Spain: Mediterranean Microcosm of Europe - Essay

North and South: Unspanish Catalonia and Very Spanish

Andalusia?
Dorián F. Ertl – 13989510 – University of Amsterdam

Word count : 2730

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Beyond representing absolute cardinal directions, North and South can have shifting meanings
attached to consequently shifting values. To exemplify this, I would like to note a peculiar
observation: Catalonia can hardly be dissociated from the concept of North, as it forms the North-
Eastern corner of the Spanish state – but the historic Principality of Catalonia encompasses not just the
modern Autonomous Community of Catalonia, but also Northern Catalonia, which under the modern
administrative name of Pyrénées-Orientales forms the southernmost part of continental France.
Catalonia, perhaps especially so since the events of 2017 which I will
later discuss, might, along with the Basque Country – which is northern as well – be the region that
differentiates itself the most from the rest of Spain in terms of identity, politics, economy and desire
for independence. Compare it to Andalusia, for instance, which though a regionalist sentiment exists
within it, is perhaps the region that has infused its culture the most into general “Spanish” culture – at
least in the way it is stereotypically perceived.
North-South differences, obviously, exist within virtually all states of the world – even
rather small ones like Luxembourg – and their intensity, quantity and quality can vary greatly. Think
of how, for example, two Belgians living just a village apart but on either side of the
Flanders/Wallonia border could find themselves unable to communicate due to each’s ignorance of the
other’s language, while a Frenchman from Brest and a Frenchman from Menton, though over 1000 km
apart, no doubt speak the exact same language with practically no variation save for a few region-
specific words and slight accents. The case of Spain in this regard is quite interesting as it presents a
certain balance between drastic North-South regional differences and a level of national cohesion. This
balance has fluctuated in its recent history as the past half-century saw the transition from Francoist
authoritarianism to parliamentary democracy and consequently from uniform state nationalism to
decentralization and the resurgence of regionalist movements.
This essay will provide an overview of linguistic, political, identity,
economic and stereotypical North/South differentiations within Spain, focusing on Catalonia as a
distinctive “northern” region which will be compared with Andalusia as a “southern” and
“distinctively Spanish” region. This differentiation will be mirrored with the classic North/South
dichotomy that has been developed in ethnography and popular imagery since Antiquity, and will also
be compared to North/South differentiations in Spain’s northern neighbour, France.

The Catalan Republic might arguably have been the shortest-lived country in history. It “existed” for 8
seconds between the enunciation by then-President of the Catalan government Carles Puigdemont of
two contradictory sentences on 10 October 2017: "I assume the mandate of the people for Catalonia to
become an independent state in the form of a republic", and "I will ask Parliament to suspend the
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effects of the declaration of independence so that in the coming weeks we can undertake a dialogue" 1.
After his speech, pro-independence members of the Catalan parliament signed a declaration that, in its
second paragraph, made the mention, almost as a fait accompli, of “the Catalan republic”. This was
immediately followed by a first argument: “the Catalan nation, its language and its culture have a
thousand years of history”2.
That statement, though truthful, is still quite strong: the concept of nation can
of course refer to a political community of any size and administrative status, but in the age of the
nation-state, the term “nation” has, in popular discourse, become coterminous with the sovereign state,
and applying it to Catalonia is quite a signal – one might hear less often, for instance, of an
“Andalusian nation” or a “Madrilene nation”.

The linguistic argument in that declaration, though, is quite solid. Catalonia’s linguistic situation truly
makes it unique and distinct from the rest of Spain - Catalan identity is indissociable from the Catalan
language3, which emerged as a separate language as early as the 9 th century, spread, and thrived
culturally in the late Middle Ages4. Today, it is spoken by some 9 million people as a native or second
language (including by 81.2% of the Catalan population 5) – making it, despite its relatively secondary
status, more widely spoken than Danish or Finnish. A foreign tourist walking around Barcelona will
struggle to escape its presence as it is the primary language on signage in the city – though the same
tourist might admittedly also struggle, at first glance, to distinguish its difference from Castilian
Spanish, and we can imagine the rarity of one entering a bar and saying “Bon dia, una cervesa si us
plau”. Comparing this situation to Spain’s south – Andalusia, despite claims made by certain fringe
groups6, has no language of its own, but rather a dialect of Spanish mostly distinguished by the
presence of certain words derived from Mozarabic and Andalusi Arabic, or by minor specificities like
leísmo and famously, a lack of distinction between the phonemes /s/ and /θ/ (or in simpler terms,
words like zapatas are pronounced without a “lisp”). We can perhaps generalize a North/South
distinction of “presence of separate languages versus presence of mere dialects” by taking into
account the fact that the three most widely spoken regional languages other than Catalan – Galician,
Basque and Asturleonese – are all situated in the North, whereas southern Autonomous Communities
like Andalusia, Murcia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha do not have languages of their own 7.

