Toponym 'Orense': is it called 'normalization' because it sounds less ugly than 'intolerance'?

The proponents of social engineering always manage to make their plans to degrade freedoms seem less unpleasant.

The BNG says that 'Orense does not exist' but on its website it says 'Castela e León' and 'A Rioxa'
Place names in Spanish in Galicia, Hispanophobia, and trash journalism

A discriminatory law that contradicts the Statute of Galicia

In Galicia, we can see an example of this in language policy. The Statute of Galicia, approved in 1981, stated in its Article 5 that Galician and Spanish are the official languages ​​of Galicia, that "everyone has the right to know and use them" and that "no one may be discriminated against on the grounds of language." The politicians who supported this text very soon changed their minds about discrimination.

In 1983, the Parliament of Galicia approved a "language normalization law". Article 2 of that law aligned with the spirit of bilingualism of the Statute of Galicia, stating: "The public authorities of Galicia shall guarantee the normal use of Galician and Castilian, the official languages ​​of the Autonomous Community." However, Article 10 of that law openly contradicted this bilingualism, banishing Spanish from official toponymy, by stating something that contradicts common practice in all territories of democratic countries with more than one official language: "The place names of Galicia shall have only the Galician form as their official form."

Disguising discrimination against Spanish as 'normalization'

In this way, discrimination and intolerance against Spanish, a language spoken in Galicia since the Middle Ages—that is, since the time when Vulgar Latin gave way to two new languages, the ones spoken in Galicia today, was disguised as "normalization." Some argue that this is a way of repairing the discriminatory policies of the Franco regime, in which Galician had no official recognition, was not included in place names, and was not taught in schools. But one form of discrimination does not justify another, and even less so does a democracy doing to one language something similar to what a dictatorship did to another.

Furthermore, it should be noted that this discriminatory law was approved unanimously. That is to say, it had the support of the Popular Alliance (now the Popular Party), the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG-PSG) and Galician Left (Esquerda Galega), and the Communist Party of Galicia (PCG). Today, the Popular Party (PP), the PSOE, and the BNG support this law without any prominent figures. The PP reaffirmed this support in May 2023, as I already pointed out here.

The PP rejected such regulations in other regions, labeling them 'imposing monolingualism'

Paradoxically, in 2011, when the PSOE and the PNV banished the Spanish place names of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, the Popular Party opposed it, arguing that this was "establishing an imposed monolingualism." In 2021, when the PSOE and the nationalists removed the Spanish toponym "Mahón", the PP also rejected that change, proposing "an inclusive formula" that would include toponyms in both languages ​​and stating: "For us, coexistence is normal, it's legal." But in Galicia, the PP does just the opposite.

Of course, the real purpose of that law was not to normalize Galician (it would have been enough to recognize place names in both languages ​​as official for that), but rather to exclude Spanish, which was treated as a foreign language in Galicia despite having been spoken in this Spanish region for hundreds of years. The possibility of each town choosing its own name was not even considered. When the A Coruña City Council voted in 2004 to recognize the city's place names in both languages ​​as official, the Galician government, then controlled by the PP, rejected it, displaying the same aversion to Spanish place names as the separatists do.

A law that has served to promote intolerance towards Spanish

The results of discriminating against Spanish in official place names have been predictable. This law has served to promote intolerance towards Spanish, extending to different sectors of society what were previously attitudes typical of the most radical separatists. Yesterday we saw an example of this. The mayor of Ourense, Gonzalo Pérez Jácome (of Democracia Ourensana), published a message on Twitter defending the use of the place name "Ourense" when speaking in Spanish, making a very good argument from a linguistic point of view. Pérez Jácome's arguments coincide with those of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), which, in relation to the toponym "Orense", states:

"Traditional Spanish name of the province and city in Galicia whose Galician name is Ourense. Except in official texts, where it is mandatory to use the Galician toponym as the only official name approved by the Spanish Parliament, in texts written in Spanish it is appropriate to use the toponym in this language. The demonym, for all types of texts, including official ones, is orensano."

As is often the case, dozens of intolerant people have responded to Pérez Jácome with insults and mockery, simply because the mayor defended a Spanish toponym that many residents of Ourense have used daily for many years. There is another paradox, which many tend to overlook: in the text published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), in Article 2, the Statute of Galicia still includes the toponyms "La Coruña" and "Ourense" as names of two of the Galician provinces. The same thing happens in the text of the Statute in Spanish published on the website of the Xunta de Galicia, since the text of the Statute was never changed to modify those place names.

Only one party has proposed repealing this discriminatory regulation

I do not want to end these lines without recalling that in 2020 Vox presented a proposal in Congress to recover these toponyms in Spanish in the official toponymy, denouncing that laws such as the aforementioned one from 1983 "have allowed and encouraged the proscription of the use of Castilian and established that the only official designation is that of the vernacular language". The proposal called for "regulating by law the use of traditional Castilian toponymy throughout the national territory, so that it becomes official throughout Spain and shares this status with the other Spanish languages ​​specific to the corresponding region." It was a very reasonable proposal and in accordance with the spirit of Article 3 of the Constitution. The initiative was not even admitted for processing. This is what some parties understand by "dialogue" and "democracy".

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Image: National Geographic Institute. Map of Galicia from 1849 with the toponym "Orense" and with other toponyms in Spanish that have been excluded from the official toponymy for the mere fact of being in Spanish.