In 2017 some leaders in Catalonia decided to allow people to vote for independence from Spain. The entire thing ended up in a lot of violence, particularly from the side of the Spanish police who was deployed to basically destroy this voting initiative. I was in Catalonia at that time. I remember it was a lot of violence of that sort.

videos.trom.tf/w/rfdBrDfQ1MQdb…

Of course people should be able to decide if they want to be independent, and not have their heads smashed by the police for trying to vote for independence, but all that considered, everyone is free to speak Catalan in Catalonia, express their cultural traditions, and so forth. The school is primarily in Catalan. Everything is in Catalan first or Catalan only. No Catalan is treated differently from a Spaniard.

So why do they want independence now?

Money? Politics? The hope that if Catalonia becomes a nation then their living standards will be higher and their culture will be more important? Their language has more chances of being preserved?

A hope for a better life if they become independent maybe?

It is hard to see how this can be the case because being an “independent” tribe is hardly doable today. Your stuff, imports and exports, media, tourism, the trade society itself, will push and pull on your language, society and culture and morph them in the process. Just like it does now. Look at the “island nation UK” who has 0 neighbors basically, is independent, is a bloody island. And yet many there complain about their culture loss, immigration, difficult living conditions, etc.. Being independent, your own tribe, is hardly a shield that can preserve your culture.

But since this Catalonian region went through a lot, it also changed in the process. Is like someone kidnapped a kid from Japan at age 8, takes her to US where she grows up. Then at the age of 40 she is free from the kidnapper. But when she returns to Japan she realizes she is not simply the same 8 year old Japanese girl. And Japan is also a different place. She speaks English and was enculturated into the American tribe.

Is she Japanese still? And what does that mean? Things have changed, and she needs to embrace her new identity.

The Catalan language is quite similar to the Spanish one nowadays because they have merged in many ways. There are so many foreigners here too from the rest of Europe but also South America. Spanish is spoken by more people in Catalonia than Catalan. Catalonia is a different girl, and no one is saying she has to forget the past trauma, but she cannot come back to before the trauma. She needs to embrace her new identity.

Snippet from Culture Cancer - tromsite.com/2026/07/culture-c…

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