Teatre Lliure, En Procés

En Procés is a project resulting from the collaboration between Lluís Pasqual and Joan Yago. They invited 11 Catalan playwrights to compose as many short plays on the facts relating to the referendum of October the 1st 2017, based on three principles: 10-minute duration, no set design, and involvement of up to three actors. The project reaffirms the social role of theatre and renews the model of the Teatro de urgencia, capable of recording history and immediate reality. It, however, transcends the context in which it was conceived and is projected into a global dimension, because it reflects universal social, humanitarian, and political principles. The chapter studies the techniques and strategies with which each author has interpreted and recreated the episodes that inspired him/her, emphasizing the close link between politics, society, theatre, and identity.

Catalan Sociolinguistics

Humans learned to talk a thousand years ago, but our written abilities are more modern. Technological progress—from writing to digitalization—have crucially changed the way we communicate with each other. Yet, research about linguistic uses, which happens under the area of sociolinguistics, is only a modern phenomenon. In fact, the concept sociolinguistics was only coined in 1949. In the Catalan culture, the first sociolinguistic studies took the form of anti-Franco essays. It was only during the late 1960s that these essays took a sociological dimension thanks to Lluís-Vicent Aracil and Rafael-Lluís Ninyoles. Nowadays, in a context of increasing multidisciplinary approaches, Catalan sociolinguistic studies have become a hybrid field. For the discipline, the main challenge that lies ahead is how find its own perspective and how to incorporate theoretical and methodological tools without eroding the goal of sustaining a collective identity, which is the ultimate purpose that led to its foundation.

Francesc Borrull and Bartomeu Ribelles

In 1810, two works were printed in Valencia that defended the validity of the Valencian foral system established in our lands as a result of the conquest of James I when it was abolished since 1707, after the defeat of Almansa. These are the Discurso sobre la constitución que dio al reyno de Valencia su invicto conquistador, el señor don Jayme Primero by Francesc Xavier Borrull and the Memorias histórico-críticas de las antiguas Cortes del reyno de Valencia, a work by the Dominican friar Bartolomé Ribelles. This chapter analyzes the interests of those authors and places these works within the political context of the Spain of the moment, invaded by the Napoleonic troops.

Proposals for Social Pedagogy and the Best Political Practices From the Crown of Aragon

The authors analyze the figure of the Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis, and especially his Regiment de la cosa pública, from a reflection on medieval pedagogy and politics. Likewise, they establish meeting points between the thought, the words and the pedagogy of Eiximenis and those of other authors. So, the chapter draws a chronological-analytical line between him and other relevant figures of the 13th through the 16th centuries, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Beatus Ramon Llull, Niccolò Machiavelli, (Saint) Thomas More, Saint Vincent Ferrer, and Joan Lluis Vives.

The Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1228)

The authors analyze the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1228) signed between France and Toulouse. It has extraordinary relevance as it establishes the terms of the application of French law over the powerful county of Toulouse and by extension over Occitan lands, as the result of the Battle of Muret (1213). They offer the first translation ever (into English) of this treaty and they analyze it as the legal rendering of the centralized expansion of the French Crown on its way towards becoming an absolutist monarchy. They also study for the first time this treaty in comparison to the Decrees of Nova Planta issued in Spain between 1707-1716 by a king of French origin which represented the fulfillment of an authoritarian process that began in France in the 13th century. The treaty and the decrees used the concept of the “just right of conquest,” which provided a (debatable) legitimacy to the interests of the winning parties. They analyze literary texts such as the Cançó de la Croada as well as historical contemporary accounts creation of a Catalan collective identity.

Who Rules the Language?

Greater attention is paid to oral language by the new prescriptive grammar of Catalan recently issued by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and several prescriptive or guiding texts on the same topic published by Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua have put under focus a territorial conflict on language authority and raised questions on the limits between external authority and personal competence in a field (spoken language) especially favorable for the persistence of diversity. This chapter offers a discussion on prescriptivism and standardization in contemporary Catalan, and the conflict experienced on two axes: horizontal or territorial and vertical or bottom-up/top-down options in prescriptivism.

Compositionality, Pluricentricity, and Pluri-Areality in the Catalan Standardisation

Current language standardization processes must face the challenge of preserving variation, as speakers are very sensitive to their language identity. In the Catalan communicative space, two official agencies are in legal charge of language standardization: the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, whose target is all Catalan speakers and which applies a monocentric “compositionality”, and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, whose target is Valencian speakers only and which applies a “convergent pluricentricity.” This chapter will analyze the official texts of both academies studying how language variation is focused on applying the notions of compositionality, pluri-areality, and pluricentricity.

The Meaning of Hispania in Mediaeval Majorca

The mediaeval concept of Hispania/España has been used by some in Spanish historiography to legitimize the existence of the Spanish nation from the Middle Ages. Leaving aside the manipulative and ideological aspect of this approach, when looked at from the perspective provided by documents from Majorca, the authors perceive a very different impression. The choronym Hispania was used between the 13th and 15th centuries to denote mainly al-Andalus (i.e., Islamic Iberia). At other times (rarely), it was also used to refer to Christian regions, albeit excluding the lands of the Crown of Aragon and the Balearic Islands themselves.

A Study of References in Contemporary Collections of Valencian Folktales

The publication of folktale collections in the Valencian Country becomes especially notable from the 1980s. Many such publications are aimed at children and young readers, but some are targeted at general adult, or even specialized, audiences. Collections often include explicit references to authors and folklorists who serve as models or references to varying degrees. Sometimes comparisons are made between the plots of specific folktales, sometimes the reference is in the form of a scholarly commentary while at other times the reference serves to locate the collection within a wider literary tradition (Valencian, Catalan, European, international, etc.). The purpose of this chapter is to study these references in Valencian folktale collections after the 1980s, because not only do such references play a fundamental role in understanding and researching folktale collections, but they also make it possible to analyze the way—and the extent to which—these publications identify themselves within a particular linguistic, literary, or cultural framework.

Catalan Identity in the 20th Century Novel

The 20th century is definitely the consolidation of Catalan literary movements in which Catalan identity plays a fundamental role. Modernism and avant-garde movements prompted a renewal of literary genres. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was a point of conflict that led to the exile of most writers in Catalan. However, they continued publishing their works in Catalan. That´s the case of La Plaça del Diamant by Mercé Rodoreda and Cròniques de la veritat oculta by Pere Calders. That process of exile came to an end between 1962 to 1975 (death of Franco). Terenci Moix, Montserrat Roig, and others belonged to a generation called “generació literària dels setanta.” Most of them were born in Spanish postwar, educated in Francoism, concerned to recover the Catalan national identity, democratic politics, and social liberation of women and gay people.