Reigning in Spain
VALLS-RUSSELL, ANICE
A TRIBUTE TO DIVERSITY Reigning in Spain By Janice Valls-Russell Barcelona Inevitably there was the usual international gathering of crowns and coronets but it was, as royal weddings...
...Ardanza says he will not stand for re-election next year, so the Basque electorate will have a chance to demonstrate that its political maturity is deep-seated and does not depend on the moderating influences of two men...
...Allocation of revenues from indirect taxes such as the VAT, and the financing of regional projects, is increasingly decided locally...
...A TRIBUTE TO DIVERSITY Reigning in Spain By Janice Valls-Russell Barcelona Inevitably there was the usual international gathering of crowns and coronets but it was, as royal weddings go, almost a homey affair...
...Much of what has been achieved is due to the PNV's José Antonio Ardanza, who heads Euskadi's autonomous administration, and Basque Socialist Party leader Ramon Jauregui, the number two man in the administration before he resigned at the end of September to take up a senior party post in Madrid...
...Aznar, conveniently, also needs the Catalan nationalists' votes in Parliament...
...Yet if Pujol gets his way, a bill will shortly be considered by the regional Assembly that would make Catalan the sole official language and drive Spanish out of schools and courts...
...To some extent, that solidarity still exists...
...Few outside the ranks of ETA and Herri Batasuna, its political arm, actually want this to happen, although in the past historic mistrust of Madrid has led even nonviolent Basques to side with ETA...
...The bride...
...When Socialist Felipe Gonzalez became the Prime Minister in 1982, he encouraged the promotion of younger, openminded officers and pushed through a reorganization of the Armed Forces...
...He says he resigned for personal reasons and because he feels the time has come for Barcelona to have a new mayor...
...The success of Aznar's forthcoming budget, for example, will hinge on the Catalan deputies...
...With his discreet backing, its 18 regional governments have gained varying degrees of autonomy during the past two decades, breaking Madrid's stranglehold on the state...
...José Maria Aznar, who emerged as his Center-Right successor last year, aims to make them all voluntary by 2003...
...Unhampered by separatist violence, the Catalans have obtained wideranging authority by wielding two powerful weapons: economic clout and cultural vitality...
...Euskera, the soft, melodious Basque tongue, is difficult to learn, differs totally from Spanish and is spoken only by a minority...
...He broadcast a nationwide message in support of the constitutional monarchy even before he knew the coup had failed...
...Barcelona deserved its royal wedding...
...Similarly, the moderate nationalists who run the Catalan administration have their own idiosyncratic idea of how the political game should be played out in Madrid...
...Since he first won office in 1980, Pujol has seemed as permanent a part of the region as the Barcelona Cathedral...
...It is hard to know, though, who is liege and who is vassal...
...But curators at the Reina Sofia Art Center in Madrid, where it now hangs, decided it was too fragile to travel...
...This summer, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets throughout Spain—including Euskadi—to say basta (enough...
...Catalonia, they proudly recall, was a nation until a quirk of history made it part of Spain...
...Early on, some senior military officers saw the whole process of devolution as a betrayal of Francoism, but their resistance ebbed after an abortive 1981 coup...
...They have also vigorously protested against an anti-ETA film commissioned by the Spanish Interior Ministry that is being distributed abroad, mainly in Europe and America...
...Their flexibility, they argue, has made for sensible continuity over the past few years and is now proving fruitful: The Spanish economy is doing well and the country should be eligible for membership in the euro currency system next spring...
...After backing Felipe Gonzalez' last and minority government, Jordi Pujol, who heads the administration, has shifted his support to Prime Minister Aznar's Popular Party (PP...
...Many in the region take pride in this bilingualism...
...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...
...When Aznar recently received Joaquin Almunia, who took over as Socialist leader after Gonzalez stepped down last June, the two men allegedly discussed ways of getting around this humiliating Catalan "blackmail," but they failed to come to any joint agreement...
...The grim footage is an "affront" to the region, they say, and they worry about its scaring off investors and tourists...
