The Popular Party and toponymy in Galicia: a new twist on the nonsense

Galicia's official place names have been an inexhaustible source of nationalist nonsense for decades.

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This nationalism has also been imposed under the regional governments of the Popular Party. The PP's predecessor party, Alianza Popular, approved a "language normalization law" in 1983 whose Article 10 states:

1. The place names of Galicia will have the Galician language as their only official form.

2. The Xunta de Galicia is responsible for determining the official names of municipalities, territories, population centers, interurban communication routes, and place names in Galicia. The names of urban roads will be determined by the corresponding City Council.

3. These names are legal for all purposes, and the signage must comply with them. The Xunta de Galicia will regulate the standardization of public signage, respecting in all cases the international standards to which the State subscribes.

This led to the deletion of Spanish place names from the official toponymy of Galicia, even with the opposition of some city councils and residents, as occurred in the case of the city of La Coruña, where the Galician government of the PP overrode the municipal government by imposing the Galician place name "A Coruña" without giving it the option of using the Spanish place name when writing in Spanish.

Well: now the PP regional government is preparing the largest review of place names since 2003, which will include changes to the names of some town halls. For example, La Cañiza, whose Galician form was "A Cañiza", will be called "A Caniza". Castro Caldelas, called this way in Spanish and Galician, will be "O Castro de Caldelas". The changes will affect more than 2,500 places in Galicia.

As has happened before, the town councils and affected residents have no say in this process. If they don't like the change, they'll have to put up with it. Others have already made the decision for them. It matters little that the vast majority of residents of La Cañiza use the letter eñe to refer to their town, or that in Castro Caldelas almost all residents refer to their village that way, because the Galician government, in collaboration with the Royal Galician Academy (RAG), has already decided for them. Is this how a democracy is supposed to work?

Of course, this website will ignore these changes. The official toponymy only affects official documents and not private publications like Counting Stars. Here I will continue to use traditional Spanish toponyms when writing in Spanish and traditional Galician toponyms (and not the inventions of the Xunta and the RAG) when writing in Galician. And if anyone doesn't like it, they can put up with it, just as the residents of La Cañiza and Castro Caldelas have to put up with it.

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Image: Google Street View.