Gabilondo, the RAE, the Cervantes and imposed languages

Iñaki Gabilondo has found himself embroiled in a controversy as the host of the program La gran aventura de la lengua española, on La1, by stating that Spanish was never imposed in Latin America through conquest. It is true that the great Hispanization of these territories came later, when, once they became republics, they opted to promote a state language, and Spanish was the best positioned considering its implementation in structures such as administration, school, or church. I wonder why, of course. Perhaps because from 1550 to 1782, the different kings issued a minimum of 32 decrees that urged education in Spanish for indigenous communities? The will to Hispanize was unequivocal, as a way of imposing religion, even though the harsh reality was that there were not enough personnel to do so, so in the end the priests sent to the New World understood that it was more practical for them to learn the local languages.

In any case, Gabilondo is the one receiving the backlash, but in the end, attention should converge on RTVE, which has slipped in an audiovisual product co-financed by the RAE and the Cervantes Institute, in which a simplified version of a complex issue is clearly sold, which, with so much sugar, has turned out to be candied in favor of the cliché of the generous Spaniard bringing culture and civilization. Of course, Gabilondo should have challenged the script: the archives are cruel, and social media has rescued an old video of the journalist explaining the repression his family suffered for speaking Basque. "Amputation," he calls it. On Saint George's Day in 2001, King Juan Carlos said that "Spanish was never a language of imposition." A quarter of a century has passed, and the State apparatuses continue to sell this Disney version of colonization. It is known that Catalan is imposed, forced, and demanded, but Spanish is only promoted, boosted, and fostered.