Language: 2B or not 2B a Catalan

Visitors have often asked me if Catalans are different from the Spanish but it's difficult to give a simple answer because it's like asking are the Scots different from the English or the Welsh. There are so many different aspects to this question.

Like the Welsh, Catalans certainly have a different language - of which they're very proud - and one which was banned by Franco so you can understand why. To me as an outsider, it seems a part French, part Spanish mix with a few local words thrown in - though that's probably an over-simplification as well as being heresy. For me in many museums and galleries that pride-in-your-language thing goes a bit far in the way information is presented in bold in Catalan and fainter in Spanish - and English if you're lucky. One presumes it's a political thing - and it really is - or that the optician lobby badly needs business. But almost all Catalans can speak Spanish (not necessarily want to though) I've only met one Catalan who said that he doesn't like to speak Spanish but there must be a lot more. Even the President, Montilla, had to learn Catalan to be accepted here. Surprisingly foreign films in Catalan cinemas tend to be dubbed into Spanish not Catalan. Maybe there's a bigger market for them worldwide? For many foreigners too, Spanish has a greater currency value in terms of communication than Catalan, so unless they want a job with the Catalan Government or are married to a Catalan they're more likely to learn Spanish to communicate not just with natives in Catalunya but also the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. The language certainly causes problems in schools where many South and Central American kids resent having Catalan as the medium of education and not Spanish. What's on Catalans' passports, they say. Catalan no. Spanish, yes.

As with all countries there are always stereotypic qualities - both the Dutch and the Scots are said to be mean, Germans organised and efficient, Americans friendly and the Brits reserved, for example. The trouble is these are general characteristics, often are not true and certainly don't apply to everyone from a particular country. But they certainly exist so I'll trot out a few that I've heard people use when describing Catalans.

How's this for starters: devious, loud, pushy groupies, clannish, tight, image-conscious, parochial and matriarchal biggots. And how many times have you had to walk round a group of them standing talking on the pavement or had to push past someone sitting on the outside seat on the bus or Metro? If you've read the papers this month maybe you could add 'corrupt' in the way that a scandal is currently blowing up about Barcelona civil servants on the take - but then that's a Spanish thing too isn't it, corruption? Oh, and we'd better add football crazy too.

The newish (well I've never seen it before) monthly newsheet, Barcelones, states in an article on Catalan culebrons or soaps that the audience for Catalan TV channels is homogenous, whereas a Spanish medium channel's is less so and therefore might have more difficulty in focusing its themes and could more easily offend or insult sections of its wider audience. Thus Catalan channels can contain more risky elements, societal taboos like incest for example or pederasty in the church because its audience can deal with such issues better. In other words perhaps there are some qualities that are after all general to Catalans.

That doesn't, I know, answer the question as to what they are and I don't suppose Catalans are any more or less incestuous than any other race, but it does point to something that you don't always hear stated - that Catalans are perhaps more liberal and worldly than you think despite their so-called fondness for separateness and tradition. You notice an acceptance of others' beliefs and ways of life and it's only the 'far-right' fringes who call for the expulsion of gypsies and immigrants from Eastern Europe. Maybe the question is unanswerable because every Catalan, like any other nationality, is an individual and is made up of perhaps some of the stereotypes mentioned plus several more positive ones.

What facets of the Catalan character have you noticed? Is there anything that you could say 'that's very Catalan?