Graves in Galician

Trevor @ Tuesday June 27th 2006 15:40

Carlos Ferrera notes the bizarre preoccupations of Galician nationalist and regional deputy, Bieito Lobeira:

If some catastrophe were to occur today that would lead to the partial or total eradication of human life from the part of the planet which it is our fortune to occupy, with all probability future archaelogical studies of funerary remains would not observe the existence of the Galician language. Stones and cemeteries, epitaphs of all kinds, would certify that Galicia does not have its own language and that the population expressed itself in Spanish.

Lobeira, of course, wants a programme of measures to stop people being remembered in the language they choose. One of the few positive things that can be said about the regional nationalists and their thugs is that, while attacks are mounted on living dissenters and their property, the dead have tended to be left in peace. That may be about to change, unless the nutters can be persuaded to adopt Carlos’ eminently sensible suggestion for a programme of parapsychology in Galician.

(Lobeira’s proposals have historical counterparts in what I believe to have been the prohibition on the use of regional languages in cemeteries during the most recent Spanish dictatorship and the removal of non-standard and “foreign” inscriptions by Fascist administrations and their bootboys in 1920s Italy–see eg Language and nationalism in Europe, ed Barbour & Carmichael. It is, however, considered bad manners to mention this.)

Update: Carlos foresees a solution in talking tombstones, although it might not work in Germany.

Categories: God, the angels and the orders of the faithful, Les bourgeois