Separatism, an intolerant movement that many Galicians are already fed up with

Along with other Spanish regions, Galicia has the misfortune of being affected by the existence of secessionist movements.

“Your language sounds wrong”: the nationalist stupidity that many people have assumed
Freedom defeats social engineering: Spanish is now the most widely spoken language in Galicia

As in other places, the ideology of this movement can be summarized as hatred of Spain and the Spanish language. I have spent decades reading and listening to separatist speeches and I have not seen a single remotely serious and convincing argument about what Galicia would gain by separating from the rest of Spain. What these speeches do contain, on the contrary, is the mistaken belief that having a regional language or certain cultural peculiarities is sufficient reason to support the idea of ​​Galicia ceasing to be part of Spain, a complete absurdity that is rejected by the vast majority of Galicians.

As with other nationalisms, Galician secessionism bases much of its dogma on the falsification of the past, a falsification that counts Galicia's linguistic heritage among its main victims. Abundant documentation demonstrates that two languages, Castilian and Galician, have been spoken in Galicia since the Middle Ages. Both languages ​​ceased to be mere dialects of Vulgar Latin and became languages ​​in their own right during that period, so that Spanish is as deeply rooted in Galicia as Galician.

The problem this poses for Galician nationalism is obvious. The secessionists base much of their dogma on language, and the presence of Spanish is an obstacle for them. Even more troublesome for them is the fact that Spanish is now the most spoken language in Galicia, after numerous efforts to displace it. Galician is a beautiful language that is suffering the effects of nationalist intolerance, which has managed to generate rejection of what it tries to impose with methods typical of anti-democrats.

The usual methods of Galician nationalism include insulting all those who don't fit in with their ideas. This no longer only includes the mere fact of disagreeing with their ideology to a greater or lesser degree: to be insulted by a Galician separatist, you only need to speak Spanish, which is—I repeat—the language spoken by the majority of Galicians. For some years now, separatism has been stigmatizing any Galician who speaks Spanish in a way typical of a fascist movement, labeling Spanish speakers as bad Galicians, settlers, immigrants and things like that, or despising and ridiculing the Spanish language under the stupid idea that "it sounds bad", a pathetic attempt to make Galicians who speak that language feel inferior, very similar to the pathetic attempt by others, years ago, to make Galician speakers feel inferior. In the end, Galician separatism imitates and copies the methods of the fascism it claims to hate so much.

As is typical of certain political movements, the repeated electoral failures of the political wing of separatism have only served to accentuate these intolerant attitudes, a trend also fueled by the fact that much of Galician separatism is also part of a left-wing extremism already prone to fanaticism. In recent years we have seen shameful things such as the BNG (Galician Nationalist Bloc, which has one seat in Congress, another in the Senate, and 19 in the Parliament of Galicia) publicly applauding an organization classified as terrorist by the European Union, a scene that is repeated year after year. In the past decade, the BNG voted against motions condemning the terrorist group Resistencia Galega in more than fifty municipalities. These positions are utterly shameful.

The symbolic representation of this extremism is the placement of the red star on the Galician flag, a combination that separatists love, because reading their proclamations you realize that they want to turn Galicia into something similar to Enver Hoxha's communist Albania, a hermetic state ruled by an extremist sect determined to repress the people to prevent any dissent. In reality, the red star shares space with the Nazi swastika on the podium of totalitarian symbols that have served to decorate some of the greatest genocides in history. Those of you who weren't born in Galicia can therefore understand the disgust that many Galicians feel at seeing our regional flag stained with that totalitarian monstrosity.

Given all of the above, it should come as no surprise that more and more Galicians are fed up with this nationalist fanaticism, which is no longer content with trying to make life impossible for those of us born and raised here, but has also set its sights on promoting anti-tourism sentiment, attacking one of the main sources of income for many Galician businesses simply because the arrival of people from other parts of Spain and the world clashes with this aim of turning Galicia into a replica of communist Albania. Of course, this separatist intolerance towards tourists is in no way representative of the Galician people. Galicia has always proven to be a hospitable land: what separatism is doing is profoundly anti-Galician.