Pinoso or el Pinos?

I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there’s been a bit of an upsurge in Valenciano speaking in Pinoso lately. It feels as if more young people are using it as their first language than they did just a few years ago. Of course, it could simply be that I’ve become better at recognising it—or that I’m eavesdropping more now that my leisure-time activities are shrinking along with my physical capacity.  

There’s definitely an institutional push, too. The local council has been using Valenciano more and more. Only the other day, Pinoso Town Hall launched a new Facebook page—its title is in Valenciano: Ajuntament del Pinós. I wouldn’t be surprised if before long Pinoso, or El Pinós if you prefer, follows Monòver’s example and goes fully Valenciano. Monòver even changed all its road signs to Valencian versions of village names. To be fair, those were probably the original ones, though that assumes Valenciano speakers named the towns in the first place. In reality, waves of migration from other regions, often bringing Castilian speakers, may have influenced local names at various points.  

In Pinoso, if the change is real, it may owe something to the new mayor, Silvia. She’s always been a staunch advocate of the home‑grown language and only switches to Castilian—the international variety of Spanish—when she really has to. I’m not sure whether there’s a party line at MCM, the local press office, to use Valenciano, or whether the team simply know which way the wind is blowing.  

We’ve been to a couple of local events recently where I expected a mix of Valenciano and Castilian, but they turned out to be entirely in Valenciano. At a village meeting in Culebrón a long fortnight ago, Silvia switched to Castilian only when someone reminded her that Maggie and I couldn’t really follow the discussion otherwise.  

Personally, I think using Valenciano is a good thing. Castilian isn’t originally local, and while every language has a tangled history, Castilian was largely brought in by newcomers from other parts of Spain. There were times—during the Franco dictatorship, for instance—when the local language was suppressed, and even now there’s a lingering sense that Valenciano is somehow the language of the poor or less educated. Yet a shared language strengthens community bonds, identity, and belonging. It also helps a language evolve—keeping up with new ideas, technologies, and social realities. A language that can’t handle everyday modern concepts—from selfies to transgender—hasn't got much of a future.  

After all, Valenciano—as the local variety of Catalan—is hardly a minor language. It’s not in the same league as Hindi or Arabic, but around ten million people use Catalan regularly, roughly the same as speak Swedish, Hungarian, or Czech, and far more than speak Norwegian or Lithuanian.  

Listening to the lunchtime news the other day, I noticed how natural multilingualism has become across the Catalan‑speaking world. After the national headlines, the broadcast switched to the Comunitat Valenciana. The new regional president spoke in Valenciano. A few minutes later, there was a piece about Francina Armengol, the president of Spain’s Congress—roughly equivalent to the Speaker of the House of Commons—visiting the area; she spoke in Mallorquín, the Catalan variety from Mallorca. Then came a report about the politician Oriol Junqueras, who was visiting Paiporta, one of the towns hit by last year’s DANA. He also spoke in Catalan. None of it was translated, because any Valenciano speaker can follow those variants without difficulty.  

Still, while Valenciano builds community, it can also feel exclusive for the many people who have made Pinoso their home. Most newcomers will naturally learn Castilian first—or already speak it if they’re from Latin America. Castilian dominates just across the border in Murcia and Castilian is what you need in Madrid, Santander, or Bogotá. Of course, children of immigrants in Pinoso, or anywhere else in the Comunitat, will go through the local schools where both Valenciano and Castilian are taught, but that shift will take time.  

And even within the Valencian Community, not everyone speaks Valenciano. You hear it much less in big cities than in rural areas. To give a rough idea, a 2019 survey by the Generalitat Valenciana found that fewer than 2% of Valencia City residents regularly use Valenciano, although 85% say they understand it reasonably well. Around half claim they can speak it, but across the region only about a quarter actually use it in daily life. There are strong regional differences—Castellón province, for instance, is far more Valenciano‑speaking than Alicante.  

In Pinoso, roughly a quarter of the population weren’t born in Spain, which is quite a number to risk excluding, especially if you apply those language‑use percentages to the mix. In some situations, greater inclusivity would be easy—for instance, local news items could have bilingual headlines or introductions even if the main text stayed in one language. Doing the same for spoken announcements, say before a concert, would be trickier but not impossible.  

And there’s no doubt that the immigrant community plays an important role in Pinoso’s economic life—whether as cheap labour doing jobs the locals won't touch, as professionals bringing skills the locals don't have, or as retirees bringing their bank balances and a surprising thirst particularly at gin and tonic time.