The Valencian Parliament will censure the Spanish Foreign Minister, J. Manuel Albares, "to despise the Valencian," according to reports. announce the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, who constantly kicks the ball forward, so everyone pushes day after day. However, the new Mazonesque scheme is a particularly twisted (and especially worrying) example of how the cynicism and lies of certain political discourses end up generating what we know as alternative facts: a completely distorted version of reality that aspires to present itself as truth.
Mazón accuses Albares of lacking sensitivity toward Valencian because he doesn't demand its official status in Europe. Albares, in fact, tries to avoid the traps of linguistic secessionists and always refers to Catalan, Basque, and Galician as official languages in the state that the Spanish government now proposes as official languages in the EU. In an interview on Onda Cero, journalist Alsina repeatedly asked him about "Valencian," and Albares stuck to his script: Basque, Galician, and Catalan. The key to the distortion lies in the fact that "Valencian" is the official name of the Catalan language in the Valencian Community, in accordance with its Statute of Autonomy. A designation that was once intended to be a consensus, but which Spanish nationalism exploits to the fullest to promote confusion and blaverism: the demand for a nonexistent Valencian language, supposedly distinct from Catalan.
Mazón, then, feigns indignation over discrimination against Valencian in Europe that hasn't even occurred, while the government he presides has the marginalization and stifling of Valencian as its sole and obsessive language policy. Both due to its budget agreement and out of personal conviction, the PP-Vox pincer attack on the language of the Valencian people is constant: persecution of the Valencian Academy of Language, suppression or marginalization of Valencian and public television, declaration of Alicante as a Spanish-speaking city, imposition of a top list of anti- or unscientific theories, etc. Why does Mazón incur in this contradiction?
They do so because, in the Valencian context, Mazón and his government treat "Valencian" as "Catalan," and therefore as a target to be taken down. In the European context, however, they pretend that "Valencian" is a distinct language, which serves to accuse Albares and the Spanish government of discrimination that hasn't occurred. They thus attack their other great enemy, the Sánchez government. Based on a false premise, therefore, they develop a double standard that is also false, and that turns language into an element of tension and social division, through misinformation and anti-scientific discourse. The PP (Vox, I don't know) is perfectly aware of all this, but it unhesitatingly embraces the path of recreational philology and social confrontation with language as an excuse. It does so because it feels (and has always felt) perfectly comfortable.
