The news report tells us what the weather is like in Alghero
BarcelonaFor the past few weeks, TV3's weather forecast has included the city of Alghero, on the island of Sardinia, now part of Italy, which was once under the rule of the Crown of Aragon. 22.4% of the population speaks Catalan, a remnant of our ancestors' presence: this must be the reason why Catalan television is reporting the weather in that location. The initiative is commendable, as it informs viewers about the expansion of Catalans in the Mediterranean, something that, broadly speaking, occurred from the birth of James I (1225) and the reign of Peter the Ceremonious until the reincorporation of the Kingdom of Majorca into the Crown on December 13.
But Sardinia was not the only possession of that kingdom and its rulers during the Middle Ages. Whether large or small, with or without the Almogavars, through marriage alliances or not, there is a long list of territories that were dominated by Catalans and Aragonese, and in which the Catalan language is still present, at least thanks to words borrowed from Catalan and preserved within other dominant languages that have prevailed for centuries.
If TV3's idea was to imply that Catalonia – or rather the Crown of Aragon from a seriously historical point of view: the Jesuit Miquel Batllori, who was very wise, always rejected, not for lack of Catalanism, the term "Catalan-Aragonese crown" – or that the Catalan language (not the spider) is not present in the Balearic Islands, nor the Western Strip, then it should have included many other cities and territories in the weather maps.
To begin with, obviously, the cities of Roussillon, French since the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), a region where Catalan is the everyday language in the southern part; also Corsica, Sicily and Naples; Murcia—which was more Catalan than Aragonese in 1265 and 1266—; the duchies of Athens and Neopatria, and, stretching the historical elastic a bit, several counties, viscountcies, lordships and baronies in Occitania, Greece, Malta and the island of DjerbaWe still fall short. What glorious times!
Knowing this, the television program seems rather bizarre, especially considering that the continued use of Catalan in various parts of the Mediterranean is one thing, and the territories that were once part of the Crown of Catalonia are another. The program is indeed bizarre, but it stems from a policy of defending what we now call the Catalan Countries, a rather incomplete, nostalgic-political designation. Because, as we've said, if we look back to our medieval history, there were more "Catalan Countries" than those now encompassed by the term, and more than those we see on TV3.
