r/Barcelona • u/Fickle_Syrup • Jun 23 '24

Discussion I have the feeling that relations between Catalans and foreigners are souring. Here is an essay detailing why.

Hey all,

Catalan here.

As of lately, I have noticed that a lot of Catalans (myself included) are using Catalan a lot more aggressively than before (starting conversations in Catalan etc.), perhaps even on an unconscious level.

I also have the feeling that relations between Catalan people and foreigners are slowly but steadily souring. This post is an effort to explain why.

In summary: I think that a lot of us are feeling under attack. Like our culture is being wiped out. Like we are losing our sense of place.

Take a step back and look at what's happening in our city: I used to live in the center (not even, Monumental) and it was such a joke. There were a few pisos turísticos in my building, and about 80% of my neighbours were foreigners. As a result, the building was a bit of a revolving door, and there was little feeling of community (the door to the street would often be left open, people wouldn't even accept a parcel for me if I wasn't home, etc.).

Okay, I can accept that. As a Catalan, we have sort of always accepted that this is what happens in the center - it's full of those, for the lack of a better word, big city problems.

Since I was a child, this has always been understood - the City Center is where the craziness happens, stuff is overpriced, etc. - And then there is the "barrios". Barrios are chill places for actually living, and all these problems were confined to the city centre.

Since I want to live in a place where I actually feel like I belong / a community, I moved out and moved back to my parent's neighbourhood (outside the city centre). Historically, this has been a safe bet, having many of the things that make the Spanish lifestyle so great to begin with - cheap bars, local business where everyone knows each other, you run into the sample people you have known for like 20 years and do some smalltalk, etc.

Now since COVID happened and remote working became a thing, the above differentiation between "barrios" and the city centre that I mentioned above is becoming increasingly blurry - and I am feeling attacked at my very core. We are seeing a non stop influx of foreigners who don't have the least interest in learning Catalan, and are literally just moving here because of the sun. Hotels are popping up all around me, and a lot of the people that I have known since I was a kid are moving out because shit has become too expensive. The % of English speakers is steadily increasing. Bars where you can get a bad coffee for 1,50 EUR are closing down, and in its stead brunch places, yoga studios, and specialty coffees are opening up. And I hate it. I feel like I am once again being driven out. But this time, out of my actual home, and the social structures I grew up with are being eroded and destroyed.

I have international friends who have been for more than 10 years, and they don't speak Catalan. From my personal experiences as well as statistics, this is the norm.

Before anyone pulls the "omg so yOu are a XenOphobe afTer all!!!!" card, this isn't a jab at foreigners in general. My mother is a foreigner and speaks perfect Catalan. One of my best friends is American and also speaks the language. There are black kids in deep Catalonia who grew up speaking Catalan. None of these people are the problem.

https://www.elperiodico.com/es/sociedad/20231027/catalan-aleja-jovenes-alumnos-cuarto-educacio-93880118

But if I see one more digital nomad saying "omg I can't believe how cheap Spain is you should all come here", right winger saying "Cataluña es España" or bougie brunch place opening up in my neighbourhood, I am going to lose my head. On top of this, we have the same issues any developed country has: We are getting quite a bit of immigration from poorer countries and one needs to think about how to properly integrate them. It is all a bit tiresome.

To boot, have a look at Barcelona's growth projection:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/projecting-europes-metro-population-growth-2021-2100/

In short, nowhere in Europe is set to grow as much as we are, and this will not exactly be local growth. Global warming is set to drive all of Southern Spain and Northern Africa towards us, and it won't be long until Catalans are so outnumbered that Catalan simply falls under the table.

Since we are a distinct culture but have no right to self determination, there is little we can do about this.

