hand, in the autonomous community of Valencia, anti-Catalanism has been part of the strategy of the political right since the democratic transition, being instrumental the Valencian right-wing regionalist movement known as "Blaverism". On 11 April 1993, the pro-Catalan independence and anti-fascist Valencian activist Guillem Agulló was assassinated by a group of neo-nazis and Spanish nationalists in Montanejos. Family members and left-wing and pro-independence organizations denounced that the motive for the crime had been political, since the young people who intervened in the murder were known for their Spanish and fascist ideology and that they also knew of the anti-fascist ideology of Agulló.
In the 2010s, some organizations and fake news blogs such as Dolça Catalunya, closely linked to the Spanish far-right and the ultra-Catholicism, have maintained and become a vehicle of anti-Catalanism, pseudohistory and language secessionism.
The language and culture of a population of around 10 million Catalan-Valencian speakers is virtually non-existent in the Spanish media. At the same time, the media and social networks are a vehicle for the dissemination of a subtle or explicit Catalanophobia accompanying banal Spanish nationalism. The incorporation of varying degrees of Catalanophobia into the banal nationalism of large sections of Spanish society is sublimated in cries of attack such as "a por ellos, oé" by the population but also by the Spanish law enforcement forces, during the police suppression of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.
The reality of those feelings has been expressed in studies carried out by different opinion institutes. Constantly, Catalans appeared as the least valued people in Spain; after them would generally be the Basques. In 2020, the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió carried out a survey asking about the likes and dislikes of Spaniards. According to the results of the report, Catalonia is the autonomous community that, by far, generate the least sympathy from the rest.
Anti-Catalanism can be found in the debates concerning the history of Catalonia and its relationship with the history of Spain, generally in non-academic spaces, also being part of banal nationalism. Mostly based on the remaining clichés from Spanish romantic historiography of Castilian basis, promoted and later consolidated by the Francoist dictatorship, Spanish pseudo-historical arguments towards Catalonia seek to minimize or deny any role, external visibility or political organization specific to the Catalan people in the past.
It became particularly widespread during the first decades of the 21st century due to the increasing demands for Catalan self-determination, being often used as a tool to deny any possible historical legitimization of Catalan demands. The dissemination of pseudo-historical arguments was facilitated by media and individuals opposed to Catalonia's self-determination and by those linked to the political right, as well as the diffusion by social networks.
Some of the recurrent topics are: