# Immigrants and Catalan



## panjabigator

I like to be forgiven for beating a dead horse, but due to the other thread on catalan, I did some digging to learn more about the language under Franco.  (If anyone has some links which discuss this subject, please PM them to me)



> Under the reign of Franco the Catalan language was banned out of public life. In the vain hope to extinguish the Catalan language Franco flooded the area with impoverished immigrants from Andaluc�a. The result was the opposite: the immigrant�s children and grandchildren turned out to be more Catalan and proud of their language than their parents.



Taken from here.
Is there anyone here who can substantiate this claim on Catalan?  Are these immigrant children more Catalan than the native Catalonians?


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## lazarus1907

What Franco did then with the Catalonian language was unforgiveable in my opinion.  I bet now I have foes on either thread.


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## maxiogee

Franco (bad and all as he was) was only doing what the victorious have done for centuries - defeat and demean your enemy and force them to assimilate into your vision of 'national culture'. The attempted wiping out of a language is one of the prime methods of doing this. It still goes on.


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## pickypuck

panjabigator said:
			
		

> I like to be forgiven for beating a dead horse, but due to the other thread on catalan, I did some digging to learn more about the language under Franco. (If anyone has some links which discuss this subject, please PM them to me)
> 
> 
> 
> Taken from here.
> Is there anyone here who can substantiate this claim on Catalan? Are these immigrant children more Catalan than the native Catalonians?


 
Firstly, the emigration was towards the two main, richest cities of Spain, Madrid and Barcelona. If Barcelona had not been the second biggest city of Spain (with all that that implies: factories, enterprises, work...) nobody would have gone there. People were poor but not silly. There was a lot of emigration towards Bilbao and surroundings, due to the huge metallurgical industries situated there. Later, the emigration was towards other places. My family had to emigrate to the Balearic Islands, because the touristic industry was developing there quickly and there was a lot of work in that sector.

Something different is why people whose whole family is in other region or who emigrated being 5 years old become nationalist-independentist when they go to a certain region. It happens a lot but I don't know why. 

¡Olé!


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## natasha2000

I would agree with pickypuck. In order to extinguish Catalan language and culture, Franco prohibited it. Nowadays, all Catalans who went to school during the regime of Franco, do speak Catalan, but few of them knows how to write it, due to learning it only in family and not at school. Younger generations don't have this problem at all.

I was also told by many Catalans, that the high Catalan class also contributed to oblivion of Catalan - it was considered more posh and cool if you spoke Spanish during the regime of Franco.

As far as I understood, after the Civil war there was a lot of emmigration from other parts of Spain to Catalonia because of economical, and not political reasons. They were usually people from the poorest parts of Spain, like Andalucia, Extremadura, Murcia. People were coming to places where they could find work and future for their children, and a decent life for themselves. During those 50ies, and 60ies, Catalans looked down on them and called them and their children "charnegos". In Barcelona, they usually lived in skirts of the city, nowdays just another district of Barcelona, but at that time known for imingrants, like Carmel o Guinardó. I suppose many of them wanted to assimilate and to wanted to be accepted and stop being marginated, especially their children. I know many of those people here, and I can tell you that children are very proud Catalans, even though they do not have a single drop of Catalan blood in their veins.

I recommend some books of Juan Marsé in order to see the life of those emmigrants in Barcelona. "Las tardes con Teresa" or "El embrujo de Shangai", or even "El amante bilingüe" even though the last one is not exactly from that period but later, bur it also shows the relationship of Andalusian emigrants and Catalans.


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## ordequin

The same thing happened in the Basque Country with the Euskera, it was also banned out of public life.
But after Franco, catalan grew up, it didn't happen the same with our language, sadly.
Then, in order to resurrect it, they created an hybrid, that in now spoken by the majority of the minority who is able to speak some kind of Basque.


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## Anada

Did Franco really prohibited Catalan? I know that Franco was against the use of Catalan, Euskera, etc but I don't think it was completely banned, since I have a Serrat record at home, in which he sings in Catalan. My father bought this record in Madrid in those days, and I am sure it was not "illegaly" bought.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying those languages were not persecuted and I'm against that persecution, but I doubt whether they were banned.


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## natasha2000

Anada said:
			
		

> Did Franco really prohibited Catalan? I know that Franco was against the use of Catalan, Euskera, etc but I don't think it was completely banned, since I have a Serrat record at home, in which he sings in Catalan. My father bought this record in Madrid in those days, and I am sure it was not "illegaly" bought.
> Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying those languages were not persecuted and I'm against that persecution, but I doubt whether they were banned.


 
Let's say it was "strongly discouraged". The only language that was used in public life was Spanish. In schools, on TV, newpapers, publich institutions... I heard from a very old Catalan when the police stopped him on the street and he said something in Catalan, they said to him not to speak them in that "language of dogs" (lenguaje de perros). I doubt that they punished people who spoke Catalan, but it was strongly discouraged. As I already mentioned, high classes spoke only Spanish. Catalan was considered "peasants" language.


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## betulina

Anada said:
			
		

> Did Franco really prohibited Catalan? I know that Franco was against the use of Catalan, Euskera, etc but I don't think it was completely banned, since I have a Serrat record at home, in which he sings in Catalan. My father bought this record in Madrid in those days, and I am sure it was not "illegaly" bought.
> Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying those languages were not persecuted and I'm against that persecution, but I doubt whether they were banned.



I would say that there were "periods" during the dictatorship regarding language. The first 20 years were of absolute repression, there were no legal books in Catalan, no teaching of Catalan and so on. The last, say, 15 years, were a little bit more "flexible" (that's not the word, I know), and Catalan was taught in small entities (that's where my parents learned how to write it), and there was some release of books and music. Serrat and the whole "la Nova Cançó" (the musical movement of Catalan songwriters) arouse in the late 60s, so it was in the last period of the dictatorship.

Bienvenida al fórum Anada!


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## betulina

As for the general topic of this thread, I fully agree with Natasha that immigrants came to Catalonia for economical reasons. I would not dare say that Franco flooded Catalonia with Spanish immigrants in order to extinguish the language. Pickypuck is right at saying that they went to rich cities, not to Catalan cities.
Regarding immigrants' children, I think that there is a bit of everything and it depends on their ideology and their implication on political issues. For all of them, at their arrival, the main concern was working to eat. Then many of them got engaged on political and social issues, as Franco was obviously bad for all, and realised that Catalan was an important issue, too. Most of the immigrants consider themselves to be half-Catalan and "half-native place" and love both countries. 
So you can find a bit of everything everywhere. There are immigrants' children fully nationalist and non-nationalist at all and there are native Catalans non-nationalist at all and fully nationalist. And there are, of course, many many people somewhere in the middle.


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## panjabigator

Why was he so anti-Catalan/Basque/Gallego?  Was it for Spanish unity or was he just a bastard?  He can be both also.


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## natasha2000

panjabigator said:
			
		

> Why was he so anti-Catalan/Basque/Gallego? Was it for Spanish unity or was he just a bastard? He can be both also.


 
This is a litle bit naive question, Panja. Why Hitler was anti-semitist? the unity of spain has nothing to do with it. Spain was united many centuries before Franco appeared.


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## pickypuck

panjabigator said:
			
		

> Why was he so anti-Catalan/Basque/Gallego? Was it for Spanish unity or was he just a bastard? He can be both also.


 
He was against everything he thought Spain shouldn't be. He chose a language, Spanish, so he banned the others. He chose a religion, Catholicism, so the rest of people with other religion went to prison. One could only be heterosexual, homosexuals went to prison too because they were considered criminal and lazy. Although Spanish was permitted in public, there were no freedom of speech (and any other freedom). Even wives needed the permission of their husbands for working or opening a bank account (sexes were not equal)... And many many other things. The public ban of those languages was one of the myriad of things the dictatorship established.


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## papillon

natasha2000 said:
			
		

> This is a litle bit naive question, Panja.



I don't think the question is naive at all. In fact, to say that Franco simply hated the Catalans (+ Basques etc.) (which he probabaly did) would do a disservice to history. And yes, I think unity had a lot to do with it. But unity in a sense of being united in the loyalty toward his dictatorship. To put it simply, it is a lot easier to quel dissent if everyone speaks the same language, when there is no extra complexity associated with the self-awareness of the minority groups.

This is nothing unique to the Franco era, and this has been done by most dictators, or even by many strong central governments in various countries throughout history. The example I am more familiar with is the Russian empire and its succesor the Soviet Union, where most minority languages were suppressed.


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## natasha2000

papillon said:
			
		

> I don't think the question is naive at all. In fact, to say that Franco simply hated the Catalans (+ Basques etc.) (which he probabaly did) would do a disservice to history. And yes, I think unity had a lot to do with it. But unity in a sense of being united in the loyalty toward his dictatorship. To put it simply, it is a lot easier to quel dissent if everyone speaks the same language, when there is no extra complexity associated with the self-awareness of the minority groups.


I wasn't thinking of this kind of unity. I was thinking about the teritorial unity. 



> This is nothing unique to the Franco era, and this has been done by most dictators, or even by many strong central governments in various countries throughout history.


That is precisely why I said it was a naive question.


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## doddle

panjabigator said:
			
		

> Why was he so anti-Catalan/Basque/Gallego?


Just an additional bit of info: Franco himself was Galician.


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## natasha2000

doddle said:
			
		

> Just an additional bit of info: Franco himself was Galician.


 
Hmmm.. This only proves that the pure ones are not the worst ones.
Torquemada was a New Christian.


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## papillon

natasha2000 said:
			
		

> That is precisely why I said it was a naive question.


I just thought that Hitler was not a good parallel to Franco. Hitler had a pathological hate of the Jews and his actions were propelled mainly by this hate and not pragmatic reasons. Franco, on the other hand, sought to suppress minority groups to strengthen his grip on power.


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## natasha2000

papillon said:
			
		

> I just thought that Hitler was not a good parallel to Franco. Hitler had a pathological hate of the Jews and his actions were propelled mainly by this hate and not pragmatic reasons. Franco, on the other hand, sought to suppress minority groups to strengthen his grip on power.


 
Ok. Maybe I was not thinking so deep in the matter as you did. But in the end, it is the same. 

Although I wouldn't agree that it was only puere hate in Hitler. Jews were the rich ones in Germany of that time. And disseminating hate against them meant confiscation of all their goods and wealth. But that is another subject which needs new thread.

The important thing is that all dictators are the same. They rise one nation and one language, and opress everything that is different. And that is exactly what Franco did. Same old story seen so many times before.


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## pickypuck

papillon said:
			
		

> I don't think the question is naive at all. In fact, to say that Franco simply hated the Catalans (+ Basques etc.) (which he probabaly did) would do a disservice to history.


 
He hated Republicans (the side that lost the war) independently of the place they came from. His hate was towards people with those ideas, nothing to do with birthplace. This dictatorship was the result of a civil war. Everywhere there were people who supported him and who fought him.


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## maxiogee

pickypuck said:
			
		

> This dictatorship was the result of a civil war.


Surely the dictatorship started the civil war, not resulted from it?
The Fascists rebelled against and overthrew a lawfully elected government.


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## pickypuck

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Surely the dictatorship started the civil war, not resulted from it?
> The Fascists rebelled against and overthrew a lawfully elected government.


 
True. I mean that the dictatorship came after the war. My English is not that good  



			
				papillon said:
			
		

> Franco, on the other hand, sought to suppress minority groups to strengthen his grip on power.


 
This is not true. He sought to suppress the Republicans. In Spain there are no minority groups. If so, there are about 8.000.000 million Catalans, 2.500.000 million Basques and only 1.100.00 million Extremadurans. Which is the minority group?


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## papillon

pickypuck said:
			
		

> In Spain there are no minority groups. If so, there are about 8.000.000 million Catalans, 2.500.000 million Basques and only 1.100.00 million Extremadurans. Which is the minority group?



All of them! 
Catalans are a (very large) minority in SPAIN, but  a majority group in Catalonia.


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## panjabigator

> Originally Posted by *natasha2000*
> This is a litle bit naive question, Panja.



Eh, you are right.  A dictator is a dictator, and though the little details may vary, the big picture is always the same.


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## pickypuck

papillon said:
			
		

> All of them!
> Catalans are a (very large) minority in SPAIN, but a majority group in Catalonia.


 
Then Spain consists only in minorities.


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## maxiogee

Surely the problem - in any country - is not in how the inhabitants view themselves within the country, but how they see themselves vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

I'm a Dubliner within Ireland, but outside it I'm Irish.

Do the Spanish minorities see themselves as Spanish or as Catalans, Galicians, Basques etc. when they are in - say, India or Australia?


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## pickypuck

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Surely the problem - in any country - is not in how the inhabitants view themselves within the country, but how they see themselves vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
> 
> I'm a Dubliner within Ireland, but outside it I'm Irish.
> 
> Do the Spanish minorities see themselves as Spanish or as Catalans, Galicians, Basques etc. when they are in - say, India or Australia?


 
I think people will see themselves as they feel like... it depends on the moment, your humour, your feelings, many things...

How the Irish minorities see themselves out of Irland? To be sure we should ask the citizens in the next poll  

¡Olé!


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## doddle

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Do the Spanish minorities see themselves as Spanish or as Catalans, Galicians, Basques etc. when they are in - say, India or Australia?


I had a friend from Catalonia who always referred to herself as Catalonian (and not Spanish) when she was studying here in England a couple of years ago. From what she told me, her other Catalonian student friends did the same, although, according to her, they actually got hassle from other Spaniards (non-Catalonians) for not saying they were "Spanish".

I doubt that someone from Extremadura would say "I'm not Spanish, I'm Extremaduran", though.


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## pickypuck

doddle said:
			
		

> I had a friend from Catalonia who always referred to herself as Catalonian (and not Spanish) when she was studying here in England a couple of years ago. From what she told me, her other Catalonian student friends did the same, although, according to her, they actually got hassle from other Spaniards (non-Catalonians) for not saying they were "Spanish".
> 
> I doubt that someone from Extremadura would say "I'm not Spanish, I'm Extremaduran", though.


 
That's why I speak about feelings  The National Institute of Statistics asks from time to time if you feel more X than Y, less X than Y, etc. In the case of Extremadura, around 4% of the answers were "only Extremaduran", so you may find them... a "rara avis" for sure, maybe there were just joking. My region couldn't survive alone; we don't have either the capital or the second biggest city in Spain. In other regions the percentages grow to very high percentages. As I say, feelings but administratively (does this word exist?  ) speaking your friend was Spanish.

¡Olé!


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## Fernando

pickypuck said:
			
		

> If so, there are about 8.000.000 million Catalans, 2.500.000 million Basques and only 1.100.00 million Extremadurans. Which is the minority group?



Only to point out that Catalans are around 6 million. Half of them are native Catalan speakers while most of Catalan population knows Catalan up to a certain degree.


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## natasha2000

doddle said:
			
		

> I had a friend from Catalonia who always referred to herself as Catalonian (and not Spanish) when she was studying here in England a couple of years ago. From what she told me, her other Catalonian student friends did the same, although, according to her, they actually got hassle from other Spaniards (non-Catalonians) for not saying they were "Spanish".
> 
> I doubt that someone from Extremadura would say "I'm not Spanish, I'm Extremaduran", though.


 
Well, this is the matter of a personal feeling. In ex Yugoslavia, when doing statistics on nationalites, there were various answers offered: As any nationality of all former yugoslav six republics, or just plain Yugoslav. So you could feel Yugoslav, or Croat or Serbian or Bosnian, or Macedonian, Montenegrian or Slovenian. Or even any other minority: Slovak, Rusin, Hungarian, Albanian, etc.

I really do not see why one shouldn't feel as Catalonian, Bask or Andalusian, and not as Spaniard.


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## panjabigator

doddle said:
			
		

> I had a friend from Catalonia who always referred to herself as Catalonian (and not Spanish) when she was studying here in England a couple of years ago. From what she told me, her other Catalonian student friends did the same, although, according to her, they actually got hassle from other Spaniards (non-Catalonians) for not saying they were "Spanish".
> 
> I doubt that someone from Extremadura would say "I'm not Spanish, I'm Extremaduran", though.



But speaking a different language is the big difference here.  So since Extremadurans speak Spanish...

And also, Catalonians always refer to Catalan speaking regions as the Catalan countries.


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## pickypuck

Fernando said:
			
		

> Only to point out that Catalans are around 6 million. Half of them are native Catalan speakers while most of Catalan population knows Catalan up to a certain degree.


 
According to the last data there are 7.083.600.

I put here the data of the other regions, oops sorry, minority groups  if somebody is interested. And sorry for the "gentilicios", I know many of them don't exist in English.

Andalusians. 7.935.100
Catalans. 7.083.600
Madrileans. 5.891.900
Valencians. 4.772.400
Galicians. 2.764.300
Castilians (Castile and León) 2.514.400
Basques. 2.131.100
Canarians. 1.984.700
Castilians (Castile-La Mancha) 1.924.200
Murcians. 1.362.500
Aragonese. 1.269.900
Extremadurans. 1.084.600
Asturians. 1.075.300
Balearics. 966.300
Navarres. 600.200
Cantabrians. 566.700
Riojans. 306.400
Ceutans. 75.700
Melillans. 67.200

Those numbers don't indicate birth place. Once you say to a town hall that you live there, you become instantly citizen of that city and therefore citizen of the region the city is in.

¡Olé!


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## pickypuck

panjabigator said:
			
		

> But speaking a different language is the big difference here. So since Extremadurans speak Spanish...


 
Catalans speak Spanish too  But if you mean a language different from Spanish, there are Extremadurans whose mother tongue is not Spanish, but fala  
In the Canary Islands they speak Spanish and regional nationalism exist, in the same way that in the Basque Country, where only 20% of the population speak Basque. And there are people who speaks a language different from Spanish and are not nationalist or independentist. As you can see "hay gente pa to"  

¡Olé!


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## panjabigator

Por favor, disculpame!  Existe la lengua _estremeñu_.


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## pickypuck

panjabigator said:
			
		

> Por favor, disculpame! Existe la lengua _estremeñu_.


 
Nowadays, virtually every Extremaduran speaks Spanish. There are words, expressions typical from here, as it happens in any Spanish-speaking area. Extremaduran is only spoken by very old people. But my great grand-mothers for example spoke only Spanish. I can say it is extinct. But fala is luckily alive. 

¡Olé!


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## Fernando

Agreed. My 6 million is out-dated (pre-inmigration, I assume).


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## chics

pickypuck said:
			
		

> My family had to emigrate to the Balearic Islands, because the touristic industry was developing there quickly and there was a lot of work in that sector.
> 
> ¡Olé!


 
Sorry, but you are mixing (at least) two very different things.

One was during and just after the war (in 1936), people were poor and there were anything -neither paying for it!- anywhere. It caused a lot of migration and it's true than, then, catalans learned spanish and foreigners learned catalan, just to understand each other and without politic neither nacionalistic ideologies or prejudices.

Your parents went to the islands not before the 60's. It was at least one generation later, who had been grownth in the dictatorial thought...

There is no doubt that this two migrations were widely different!!!!​


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## chics

doddle said:
			
		

> Just an additional bit of info: Franco himself was Galician.


 
More info: ...but he _didn't know the galician language_.

In fact, there were the prohibition (you could be jailed, tortured, killed... for it) of speaking every language but spanish. Yes, also English, for example, and you can do a very interesting thread about the influence of that in spanish language (balonpié, plusmarca, ensaladilla española, bikini...).

The idea was not to use a language that he wouln't understand.


And, well, Hitler defended aryan race when he was short and brown...
​


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## chics

Fernando said:
			
		

> Only to point out that Catalans are around 6 million. Half of them are native Catalan speakers while most of Catalan population knows Catalan up to a certain degree.


 
There are 7 million inhabitants now in Catalonia, and near 13 million of catalan speakers.
​


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## Fernando

As said before, PRIVATE use of another language did not make you to end in jail. It made you a suspect, at most. PUBLIC use was forbidden.

In the last half of Franco regime, many books were published in Catalan, Galician or Basque (there was a Academia of Lengua Vasca).

And no, I do not imagine anyone being shot for speaking English in Spain.

At last, I can not tie your 13 million figure. Even considering 7 m Catalans + 6 m (Valencia + Balearic Islands unhabitants), check not at all, they are native speakers.


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## pickypuck

chics said:
			
		

> Sorry, but you are mixing (at least) two very different things.
> 
> One was during and just after the war (in 1936), people were poor and there were anything -neither paying for it!- anywhere. It caused a lot of migration and it's true than, then, catalans learned spanish and foreigners learned catalan, just to understand each other and without politic neither nacionalistic ideologies or prejudices.
> 
> Your parents went to the islands not before the 60's. It was at least one generation later, who had been grownth in the dictatorial thought...
> 
> There is no doubt that this two migrations were widely different!!!!
> ​


 
I am not mixing anything. In my post I said "firstly" and "later". My grand-parents and not my parents had to emigrate to the Balearic Islands and not precisely for sightseeing. Things became very hard and they didn't have any other option.

Before the civil war I am sure that in Barcelona people were perfectly bilingual.


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