My friend, a veteran writer who has won a handful of awards, pauses and concludes: "The independence movement responds to the anguish of a people who know that their identity, starting with their language, is going to waste. It was the last gasp, the final throes." At first, I found his statement strange, shocking, and I filed it away in a drawer of my memory. The conversation I'm referring to took place after October 1st, when the protagonists of the independence attempt were in prison or had fled. However, some time later, I've given considerable thought to my friend's words—who today considers the battle for language completely lost—and I've wondered about the degree of truth they contain. Note that accepting what he says requires acknowledging that what we call the people, the nation, or society possesses some kind of collective unconscious, something shared that motivates action.
When I saw the latest Youth Survey from the Barcelona City Council, that conversation from years ago came flooding back. According to the study, almost one in three Barcelonans between the ages of 15 and 34 never speak Catalan. Never. And only 17.8% use it regularly. While during President Pujol's time a certain balance, a sort of tie, seemed to be maintained, albeit with difficulty, between Catalan and Spanish, today we can say—and we have a multitude of studies to support this—that the use of Catalan is in freefall. One of the factors, a very important one, though not the only one, behind this decline is the significant immigration to Catalonia, which has grown from 6 million during Jordi Pujol's administration to a population now exceeding 8 million (specifically, around 8.2 million). The Spanish National Institute of Statistics confirms this, and provides a relevant piece of data to help explain why young people speak so little Catalan: 47% of residents in Catalonia between the ages of 26 and 49 were born abroad, that is, outside of Spain. For the population as a whole, this proportion is 25.8%.
The Barcelona City Council survey I mentioned earlier was made public just a few days ago. It was presented by the Commissioner for Children, Adolescents, Youth, and LGTBI Policies. The City Council's own language commissioner, Marta Salicrú, hasn't uttered a word, at least not that I know of. Neither has the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni. The Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, has looked the other way. President Salvador Illa, for his part, hasn't found it relevant or worrying enough that Catalan is on the verge of becoming a marginal language in Barcelona. It's all very well, but everyone has remained silent. There would be plenty of discussion, if it weren't for the sad habit, the prevailing attitude, of those who govern the country today.
As my writer friend says, it became subconscious during the Process, and today many people are perfectly aware that—despite the current boom in literary production—Catalan is slipping through our fingers. You don't need to look far for data; it's become obvious to anyone walking through the streets and squares. In the big cities, it goes without saying, but also, strikingly, in the rest of Catalonia. Many concerned people, knowing that the government couldn't care less, maintain a proactive stance and persist in defending Catalan, both individually and collectively. This is true, and it's good, very good, that it continues this way. However, there are also many Catalans who have surrendered to the obvious and have ended up accepting, after much reflection, that Catalan has become an endeavor as heroic as it is futile. We could say they've given up. I'm sorry, I don't like it, I don't justify it, but I can understand it.
It has been said, and I return now to the independence process, that in those years everyone was so focused on independence that the language was relegated to the background, sidelined. That insufficient attention was paid is evident, especially since the population was multiplying and, therefore, an enormous effort was needed, by land, sea, and air, to ensure that those arriving (and still arriving) perceived the language as essential. Similarly, it is clear that the exhaustion and frustration caused by the outcome of the process have left a heavy residue of disillusionment. To make matters worse, while during the years of the process the country's authorities and a large part of society worked together, fueling an increasingly powerful dynamic, today, as we have said and as we have seen, our authorities consider the language, despite its central role in our identity, just another problem, a cumbersome matter.
