The term Hispanoamérica refers to the group of American countries where Spanish or Castilian is the official language. These are Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, and El Salvador. A large Spanish-speaking region that totals more than 400 million inhabitants. Therefore, a priori, an enormous market for cultural productions in Castilian, although more than 10% of the population lives below the extreme poverty line.
I don't think I'm revealing any secret if I say that, currently, the cultural ties and affections between Barcelona and Hispanoamérica are not particularly intense. Especially if we compare it with a good part of the 20th century. I think, for example, of the fruitful exile of an important part of the Catalan intelligentsia in countries like Mexico, Argentina, or the Dominican Republic after the civil war and, of course, of the Hispanoamerican Boom with its epicenter in Barcelona where Carmen Balcells attracted authors like García Márquez and Vargas Llosa.
When things have looked bad here, many Catalans have chosen to pack their bags and settle in Hispanoamérica. Not having to learn a new language to start from scratch far from home, in addition to cultural proximity – whether one likes it or not, we have more in common with an Argentine than with a Norwegian – I imagine had something to do with it. The same must happen to the thousands of migrants from these Spanish-speaking countries who, in recent decades, have chosen Barcelona to settle, thinking they would find a better life and that, furthermore, they could do so in their own language.
Language, this is the crux of the matter. Barcelona has been debating for some time – possibly since Franco kicked the bucket and Catalan began its recovery process – whether or not to be something for Hispanoamérica. Which, at a cultural level, means being a close, reference city for the more than 400 million Hispanoamericans we mentioned.
It is not a minor issue and, in fact, it is one of those topics that periodically ignite passionate debates. Among the most enthusiastic defenders of a Barcelona wide open to Hispanic American culture there is none other than a Nobel Prize in Literature. Mario Vargas Llosa –"I don't recognize this Barcelona", "We don't want Barcelona as a medieval city", "Nationalism (Catalan, it is understood) and culture don't get along well"– never tires of nostalgically repeating that he has a wonderful memory of when he lived here in the seventies and Barcelona "was the cultural capital of Spain", a still Francoist Spain!
On the opposite extreme, there are those who would like to erase any sign of Castilian culture from the city and, for example, cry foul at the possibility that Barcelona might install a sculpture of Don Quixote in Barceloneta to remember that it was precisely here where the knight of the sorrowful figure was finally defeated. As if the protagonist of Miguel de Cervantes' novel were not a universal character but a regular at VOX rallies! Surely many of them would prefer Woody Allen to have a sculpture in our streets before Don Quixote, even if the film he dedicated to Barcelona is a monumental bore.
Jokes aside, I believe it is an important issue for the city, especially now when some voices warn us that Catalan has one foot in the ICU. Therefore, perhaps it would be time to ask ourselves, very seriously: Can Barcelona be the capital that Catalan needs and, at the same time, a powerful center for cultural production in Spanish?In what way? Can a city like ours aspire to lead the Hispanic publishing market without feeling Castilian as its own language? Díaz Ayuso's mouth waters. Can we complete the linguistic normalization process that guarantees the survival of Catalan without having to give up doing business with these millions of Spanish speakers? To be or not to be, that is the question.Language, this is the crux of the matter. Barcelona has long –possibly since Franco kicked the bucket and Catalan began its recovery process– been debating whether or not to be something for Hispanic America
I'm just asking the questions, okay?