1) Catalan: a language that has survived against the odds
Repressed over the centuries by conquering powers, Catalan is now spoken by 9 million people
URL:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/22/catalan-language-survived
Catalan is not, as some believe, a dialect of Spanish, but a language that developed independently out of the vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans who colonised the Tarragona area. It is spoken by 9 million people in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Isles, Andorra and the town of Alghero in Sardinia.
Variants of Catalan are spoken in Valencia and the Balearics, which were taken back from the Moors in the 13th century. According to Professor Albert Rossich of the University of Girona (Gerona) these variants reflect the origin of the people who repopulated these areas when the Moors were driven out. Valencia was repopulated with people from Lleida and Tortosa; the Baleares with people from Barcelona and l'Empordà in the north.
Catalonia had been an autonomous province within the kingdom of Aragón but when Aragón was united with Castile with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, Castilian – ie Spanish – became the language of court and literature, while Catalan remained the popular tongue. When in 1714 Barcelona fell to Spanish troops led by the Earl of Berwick, Catalonia lost its autonomy, the central government imposed restrictions on the use of Catalan and Spanish became the official language.
2) How Catalan Culture and Identity Survived the Franco Regime
URL:
http://scholar.oxy.edu/urc_student/909/
3) A brief history of the repression of the Catalan language
URL:
http://www.helpcatalonia.cat/2013/06/a-brief-history-of-repression-of.html
XVIII Century
1715 - Consultation to the Council of Castile: In the classroom there should be no books in Catalan; this language will not be used in speaking or writing and the Christian doctrine will be taught and learned in Spanish.
1780 - Royal provision enacted by the count of Floridablanca: Requires all schools to teach the grammar of the Spanish Royal Academy.
XIX Century
1821 - Quintana Plan obliges to use Spanish in the school system.
1837 - Royal regulation included bodily and defamatory punishments for children who speak Catalan at school.
1837 - Instruction by the government of the Balearic Islands obliges to punish students who speak Catalan, who were detected thanks to the information provided by other students.
1857 - Moyano Act confirms the prohibition of Catalan in public education. It is considered the act which contributed the most to the Catalan children being illiterate in their own language, as it was since the second half of the XIX century when primary education was widespread in Spain.
XX Century
1923 - Edict that imposes teaching of Spanish during Primo de Riveras dictatorship. However, this is not the only one, as I show below.
1924 - General Losada imposes teaching of Spanish at schools. A Royal Order punishes teachers who teach in Catalan. That very year, 1924, Antoni Gaudí himself was arrested and beaten for speaking in Catalan to some police officers.
1926 - Royal decree that punishes teachers who speak Catalan by transferring them.
1938 - Act of April 9th abolishes the Statute of Catalonia and prohibits Catalan.
1939 - Prohibition to speak or write in Catalan in all public or private schools.
4) Spain keeps persecuting Catalan language
DIPLOCAT – 45 examples from the last 10 years in Catalonia
URL:
http://www.cataloniavotes.eu/en/the-spanish-state-continues-to-persecute-the-catalan-language/