1
Minder, Raphael, and Patrick Kingsley. “In Catalonia, a Declaration of Independence From Spain (Sort of)” The New York
Times. October 10, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/world/europe/spain-catalonia-independence-carles-
puigdemont.html
2
Parliament of Catalonia. Declaració dels representants de Catalunya. October 10, 2017.
https://www.ara.cat/2017/10/10/Declaracio_Independencia_amb_logo_-1.pdf
3
Note that Catalan, under various dialectal forms, is also an official language in Andorra, a co-official language in the
Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, and a minority language in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales and in
Sardinia – nevertheless, none of these could claim a connection to the language as strong as Catalonia, the language’s center.
4
Costa Carreras, Joan, and Alan Yates, The Architect of Modern Catalan: Selected Writings (Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Co, 2009), 6-7.
5
Geli, Carles. “El uso del catalán crece: lo entiende el 94,4% y lo habla ya el 81,2%” El País. July 8, 2019.
https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/07/08/catalunya/1562592970_754956.html
6
“La extrema izquierda andaluza reivindica el 'andalûh' en el Senado” Libertad Digital. September 27, 2021.
https://www.libertaddigital.com/andalucia/2021-09-27/la-extrema-izquierda-andaluza-reivindica-el-andaluh-en-el-senado-
6822275/
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This difference in linguistic specificity is further reflected in a difference in the prevalence of regional
nationalism and pushes for independence. The 10 October 2017 declaration came in the midst of a
month that was, in dramatic fashion, historic for Catalonia and Spain. On the 1 st, an independence
referendum was organised despite having previously been declared unconstitutional by the Spanish
Constitutional Court. Some 2.2 million Catalans – less than half of registered voters – turned up at
polling stations despite attempts by the Guardia Civil and the CNP to stop the referendum, voting 92%
in favour of independence. On the 27th, a majority in Parliament voted in favour of ratifying the
previously mentioned declaration – Madrid’s response came that evening as the Spanish Senate voted
in favour of imposing direct rule on Catalonia, dissolving the latter’s executive and legislative
authorities8. The dramatic aspect of the situation, the images of police violence against protesters and
voters and of thousands of supporters singing Els segadors on the Plaça de Catalunya, exacerbate the
importance held by the idea of an independent Catalonia and the emphasis that Catalonia puts on its
difference from the rest of Spain in its self-identification. Though the events of 2017 proved effective
Catalan independence to be an impossible prospect in the near future, its ideological importance still
persists, as the region is currently governed by a pro-independence coalition.
But bouncing back to the south, we find a certain lack of nationalist
sentiment in Andalusia. Like all other Spanish regions, it acquired a level of autonomy during the
Transition to democracy, with a later reform coming in 2006. In that reform, Andalusia was defined as
a nacionalidad histórica – to the discontent of the now-defunct nationalist Partido Andalucista, as that
same year, the new Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia defined the latter as a nación, a level of
terminological prestige which Andalusian nationalists wished they could have attained too. Parties like
the Partido Andalucista, though, remain on the fringe, never having held more than 10 of the
Andalusian Parliament’s 109 seats. The discussion on regional nationalisms in Spain, of course, is
never complete without a mention of the Basque Country. Basques have represented a separate people
group since Roman times, and their language is not related to any other. After the rise of Basque
nationalism in the 19th century, a large number of political parties and organizations were formed,
among which was the infamous ETA, considered by both Spain and France to be a terrorist
organization and which between 1959 and its announcement of a ceasefire in 2010 claimed the lives of
829 people9 – the most notable of which having no doubt been Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right-
hand man and designated successor in 1973. The difference between North and South is thus even
more dramatic here – Andalusia’s lack of widespread regionalist sentiment is heavily contrasted by the
Basque Country’s history of violent assertion (though by a rather small group) of its identity.