...One vote of confidence has come from the Guggenheim Foundation, which has opened a museum of modern art in Bilbao...
...Inaki Urdangarin, is a Basque handball player and a commoner...
...The official inauguration on October 19 was to have been marked by the loan of Picasso's powerful Guernica mural, evoking the death and destruction caused by the terror-bombing of the ancient Basque capital in 1937...
...Together, they persuaded officers based in Barcelona to hold their troops in check...
...Like the Basques, the Catalans too have a strong sense of national identity...
...After two ETA men were killed during a police raid on several of the organization's hideouts in September, BasqueNationalist Party (PNV) spokesmen called for an investigation...
...In Catalonia's art and architecture, as in its fiestas and industry, innovation goes hand in hand with a genuine but uninhibiting attachment to tradition...
...Schools, universities, courts, and other public services operate in Catalan and Spanish...
...In 1995 Princess Elena was married in Seville, which also boasts a celebrated cathedral of the sort not to be found in Madrid...
...The bridegroom...
...Writers, actors, journalists, and leading academics, many of whom write and work mainly in Catalan, have signed manifestos and are lobbying to have the bill withdrawn...
...As a result, most signs are in Catalan, and there is an allCatalan television channel...
...Madrid officials may find Catalan obduracy tiresome but the King, who of course keeps out of political disputes, knows it can prove valuable in times of crisis...
...Even unemployment, currently at 20 per cent, is starting to fall...
...Public opinion had been outraged by the savage murder of a young municipal councilor whom ETA was holding hostage...
...Its crazy strategy is to spark a popular uprising in Euskadi by provoking a crackdown on the region's autonomy...
...Yet by trying to make Catalonia a nation in all but name he has lately begun raising hackles not only in Madrid but at home...
...Certainly it was very much a Spanish get-together...
...The region has its own police, who work alongside a Madrid-controlled force...
...But weariness with violence is growing...
...Princess Cristina, daughter of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, was educated in Madrid and works for a Catalan foundation...
...In Euskadi, the Basque region, there has been a jerky but real transfer of powers...
...Opposition to this has come not from Madrid but from Catalan intellectuals...
...While Pujol has been battling for linguistic reform, his main rival, Pasqual Maragall, quietly stepped down as Socialist Mayor of Barcelona after 15 years in office...
...ETA's favorite targets are military and police officers...
...Some PP members complain that economic decisions are worked out in advance in Barcelona and not in the National Assembly...
...This, in turn, discouraged units elsewhere from leaving their barracks...
...That night, a Catalan leader worked with the King to keep Spain democratic—and united...
...These advances, however, have not satisfied the separatist Euskadi Homeland and Liberty organization (ETA), whose terrorists want total independence...
...When the whole national government was held hostage for several hours during the 1981 coup attempt, the only institutional figure King Juan Carlos could rely on was Pujol...
...By celebrating his daughters' weddings in provincial capitals he pays a royal tribute to the country's diversity...
...The problem may be settled for them by a change in Catalonia...
...Many Catalans, though, are hoping he intends to devote all his energies to an effort to oust Pujol in the next regional election, due in 2000...
...Confidence is what strikes one most about them (although Madrid calls it arrogance...
...The elected Assembly and administration now handle education, cultural affairs, social services, and job-creation schemes...
...The days when Catalan was a language banned by the Francoist authorities are over, they point out...
...The wedding took place in a 13th-century cathedral here on October 4, and the festivities included Basque and Catalan folk dancing...
...When Juan Carlos was enthroned 22 years ago, after General Francisco Franco's death, he became "King of all the Spains...
...Catalan, by contrast, is a Romance language, permeable to outside influences and easy to pick up...
...True, the popular singer Raimon was recently booed in Madrid for singing in Catalan, butmost of the Castilian audience cheered him enthusiastically...
...His problem, oddly enough, is his enthusiasm for the Catalan language...
...A few weeks later, Basques again turned out, albeit on a lesser scale, to protest the killing of a policeman—their first spontaneous display of sympathy for a representative of lawand-order...
...Quite a few Socialist deputies agree...
Vol. 80 • October 1997 • No. 16
