Catalona/Barcelona

Being a huge soccer fan, a Manchester united soccer at that, I have taken to watching many soccer matches in England and abroad. And have come across something I did not know existed, until watching Barcelona play. The internal fighting in Spain between Spanish - Spain and Catalonia. Indeed, Barcelona Football club, which is also referred to as, "The Catalonian Giants," have been representing their people for a long time. A footballer at Barcelona "forced" the President of the Club to put into every player's contract clause that they had to learn Catalonian. The player was an activist, but I did not know how serious he was, until he refused to join the Spanish national team, but instead play for the amateur Catalonia rebel side. But, before he refused to play for the national team, he had initially refused to train at Real Madrid, where the national team traditionally practiced. But besides those incidents I never knew how serious the division was within Spain about the Catalonia issue. Now, the Catalonian's are having a special show at hte Frankfurt Book Fair, and they have barred the Spanish media from entering. The books on display speak about the battle the Catalonian's have faced to save their language, after it was banned twice from Spain in 1714 and 1939. I read this and was shocked and appalled at the Spanish government's attempt to ban the language, in essence an attempt to destroy the culture of the people. In South Africa the same thing was done, but not throughout the country, but in the schools. Forcing children to learn in Afrikaans, resulting in the Soweto uprising, where students demonstrated for their right to learn in their own languages and resulting in some students loosing their lives. It is an unfortunate thing in this world that we do look down upon the smaller languages, and immediately reduce the people who speak them to "nothingness." It is a fault we humans have, and a fault we have to work on.