Culture and Unity

Very well. Consider the source. I am American, where there is no history and little respect for it.

Catalanes are very sensitive about losing their language. And they should be. Barcelona is a working class city, but also very cosmopolitan. This is where people come to find work. They have come from other parts of Spain - Andalucia and Estremadura. When people leave the farms of Castilla they come to places like this. Now they are coming from Morocco, Central and South America, East Africa and Eastern Europe too; so many of them that it threatens to overwhelm and replace the local culture and even the language.

People have been successful here. Barcelona is among the most prosperous of European cities. But who exactly are the Catalanes? Those who can trace their roots here for hundreds of years? In the countryside many can do that, but in the city not so many.

I've been here now for several days and on the streets of the city I seldom, seldom, hear a conversation in Catalan, It comes as a surprise when I do (you hear everything else). And when I do it's usually the sort of "pidgin" Catalan, containing the simultaneous use of both Catalan and Castillan words, that is characteristic of people who are native to both languages.

It isn't that they don't understand. The first several years of school are taught in Catalan, by law. And all of the street signs, the signs in the shops, are in the old language. To get a job at the train station, or any of the public services, you must speak Catalan, by law - though it seems that nobody does in the course of the day. And to buy a train ticket from a machine I had to operate the displays in Catalan. If there was a way around that I didn't see it.

But young people, especially, just don't address one another in Catalan. There was more Catalan spoken here in the days of Franco when it was actually illegal. Which says something about both the ineffectiveness of such heavy-handed law and the equally ineffective backlash it provokes. Outside the city language seems more normal - less outside influence. I rode a train back from Figueres which was full of students on their way home and they were all speaking Catalan. I don't believe it's in eminent danger of being lost, but it surely will be changed.

Language and culture will inevitably be what the consensus demands that it be. It is beyond the influence or manipulation of ideological or economic interest.

We Americans are used to giving up our past for the sake of unity - our melting pot - even proud of it! Here, if they didn't have a different history they would have to make one up! And they do, in fact, stretch the limits of its interpretation all the time. The differences aren't as great as they would have you think. Catalan isn't the only other Spanish used in Spain.

However, this sensitivity to losing their culture, their language, and the effort to protect it - the exclusion, the demand for autonomy, the preferential treatment given the old order - is seen by outsiders as separatist, protectionist, favoring an established elite, and reactionary. Castillans see Catalunia as their nearest foreign neighbor. Germans describe Spain as the most northern of African countries.

The disharmony created by this effort to preserve their heritage makes consensus difficult and the coordination of policy going forward even more difficult if not impossible. Catalunia isn't big enough to stand on its own. One wonders how they will find their way without that consensus.

I won't argue that something isn't lost for the sake of unity. The economic attack on the Greek government today is an effort to undermine and deprive Greeks of their autonomy. Must the Greeks sacrifice their identity, their heritage and perhaps their language to become another cog in the wheel of European fortunes? And if so where, if at all, does that stop? It's a reasonable question.

To an outsider the difference between this part of Spain and the others - not much. But the difference between Southern Europe and their northern neighbors - magnified to the ^n! Greece (or Southern Europe) is not to Germany what Catalunia is to Spain. There are different histories, different mind-sets, different values and different expectations.

I wouldn't presume to tell these people which choice to make or what they should value. Though I would argue that its as useless to erect barriers against the winds of change as it is to legislate the language people speak.

All of Europe hangs by a thread. Social divisions prevent economic integration and none of these buggers can stand alone. I saw where somebody said they are just looking for a place to crash the plane. That gives European leadership too much credit. The leadership just doesn't want anything to fall on their own feckless heads. And while they dither and posture things become more unbalanced.

The immediate problem is Greece. German and French banks, predominately, lent too much money to Greece at too near German interest rates. Now the Greeks can't pay it back. And with rates now where they maybe always should have been they can't borrow more - and they have to borrow more to continue to service the earlier loans.

Greece exports nothing. Their only source of external revenue is tourism. If Greece cannot sell enough tourist services to surplus countries (Germany) there is no hope of their being able to repay the money they borrowed.

Economically, it's a mathematical identity. If Greece is to run a current account deficit it must run a capital account surplus in balance. Which is the same as saying that for surplus countries to continue to run a surplus - to which they feel entitled - they must continue to finance Greek deficits.

It is the culture of the surplus countries to think of themselves as superior, harder working, and tout their own sacrifice, productivity and competitiveness. Which is to say their ability to exploit the Greek (and other) market(s) to keep their own factories humming.

Spain has a similar problem to Greece. It was also too reliant on tourism and especially construction. But they have a better cushion. They were in better financial condition at the start of this recession and if things were to pick up soon they would manage. Though it's hard to see what would replace that huge construction industry which is on it's knees. Italy exported a lot, but suffers much from new competition, globalization and the importation of cheap goods (and knock-offs).

The solution requires that bondholders suffer losses on Greek debt. And that the EU find a mechanism to transfer money from surplus to deficit countries as we do in the US. Most highway construction, for example is funded by the Feds. There is no European counterpart. Each country is completely autonomous in its funding, but with a common currency (which they cannot devalue).

There are also implications for us Americans. If we are to continue to value our unity and ourselves as a melting pot we must be willing to assimilate new melts and know that it will change our composition too. Maybe even our language. Though that should be easier for us.