Local languages

One disadvantage of living in a foreign country is that, often, the country you choose to live in doesn't speak a language you understand. It's one of the reasons why migrants, fleeing some terror regime, don't stop when they get to the first safe place. They keep going heading for somewhere that speaks a language they do.

Most of we rich foreigners who move here want to be good immigrants. We try to learn a bit of Spanish before we arrive. We try to learn more as we live here but, in this area, and in others, we find that a lot of the information is in a different sort of Spanish. In Pinoso, which is in the Valencian Community, it's called Valencian. Although nobody speaks Valencian directly to we foreigners we see and hear it everywhere

The current Spanish constitution says:

1) Castilian is the official language of the State. Every Spaniard has the duty to know it and the right to use it (Castilian is the language that is known worldwide as Spanish)

2) The other Spanish languages will also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities in accordance with their statutes

3) The richness of the different linguistic forms of Spain is a cultural heritage that will be the object of special respect and protection.

So Spanish, Castilian is spoken throughout Spain. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community (where the variant is called Valencian). Galician is spoken in Galicia and some areas of Asturias and Castilla y León. Basque is spoken in the Basque Country and Navarre. Aranese (a variety of Occitan which is another Southern European language) is spoken in a specific region of Catalonia.

I fully understand why people speak Valencian. It's a local language, it's the language of the land. My Yorkshire accent shows where I'm from too. But it does make life trickier for we incomers. Often it's easy enough to catch the gist of Valencian if you speak Castilian, but it makes it all harder work. I also wonder sometimes if there is a bit of exclusivity about it. Back in 2010 the Regional Government did a language survey in their territory. They found that nearly 50% of the population speaks Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well" (in some of the Castilian speaking areas that figure was as low as 10%) and about 25% said they write Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well" (6% in the Castilian speaking areas). There are around 50 nationalities living in Pinoso. Only one of them naturally speaks Valencian. 

The strength of feeling behind the various regional languages, Basque, Catalan etc., varies a lot in the different regions. Sometimes it's simply another language, something of local pride and heritage. Sometimes it's considered to be one of the building blocks of an independent nation downtrodden by an uncaring and power crazed Castilian speaking government based in Madrid. This is particularly reflected in schools where classes may have to be taken in the local language. Sometimes opting to take classes in Castilian might disadvantage pupils in other areas of the curriculum. It's all very complicated and the stuff of hundreds of arguments around dinner tables, on bar stools and in WhatsApp groups.

One of the manifestations of this linguistic plurality/chauvinism is in relation to local government workers - from librarians and teachers to surgeons and town hall clerical staff. Where there is a local language a public job profile usually includes a language profile. Even where the local language is not a specific requirement having it will bring quicker promotion and greater opportunity in general. In some communities nearly all the government jobs require the local language but all the communities have ways around this for the times when there are skills shortages. It can still be a huge stumbling block. 

I know someone, a health professional, who has always spoken Valencian at home but couldn't take the promotion offered to her until she had passed the official Valencian exam. As Spanish exams tend to penalise errors rather than reward knowledge, her everyday Valencian cost her points. It took her a lot of studying for her to pass the exam. Recently three Spanish nurses working in Catalonia used TikTok to complain that their careers were stalled by the need for a high level (C1) Catalan language qualification. The nurses used a very common, everyday, swear word which gave the Catalan authorities a good excuse to talk about potential disciplinary and legal action against the nurses. The Health Care chief in Catalonia said "We must guarantee care in our local language". There was no mention of their nursing skills.

Blood, fuet and tears

What goes into a paella is a bit of a moot point. Valencian paella usually contains white rice, meat (usually chicken or rabbit) garrofó (a sort of bean), saffron and rosemary and, of course, olive oil. There are plenty of variations but most of them replace or add to the meat with, say, snails, seafood or fish and the beans with maybe artichokes or cauliflower. You may remember that, a couple of years ago, Jamie Oliver the British chef, suggested a paella made with onions, carrots, parsley, red pepper, tomato puree, chicken stock, frozen peas chicken thighs and chorizo. He received death threats from enraged Spaniards. They were appalled by the recipe in general but especially about the inclusion of chorizo. I suppose it is a bit like calling something made from quorn and onions in a soy  sauce gravy topped off with mashed yams a Shepherd's Pie. I doubt though that the British newspapers would be able to mine the rich seam of national outrage in defence of the Shepherd's Pie.

Unless I'm very much mistaken chorizo is now commonplace in the UK. So popular, so common, that the pronunciation is no longer the chorritso of a few years ago to something much closer to the Spanish - Choreetho. Chorizo is made by coarsely mincing pork meat, adding seasoning and paprika before pushing the mix into sausage skins which are hung to cure in a nice dry place. Apparently this type of curing without smoke and without salt and where the meat sort of gently rots down is called fermentation curing. Anyway, however it's made chorizo is plentiful in Spain. Any supermarket will have it in a variety of shapes and forms. Some is cheap and some isn't, some is spicy and some isn't, some is obviously produced in huge factories and delivered in articulated lorries and some is made carefully by someone who would be happy to do a radio interview about it.

Stick with me whilst I drift.

In choosing a book I generally work from reviews and lists published somewhere - "Our top ten picks for the beach this summer", "Fifteen new Spanish writers you should get to know" and so on. It is remarkable how many of these books seem to be set in Catalonia or to include Catalan themes. I read the latest Isabel Allende the other day. Nowadays she's a US citizen but I still think of her as Chilean. Her story, about Spanish Civil War refugees taken in by Chile, was full of Catalan words and characters. The book I've just finished was going to be about Catalonia because it was originally published in Catalan. The story is set amongst country folk in the High Pyrenees. There was lots of description in the book and I noticed that in amongst the myriad food references several places smelled of cheese and fuet.

Fuet is a thin, dry cured, solid, pork meat sausage flavoured with black pepper, garlic and, sometimes, aniseed. It has a white appearance, as though it has been sprinkled with flower, though the white is actually a fungus. I'd never particularly associated fuet with Catalonia though, when I thought about it, the name is obviously Catalan. So chorizo is a sausage and fuet is a sausage.

Spain has lots and lots of sausages. If I were to buy chorizo I know there are choices to be made. Any old pig or the little Iberian black jobs? Fed on commercial feed or raised free range on acorns? Basically the cheap stuff or the quality product? On the other hand I just buy fuet. In the same way as I would never associate hot dog sausages, Wieners, with quality meat I've always presumed that fuet was in the same sort of class, made from the the scrag ends. If I were to think about, and I never had till I read Irene Solà Saez's book, I would imagine fuet being produced in an enormous factory stacked with giant killing machines where all the workers wear hairnets and white wellies and smoke a quick ciggy at break time. The sort of place that, every now and then, is infiltrated by undercover journalists who film heartless workers laughing as they do something disgustingly barbaric to terrified blood spattered pigs standing in their own excrement. But, maybe not. If the Pyrenean houses named Matavaques and Can Prim smell of fuet and cheese there must be quality stuff to be had.

Practical research is called for.