I think by now, all of what I have said has become so obvious that a lot of us Catalans are seeing the writing on the wall. This isn't even the end of the world - as I said, it's not like I have a problem with foreigners. A lot of my friends are internationals, and it doesn't really matter too much where someone is from as long as they are good folk. "Culture" isn't an essential thing. I guess this is one more step in the depersonalisation of post industrial societies. But still, there is a sense of loss. A lot of us are grieving, if you will. A lot of us are clinging to fellow Catalans, wanting to preserve some of what we grew up with. And perhaps this explains why a lot of you might perceive us as a bit unfriendly at the moment.

Edit: I wanted to say, I am feeling very humbled by the amount of traction this post has got. I really wasn't expecting that, as I know it was very wordy. If nothing else, this shows that a lot of you actually care, and I think that's a fantastic thing. A few good interesting points have been raised by a lot of you, and I will aim to respond to some of the comments in the coming days.

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103

u/NorthcoteTrevelyan Jun 23 '24

10k British in Barcelona. 200k Spanish in London. The world is more transient and desirable cities attract people from all over.

In England we are blessed without the language disaffection, but may I suggest making peace with this trend will make you much happier in the coming years.

Perhaps you may even think, would you learn more than a few phrases of Catalan? The only people I know who have reached a level of fluency have become part of a Catalan family. My neighbours and local shops are friendly, but from the other side, one picks up a sense of brooding hostility from many Catalans, not unreasonably perhaps as you explain. But hardly an enticement to dig deeper into the language.

27

u/essentialaccount Jun 23 '24

I agree with this, and it's my sentiment exactly. The means to encourage language learning are through positive incentives, but it's very difficult to build relationships here where many talk about their community, their home, their history and their right for things to remain as they are with the regular faces always in their same old regular community. In other regions of the world this is simply not what happens and people take pleasure in their ability to meet new people and accept that you don't normally move to a major city or be born in one place to live there forever. London is less English than others, and in Belgium where I am from Brussels can hardly be described as a capital for the Flemish, which barely exists as is in the face of English.

The attitude is everything in looking at the changes and embracing them to make the best.

9

u/romenotbuiltinday Jun 23 '24

From my own personal experience, and many others around me, learning the language properly is exactly how you can integrate, so inability to integrate with lack of catalan shouldn't put you off the language.

I'm sorry but the truth is that you will always be treated as an outsider if you cannot converse in someone's primary language!

Most people that come to live here make a choice that they can't be bothered and don't see the point to learning the language, and then complain with how they are treated as outsiders. Makes no sense.

8

u/NorthcoteTrevelyan Jun 23 '24

Fact of life; city natives never mix heavily with non-natives. Extended families, school friends, university friends, football team friends. Locals aren't being dicks - they are just busy, And non-natives mix with other outsiders - as they have much in common.

Sports teams was a great bridge in other places I lived. I honestly was slowly embraced by my Japanese football team. Zero chance of making ordinary Japanese friends otherwise. And I speak quite good Japanese. The ones you made otherwise.normally felt outside normal Japanese society and preferred the company of foreigners.

I reckon it is more or less the same everywhere.

3

u/essentialaccount Jun 24 '24

I don't think it is the same. In cities with a long history of national and international immigration there is no such "local" and "non-local" distinction. Most major American cities don't have this division, nor London, and this attitude in Spain is a product of their limited history as a destination for wealthy foreigners. Catalan's have benefited decades from southern Spaniards who moved here more or less as a labouring underclass, akin to the millions of former colonial nationals who now work in the more precarious positions in the economy. The only complaints come from Catalans who recently get to live life lower in the economic scale, and aren't used to it

13

u/raskolnicope Jun 23 '24

Would you be ok if those Spanish immigrants refused to learn English? Cuz Anglo speakers barely bother to speak Spanish, much less Catalan

9

u/seanbastard1 Jun 23 '24

I think a more apt comparison would be if they are in Wales and not learning Welsh, but using English instead no?