7
The Valencian Community can reasonably be considered as southern, and has Valencian as a co-official language – but the
latter is, in essence, a dialect of Catalan, and is spoken by slightly less than half of the Community’s population.
8
“Catalans declare independence as Madrid imposes direct rule” BBC News, October 27, 2017.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41780116
9
Ministerio del Interior, “Victimas de ETA”, July 30, 2009.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100915224606/http://www.mir.es/DGRIS/Terrorismo_de_ETA/ultimas_victimas/p12b-
esp.htm
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Having considered the somewhat vague aspect of “intensity of regional identity” as a measurement of
North-South difference, let me now turn to a more concrete aspect: economy. Looking at statistics
broken down by region, a clear geographical distinction emerges. Specifically looking at GDP per
capita, we can see that though the highest is found in the Community of Madrid, thus in the centre,
northern and north-eastern regions – the Basque Country, Navarra, Aragón, Catalonia – have a GDP
per capita up to 78% higher than those of Andalusia and Murcia 10. Furthermore, a 2016 study 11
revealed that among cities with over 50,000 inhabitants, the ten with the highest rate of poverty were
all in the south (nine of those ten are in Andalusia) while the ten with the lowest rate of poverty were
all in the north ( in the Basque Country, Navarra, Aragón, Catalonia, Asturias).

Fig. 1. GDP per capita in Spanish provinces, 2019. Image by user “Spooderman89”, March 31, 2019, on
reddit.com, https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/b7qsf8/gdp_per_capita_ppp_of_spanish_provinces_source/

Despite the economic success that followed the end of the Franco regime and saw Spain’s GDP being
multiplied by 1412, the already existing economic divide between north and south persisted. The
situation is a sort of reduced-scale model of the general economic situation of Europe characterized by
a geographical difference in economic prosperity that was exacerbated by the post-2009 debt crisis and
its consequences, in which the infamous “PIGS” group of Southern European countries, including
Spain, were hit the hardest. During this crisis, northern regions of Spain tended to fare better than
southern regions – when Spain hit a record unemployment rate of 27.16% in early 2013, that number

10
Eurostat, “Regional GDP per capita ranged from 31% to 626% of the EU average in 2017”, February 26, 2019.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/-/1-26022019-ap
11
AIS, “Población en riesgo de pobreza en España pueblo a pueblo”, December 14, 2016. https://ais-int.com/la-pobreza-
pueblo-pueblo-datos-2015-habits-municipios/
12
Chislett, “Image and Reality: Contemporary Spain”, 2
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varied widely between regions, as Andalusia had the highest rate at 36.87% (which was also the fastest
growing rate) followed by Extremadura at 35.56%, more than double that of the Basque Country at
16.28% (and all other northern regions had an unemployment rate lower than the national average) 13.
The widely used PIGS acronym was derogatory and even discriminatory – first coined by the
Anglo-Saxon financial press, it evoked the image of the lazy Portuguese, Italians, Greeks and
Spaniards who prioritize leisure while profiting from generous welfare systems, and who as a
consequence of their aversion for work and their love of siesta become the financial burden of the
serious, hard-working Northern Europeans. Rather than being grounded in any economic truth, the
acronym (which the Financial Times defended as “a pejorative moniker but one with much truth” 14) is
a perpetuation of stereotypes concerning Mediterranean people – laziness, corruption, lavishness,
unproductivity, lying – that themselves are rooted in values that have been attributed to North and
South since the times of Tacitus. Traditionally, the North is cold, virtuous, industrious, thrifty and law-
abiding, while the South is warm, decadent, lazy, spendful and rule-bending.
This stereotypical distinction also applies
within Spain itself. Andalusians are known for their supposed laziness, sensuality, joviality, simple-
mindedness and mendicity; Basques for their strength, courage, virtue, seafaring abilities and intense
nationalism; Catalans for their industriousness, commercial mind, thriftiness and enterprisingness 1516 -
most of these stereotypes reflect classical North-South values. They have been propagated in cultural
works for centuries, with one of the most notable examples being Carmen (which can be seen as
alternatively displaying auto- and hetero-images of Spain, between its origin as a novella written by
French author Prosper Mérimée and its post-Franco plurimedial adaptations by Spanish artists like
Antonio Gades and Carlos Saura). Set in Andalusia, it prominently features the exoticized figure of the
title character, presented as a sensual, mysterious and passionate “gypsy” woman. And indeed – who
could imagine Carmen being set in Catalonia? The “spanishness” expressed in it is perhaps just a form
of “andalusianness”, itself rooted in a kind of exoticism – and even internalized, auto-exoticism in the
case of, for example, Saura’s 1983 film adaptation. Closer to our time, a very interesting example is
Emilio Martínez-Lázaro’s 2014 film Ocho apellidos vascos – the second biggest box-office hit in
Spanish history – in which born-and-bred Andalusian Rafa, in love with a Basque girl, finds himself
putting great efforts into passing for an authentic Basque. The movie – and its sequel, Ocho apellidos
catalanes - uses Basque, Catalan and Andalusian (thus, at the core, Northern and Southern)
stereotypes in a playful, comedic way, in an attempt to laugh about and deconstruct them rather than
perpetuate them for the purpose of prejudice17.

