Nationalism is a powerful tool of social engineering that many politicians are not reluctant to use to their advantage.<\/p>\n
The Popular Party (PP) has already fuelled nationalism in Galicia and now it is trying to do the same in Andalusia. The problem is that in this region of southern Spain the PP lacks what it does have in my home region: a regional language.<\/strong> Galician has existed for centuries (it is one of the dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged in the Iberian Peninsula, like Castilian -also called Spanish-, Portuguese and Catalan). But that is never a problem for unscrupulous politicians.<\/strong><\/p>\n The PP of Andalusia wants to promote the 'Andalusian speech'<\/big><\/p>\n This Tuesday, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla<\/strong>, president of the Andalusian Government and top leader of the Andalusian PP, announced<\/a>: \"The Andalusian speech is a reflection of the soul of the Andalusians, and we will always take care of it<\/strong>.\"<\/em> He then announced the signing of a protocol with the Alejandro Rojas Marcos Foundation to \"promote our accent and ensure that it is respected<\/strong>.\"<\/em><\/p>\n That day, Carolina Espa\u00f1a<\/strong>, Minister of Economy of the Andalusian government, stated<\/a>: \"The Andalusian speech, our accent, is our hallmark. We will create a working group to promote the Andalusian speech, encourage its use and its social assessment,<\/strong> which will focus its dissemination on educational centers, universities, the public sphere and the media.\"<\/em><\/p>\n The first step: creating a laboratory language<\/big><\/p>\n For any Galician, what is happening in Andalusia is what in France they call a \"d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu\". We have already experienced this, so it is not difficult to imagine how it can end<\/strong>, if the Andalusians do not prevent it with their vote (and right now there is only one party in the Andalusian Parliament, Vox<\/strong>, willing to stop this nationalist nonsense).<\/p>\n The first will come in the form of a paradox: with the excuse of protecting a supposed \"Andalusian speech\" an artificial language will be created that will eliminate the accents that exist in Andalusia<\/strong>, since in that region there are different ways of pronouncing Spanish. Something similar happened in Galicia: they created a laboratory Galician<\/strong> that simply eliminated the different dialectal variants of that language (the same thing that happened with the \"euskera bat\u00faa\" in the Basque provinces, by the way).<\/p>\n The language business and the millions of dollars it moves<\/big><\/p>\n Of course, in this matter, language is the least of it: nationalist linguistic engineering moves millions of public funds, being a formidable business<\/strong> for nationalist groups, their linguistic commissioners and the editors of related publications. The Andalusian institutions will start to fill up with \"linguistic normalisation\" officers<\/strong> (or whatever name they choose there to disguise their linguistic commissioners) and many subsidies will start to include \"Andalusian speech\" as a condition<\/strong> for being awarded.<\/p>\n The exclusion of toponymy in Spanish<\/big><\/p>\n As has happened in Galicia, the PP will begin to change the official toponymy<\/strong> to include the new place names in \"Andalusian speech\" and displace the Spanish place names<\/strong>, presenting them as something imposed from outside even though Andalusians have used them for centuries. One of the ways to promote the new place names will be by forcing subsidized media to use them<\/strong>, as already happens in Galicia<\/a>, where any media outlet can lose a subsidy if it uses Galician place names in Spanish in its advertisements.<\/p>\n The deceptive 'trilingualism' in schools and the rejection of the free choice of language<\/big><\/p>\n At the same time as all of the above, Andalusian children will be subjected to a model of \"trilingualism\" in Spanish, English and \"Andalusian speech\"<\/strong>, in which the subjects with more text, which are those that serve to educate students in the educated version of a language, will be reserved for the new regional language, as is the case in Galicia. Of course, they will reject any proposal for a free choice of language, for fear that most families will choose Spanish.<\/p>\n The disappearance of Spanish from official signage<\/big><\/p>\n Little by little, Andalusians will see Spanish disappear from official signage<\/strong> and from many of the printed materials of the autonomous administration and local administrations, as is already happening in Galicia. In this way, Andalusians who do not want to use the new language will be turned into foreigners in their own land<\/strong>, even in front of their children, through indecent ideological indoctrination in schools, as is already happening in Galicia with the complicity of the PP<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The silencing of all complaints of discrimination against Spanish<\/big><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Andalusian PP will continue to say that it practices \"cordial bilingualism\"<\/strong>, as does the Galician PP with absolute shamelessness while developing policies to marginalize Spanish, and any complaint about discrimination against Spanish will be silenced or ridiculed by generous regional subsidies<\/strong> to local and regional media, as already happens in Galicia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The promotion of a scarecrow to secure the vote of fear<\/big><\/p>\n In addition to all this, the PP itself will be in charge of encouraging an Andalusian separatism on its left to scare its voters<\/strong>, subjecting them to the blackmail that either they vote for the PP or the dangerous Andalusian separatists could end up governing. After the elections, the Andalusian PP will make a pact with these separatists<\/strong> as the Galician PP has been doing with the BNG<\/a>, Bildu's Galician partners, for years, in order to strengthen its electoral scarecrow<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Andalusians still have time to avoid all this<\/big><\/p>\n Of course, there is nothing inevitable about the future of a region. Andalusians have the opportunity to avoid all this with their vote<\/strong>, now that they have time to prevent their land from falling into the same absurd nationalist spiral that the PP has helped to put my beloved Galician land into. If you vote for the parties that are feeding Andalusian nationalism, you already know what will come next.<\/strong> Galicia is the clearest example of the extremes to which the PP can go.<\/p>\n ---<\/p>\n
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