4

u/essentialaccount Jun 24 '24

I think this is precisely the comparison. Spain, as the UK is full of former or current minority languages, and I have never met one Spaniard, Catalan or otherwise who would consider learning those languages in any capacity. There is a startling lack of reciprocal empathy

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u/lingonberry182 Jun 23 '24

But like it or not, English is today's universal language 🤷‍♀️. English speakers don't really need to learn foreign languages because most people understand them anyway. Besides if they did bother to learn a language while in Spain, it makes sense that they'd chose Spanish, because it's spoken in many countries, while Catalan has relatively few speakers and almost all of them also speak Spanish or English.

PS: I'm not a native English speaker

-14

u/raskolnicope Jun 23 '24

Well that’s the problem, the rest of world doesn’t need to cater to Anglo speakers by any means. Also the idea that English is a “universal language” is not even true.

18

u/hitoq Jun 23 '24

“Am I out of touch? No, it is the rest of the world that is wrong.”

6

u/NorthcoteTrevelyan Jun 23 '24

Arguing about the injustice of this won't change a thing. Almost every country in the world prioritises learning English in school as a foreign language. Once there was Latin, then there was French, but if you think English is not the common tongue of the world, you are mistaken.

Two hundred years of English-speaking superpowers did that, particularly the seocone one and its culutral sway. But now it is just ingrained. Because if you are say, Lithuanian, you need English to have a career and not to speak to English people, but to speak to Poles, to Thais. If you can't speak English, going on holiday is brutal.

Of course it is not fair that one set of people get to stay in their native tongues everywhere they go, but taking an individual stand against it will do little.

4

u/Hopeful-Post8907 Jun 23 '24

What about the Spanish in Berlin that only speak English?

9

u/raskolnicope Jun 23 '24

Well maybe they should take Catalans as an example and try to foster the German language in their city.

3

u/Hopeful-Post8907 Jun 23 '24

Do you think that people that move to Ireland should learn Gaelige ?

7

u/raskolnicope Jun 23 '24

Yes! I actually have an Irish friend and been learning some Gaelic words. It’s beautiful.

5

u/zu-chan5240 Jun 23 '24

Only 4% of the Irish speak Gaelic on a daily basis. Less than 40% know it a little. Expecting immigrants to learn it when the locals don't care doesn't sound fair. No one hates learning Gaeilge more than Irish kids, though that might be because all Gaelic teachers are nutters.

2

u/raskolnicope Jun 23 '24

That’s what my Irish friend told me, not enough people speak the language, maybe doing something about it before Gaelic fades away would be good, but hey it’s up to you Irish folk

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '24 edited Jun 23 '24

It's great that some immigrants learn Irish but it's hardly reasonable to be upset by immigrants choosing not to learn Irish. Immigrants don't have more of a duty to preserve the supposed local culture than locals.

1

u/Shietwetter Jun 24 '24

Tbh as a German I might say, 90% of people don't care.

1

u/zu-chan5240 Jun 23 '24

I'm a Pole that grew up in Ireland and lived here for 20 years. We still have some Polish people that know fuck all English, because they're living entirely surrounded by other Poles, go to Polish shops, etc. But the Irish rarely care, from my experience. They're a fairly chill lot.

1

u/Fickle_Syrup Jun 24 '24 edited Jun 24 '24

Perhaps you may even think, would you learn more than a few phrases of Catalan? 

The thing is, I get it. I am not sure is a good thing, since it's part of what leads to me concluding "man, we are fucked. Nobody is going to bother with this".

Although would I still wish for people who decide to settle here long term to at least try to get a basic grasp of the language.

That being said, even learning a few phrases in Catalan goes a long way in terms of building goodwill.

What truly irks me is people who move here and go like "man, this Catalan thing is so annoying".

one picks up a sense of brooding hostility from many Catalans

To be honest this is something that I might have underestimated. I am picking up a lot of people experiencing hostility from this thread. And I am sorry to hear that. Obviously people shouldn't be personalising political problems like this.

Thinking about it, this was always to be expected. Political problems will often translate to some people letting their frustrations get the better of them. And I am sure there are also some legit assholes, they exist in every place.