You can find a fiesta or popular festivals and carnivals everywhere in Spain almost anytime during the year. La Tomatina Festival in the province of Valencia, for example, attracts thousands of people every August to throw more than 240,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other. You’ve got to love a people who take pleasure in not only eating Mediterranean food, but wearing it.
Recent political events within the country suggest that the annual epic tomato battle may be moving beyond Valencia’s borders.
Reuters reports that the people of Catalonia in northeast Spain are not particularly happy about the way they have been perceived and treated by Spain’s central government in Madrid. It goes a long way back to the dictator Franco’s treatment of Catalonia. From 1939 to 1975, education had to be in Castilian Spanish and ignored the local Catalan language, according to Reuters. But that all changed when Spain ousted Franco and returned to democratic rule. But still the pressure continues. The central government has increased the number of hours Castilian Spanish must be taught in the schools of Catalonia.
But this perceived slight to Catalonia’s linguistic roots turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. The folks in Barcelona and surrounding countryside are not in a fiesta mood.
Catalonia has launched a marketing campaign through movies, books and the Internet to promote itself as an independent state. With 7.5 million people - most in Barcelona - Catalonia represents about 16 percent of Spain’s population, a sizable number of people that should not be riled up.
This is serious stuff. Madrid is not happy and has taken steps to tamp down the independence movement. Where will this go? A recent poll in Catalonia, as reported by Reuters, said that “given three options, 40 percent would vote to remain Spanish with enhanced self-rule, 31 percent would choose independence and 17 percent would prefer no change.”
For now, the people of Catalonia will not be going to the barriers, with nearly 60 percent saying self-rule is not for them. But nearly a third like the idea of independence. Madrid’s keeping an eye on those one-out-of-three Catalans who prefer independence and has thousands of tomatoes ready just in case the dispute escalates.