The assault on the Catalan identity in the early Francoist education system: an unpublished document

Abstract

The article that we present provides evidence on the existence of a strategy planned from the upper echelons of the central power so that the Spanish language in Catalonia would enjoy a privileged position, where the primary school would play a leading role in developing such an ambitious project. In order to validate our hypothesis we analyse the content of an unreleased document found by the author of this article in the personal file of Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, Minister of Education of the first Government of the rebels and ardent supporter of the Catalan language and culture in his youth. From this study we can conclude, in the first place, that the proposal contained in this manuscript entitled «Lecture on the teaching of Spanish language in Catalonia» is a proof that during the Civil War there were already orchestrated initiatives from the rebel government to enhance the supremacy of the Spanish language in Catalonia and, in the second place, that the essence that impregnates such a unique initiative embodies a clear example of incomprehension of the differential Catalan fact by the authorities of the new state. This is a problem inherited until today and whose main manifestation is the intolerance towards the use of a native language, and accordingly, towards the definition of the framework that determines its official status, all of which has led to an institutional disagreement without precedent in the history of our young democracy. The final conclusions emphasise the validity of this strategy of the central government whose objective is to subordinate the Catalan culture and, therefore, their
native language, to the Castilian hegemony.

Key words: Spanish language, culture, Catalan, differential fact, native,
Francoism.