13
Instituto Nacional de Estadística, “Resultados por comunidades y ciudades autónomas y provincias, Primer trimestre
2013”, April 25, 2013, http://www.ine.es/daco/daco42/daco4211/epapro0113.pdf
14
Van Vosse, “Framing PIGS: patterns of racism and neocolonialism in the Euro crisis.”, 9.
15
García-Álvarez et al., “Representing Spain: cultural image and geographic knowledge in National Geographic’s articles on
Spain”, 13.
16
Caballero Gálvez, “The downfall of Spanish stereotypes: Andalusian, Basque and Catalan identities in ‘plurinational’
Spain”, 2-12.
17
Ibid, 15-17.
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For means of comparison, I will now turn to the equivalent situation in France. For such a vast and
geographically diverse country – one that extends from red brick towns by the North Sea to
Mediterranean beaches – the relative lack of pronounced regional diversity in France is rather
surprising. On the linguistic side, under the guise of Article 2 of its Constitution (“La langue de la
République est le français”), France has spent much of the post-revolutionary era fostering arguably
linguicidal policies, pushing the French language as a unifier for the equal citizens of the Republic and
consequently causing the perpetual decline of regional languages 18. Regional identities persist to some
extent, though unlike in Spain, they are spread around the corners of the country, with the most
notable examples being Brittany, Alsace, the (French) Basque Country, Northern Catalonia and
Corsica. Regional nationalist political parties are (expect in the case of Corsica) today practically
irrelevant, and in the post-war era, violent actions – excluding cross-border actions by the ETA – have
been limited to a few notable incidents, such as the 1978 bombing of a wing of the Palace of Versailles
by the Breton Liberation Front or the 1998 assassination of prefect Claude Érignac by Corsican
nationalist Yvan Colonna. Economic disparity between regions, meanwhile, is perhaps
less pronounced, and reflects no particular north-south difference (when looking at GDP per capita,
the poorest region of European France is also its southernmost – Corsica – but it ranks just under its
northernmost, Hauts-de-France, and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, in the south-east, is the third
highest) but rather a centre-periphery one, as the Paris region is far richer than any other 19.
On the aspect of regional stereotypes, these too are
less inclined to follow clear classic North-South patterns – Bretons are alcoholics, Parisians are snobs,
Northerners are inbred and backwards, Normans are indecisive, but in typical Southern fashion,
Provençaux are lazy and Corsicans are warm-blooded bomb planters. Interestingly, just like Spain
with Ocho apellidos vascos, France’s second highest-grossing film ever is Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis
(Dany Boon, 2008), a comedy in which Philippe, a post office manager from the Provence, finds
himself – to his initial dismay – transferred to the far North. Just like Ocho apellidos, it reduces
regional stereotypes to something to be laughed about and something that is not necessarily true.

Thus, as I have developed, Spain is marked by a very clear cultural, economical and stereotypical
distinction between its northern and southern regions. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia in
particular foster and actively promote identities of their own. Decentralization has allowed them to let
their languages flourish, and as we have seen in recent years – particularly with the events of October
2017 – nationalist sentiments persist in these regions, emphasizing their difference from Spain to the
point of, in the case of some, wanting to leave it by any means necessary. Meanwhile, southern
regions like Andalusia lack both a language of their own and a true sense of a regional identity
different from Spain – in that regard, they might logically be the most Spanish parts of Spain. This is
18
Stephen Joseph McNulty, Linguicide or Linguistic Suicide?: A Case Study of Indigenous Minority Languages in France
(Edinburgh Research Archive, 2018), 23-25.
19
Insee, “Produits intérieurs bruts régionaux de 2000 à 2020”, May 5, 2022. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6440639
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further expanded by an economic divide: the North has long been richer than the South, as was
particularly visible during the debt crisis in a kind of microcosm of the European situation at that time
– in which Spain, along with its hard-hit southern neighbours, was blamed by northern European
media through the perpetuation of stereotypes. These stereotypes are found within Spain itself, with a
traditional view that the South (Andalusia) is lazy and loud while the North (Catalonia, the Basque
Country) is serious, industrious and virtuous. Going to France, Spain’s larger and more geographically
diverse neighbour, we find much less diversity – it is characterized by a rather homogenous national
culture in which regional cultures persist in diminished forms, with perhaps the exception of Corsica,
and where the economic divide is very much between the center and its periphery.

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