Prehistorical Bacavia (The iberian people)

The most ancient human rests in the bacavian territories were found in the Rosselló (Talteüll / Tautavel, 700000 BC). Nomadic populations wandered in the area, gathering vegetables and hunting, searching for protection in natural shelters. 7000 years ago, in the Neolithic era, populations became sedentary with the invention of agriculture and stockbreeding. Rests of neolithic villages have been found in the coastal areas and in the valleys in Catalonia and Valencia. Majorca seems to be populated for the first time in 4000 BC from Sardinia, Sicily or other locations in the Western Mediterranean area. There the “megalithic” culture developed between 3000 and 1000 BC.

The Bronze era (1800 to 700 B.C) saw the raise of villages with houses of stone and streets, especially in the planes of the interior of Catalonia and Valencia. Iron and ceramics appeared after 1000 BC, and it is thought that central european people may have arrived to the territories. Some villages grew while the little ones were just abandonned.

From 550 BC it could be said that the population in the area shared some cultural elements such as language and writing, urbanism and social organization. Even if they were splitted in separated groups, they were known as the Iberian people, that had their identity well defined until the arrival of the Roman colonizators. They interacted with the Greek and Phoenician traders that founded some colonies on the coast in the 6th century BC. From them they got the knowledge of sailing, trading (money included) and the cultures of vine and olive.

The area of Iberian culture more or less coincides with the current extension of Bacavia, also occupying some parts of Aragon. The rest of the today called Iberian peninsula (from the Ebro river) had other cultures (lusitans, aquitans, celtics, celtiberian, tartessian). The Iberians were distributed in tribes, some of the most well known were the Indigets in the maritime Pyrenees, Andosins and Ceretans in Central Pyrenees, Ausetans, Bargusins and Lacetans in Central Catalonia, Laietans in the present Barcelona area, Ilergets in the Lleida area, Cossetans in the Tarragona area, Ilercavons in the south of Catalonia and north of Valencia, Edetans and Contestans in the rest of Valencia and Balearics in the Isles. The latter were expert stone throwers, hired by the Roman army.

Political coalitions, PP anticatalanism, trains…

This week the main political facts in the bacavian territories have been the following

Balearic Isles: constitution of a platform of all the political parties that do not have an explicit link with spanish parties to go to the Spanish Parliament. This balearic/bacavist platform is made up of PSM (left majorcan/bacavist), UM (liberal majorcan/bacavist), ERC (left bacavist) and Entesa per Mallorca (municipalist, majorcan). This coalition is made with the aim of obtaining a bacavian nationalist member of the parliament in Madrid since, until now, PP and PSOE have always got all the seats from the Isles. The ex-communist/ecologist party EU will therefore go by itself and has very little chances of obtaining representation. This is a major change in the political arena in the Balearics. In 2007, in the elections to the Balearic autonomous Parliament, the EU+ERC+PSM constituted the “Bloc” that managed, after elections, with PSOE/PSIB and UM, to take the government out of the hands of PP.

València: The anti-bacavist PP government has made some more movements in its aim to annihilate any effort to promote the catalan language and the valencian culture, but it always finds the opposition of many people resisting the attacks. This week the Valencian Supreme Court of Justice has said (for 13th time) that valencian and catalan are two names for the same language and no discrimination shall be done to people using philology titles of catalan to teach the language in schools. Also they try to close the antennas taking the catalan tv signal (TV3) to valencia, but justice has not allowed them to do it in Castelló, after their success two weeks ago in Alacant. Finally the nationalist (Bloc) + left (EU) coalition is formed again to go to the Spanish Parliament, trying to reproduce the success of the last Valencian autonomous elections in 2007.

Catalonia: the left-nationalist governmental coalition (PSC/ERC/IC) has not been able to get an agreement with the socialist government (PSOE) in Madrid about the cession of the local trains around Barcelona, even though PSC and PSOE are the same party. There is a big feeling of disapointment in Catalonia, since the trains function awfully and the central government is only wanting to get rid of the service but without the provision of funds to invest on the service. The general perception is that the central government cannot be trusted in its compromises and people each time is more disappointed with politicians. In culture, Lleida has just passed the capitality of the catalan culture to Perpinyà, in Rosselló (in the French state), that will do the job during 2008.

Fernando Pessoa and the Catalan Nation

(Written in the 1910′s)

To have an iberian union of any kind three things are essential… : 1) to abolish the spanish monarchy; 2) the final separation of the Peninsula in its three essential nationalities: Catalonia, Castile and the Galaico-Portuguese state and … 3) the constitution of a federation (of the parts)…

Of all the problems that shake and perturb the undisciplined life of Europe , the problem of catalan separatism is, perhaps, the one that reflects more flagrantly the fundamental conflict to which the world delivers itself today and is, therefore, the one having more curious elements to learn from.

… The conflict between Catalonia and Spain is the conflict between the concept of a country as a nation and the concept of a country as a civilization. The former is a geographical concept, prefigurated as ethnical and afirmed linguistically. The latter is an historical concept, prefigurated as imperialist and that afirms itself as cultural.From the national point of view, Catalonia is a nation, a country, with a way of being, with special tendencies, with its own language that defines them and with the aspirations that desires them.

It is not a pseudo-nation like Belgium or Switzerland, that lack from the beginning of the linguistic base to show to the world that they have personality. It is not an artificial nation, like the United States of America, where the linguistic unity only expresses the tradition of the colonization, without bases in an own culture, or a national psyche… Neither a dead nation, like Ireland… It is not a region spiritually conquered, like the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, originally germanic, that Louis XIV stole to Germany…

Bacavia is the land, Catalan is the language

Bacavia is an artificial name, made with the first letters of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, all of them catalan-speaking countries in the western Mediterranean. The corresponding main towns are Ciutat de Mallorca, Barcelona and Valencia. The name was proposed by Nicolau Primitiu (Sueca, Valencia) in 1932, with little success. Catalan is a well acknowledged denomination for the common language, but a common name for the ensemble of the lands is not well established. Here I intend to provide a weekly report on the relevant things going on in Bacavia, mostly focussing on politics and culture, and describe how the situation may evolve towards an eventual independence of the ensemble or the parts of Bacavia in the coming years.

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