Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:57, 16 October 2005

HOW MANY ROMANIANS ARE WORKING IN SPAIN ???

According to some statistics at least 500000 to 600000 work legally or not in Spain, a lot of them have given residency status, they can integrate very well since the romanian language is a latin one like spanish.

One country, many nations

I have made some changes in the "Identities section" (number 16), whose previous text seemed too based on personal opinions or perceptions, and not in actual data, which is what an encyclopedia like this should have. My source for this data, that correct greatly some subliminal quantifications that were present in the previous text, are cited at the end of the section, and I owe it to Miguel, who referred to it in the "Identities" section of this discussion (see below). There are also other surveys that give similar data (some of them even reported by Catalanist newspapers whose ideology is quite alien to the results of this very surveys: La Vanguardia).

I also correct some miscitations of the Spanish Constitution, as well as some "weasel phrases" that, according to the Wiki instructions (page "Cite sources", section "When you add content") should not be included in a Misplaced Pages.

I removed this from Spain/People: '*If only strict Spain is considered the number lows to 21,894,895.' The same thing has been done to France. (1) "lows to" is not English and (2) I think the person is removing the Catalan-speaking population from Spain's population (maybe the Galician-speakers and Basques, too?) and the Occitan-speakers from France. Misplaced Pages may not be a dictionary, but it seems to be a home for separatist movements. --MichaelTinkler

Not true -- Religions: Roman Catholic 99%, other 1%

Removed from article:

In fact, Spain does not exist as a nation. It's just a State made from different nations (i.e. Catalunya or Catalonia, Euskadi, Galiza, Castilla and so on, each of them having their own language). As Castilla has dominated by militar means the different neighbour nations since the XVIIIth century (except Portugal, of course), they have imposed their vision of a "united, great and free" Spain, which does not exist accordingly to reality. Dictator Francisco Franco (died 1975) designed king Juan Carlos I in order to make sure that Castilla would dominate the rest of nations as it had been doing for the last three centuries.

ATTENTION!!!!!! Meese are taking over the world you need to run for cover or become one with the meese this is important you need to do as I say or you will not live until the end of the world. Meese are very harmful animals!

What the #%$@ is a Meese, and no I will not become one will the Meese. someone should remove the meese thing from this article.

Don't worry, the Meese were destroyed by a super duper pooper scooper!

Spain not a nation? Seems real fishy to me. I've heard of the UK as described as being composed of "component nations" but not Spain. Is there a cite for this? --mav 08:14 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, Spain is considered by many, including a large part of Spanish population, to be a group of nations unified under a single State. Any good History book will explain that. Of course, the centralist policy of Spanish government has led to a Spanish nationhood which is the one people identify with Spain internationally. Anyone with a good knowledge of Spanish reality know better: Spanish identity is, in fact, an overlapping succession of diferent national identities, some of them conflicting ones. Castilla is the core nationality of Spain, but no one calls themselves 'Castilians' - Castilians speak of themselves only as Spaniards. Gallicians, Catalans and Basques, otherwise, speak of themselves (at least a significant part of these regions' populations) as, first of all, pertaining to their nationality: Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia. The situation is even more confusing, since there are regions with ambiguous identities, like Valencia, Balears, etc. The Spanish Constitution, although affirming the sovereignty of the Spanish Nation, recognises historical nationalities. Each nationality has a different language (Basque, for instance, is one of the oldest languages in the world; Catalan is spoken by more than 7 million people, etc). Until 1714, Spain was a loose confederation of kingdoms and statelets, under the same king, until that very king - Philip V - invaded parts of his own country - that's the origin of the present situation, apparently simple, but in fact extremely confusing and, I dare say, interesting. I am Portuguese (the only Iberian nationality without any kind of political Castilian rule) and I can attest that differences between some aspects of Catalan culture and Castilian culture, for instances, are far greater than differences between Castilian culture and the Portuguese one, although, obviously, the relationship of Spain's many peoples created strong ties between them, which are more evidently visible than differences to foreigners. This situation is so strange to most people because foreigners tend to see foreign realities in their simplified image. Spain is not bullfights, flamenco and Spanish language: Spain has four official languages (Spanish/Castilian, Catalan, Basque and Galician, although Spanish is the only one official throughout the whole State), many kinds of music (some sounding quite un-Spanish to foreigners ears) and there are regions that abhor bullfights (like Catalonia). Spain is a wonderful country, modern and thriving, with multiple identities which, if they are a source of conflict, also are the real richness of that country (whether we consider it a nation or not). Marco Neves 22:38 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)Marco Neves -- if you want more references to this situation, contact me: marcoafn@hotmail.com

Wow! Great info - somebody should integrate much of that into the article. --mav

Done :-). check the identities section and post coments!

Thewikipedian

National Anthem lyrics

Tidbits of this is visible various aspects of the daily life in Spain. The National Anthem has lyrics, but they are never sung because it was not possible to agree on the language it which it would be sung. People just stand in silence as the anthem is played. Many times the European identity is stronger than the Spanish one, especially among the non Castillians. Catalans would for example, even if not advocating out right independence from Spain, in many cases rather see themselves a region of Europe, than a province of Spain. -- Mic 05:13 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think you are wrong. The Marcha Real has no lyrics, but it didn't have them already durign Franco's regime when no question about language was imaginable. -- Error 02:20 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It did have lyrics during Franco's regime: "Arriba, España, etc." They were removed after the transition for democracy. Marco Neves 02:58 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)Marco Neves

Were they ever official? From what I know, "Viva España, alzad los brazos " were just the most frequent of several proposed lyrics but never official. Can you do some research? I am lazy :) (Should this be at the Marcha article?) Error 04:18 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The anthem has had several sets of lyrics throughout its history, but none have stuck. Miguel 18:14, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)

Language issues

There were no questions about language because the government transmitted an image of Spain which did not correspond to what people really felt. Franco fall just short of denying that Catalan, Basque and Galician existed: in fact, his government sometimes called Catalan and Galician dialects, which is linguistically absurd: Catalan is mainly related to languages outside Spain (Occitan) and Galician is related to Portuguese. Franco never said Basque was a dialect because it would be just plain stupid, Basque being some millenia older than Spanish. Marco Neves 02:58 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)Marco Neves

It is linguistically wrong to call Catalan and Galician 'dialects', but not absurd. They are extremely close to Spanish — far closer than the various dialects of Chinese.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, Catalan is closer to Italian than to Spanish. And Galician is definitely closer to Portuguese than to Spanish. Boraczek 13:34, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Not really, Catalan is not closer to Italian than any other latin (romance)language. In fact Catalan is part of the linguistic sub-family wich include french, occitan(south france), and catalan. So, Catalan is closer to french than italian and spanish.

Historic nationalities

It is a debatable issue, a big part of modern politics of Spain is around those issues. There are some big commonalities among Spanish citizens, there some big differences. Some politicians accent the former, other the latter. For example, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (from memory) talks about a Spanish nation formed by regions and nationalities (note: not "nations"). "Nationality" is an ambiguous term to keep everybody sort of happy. Some people on the so-called "historic nationalities" (those with a greater degree of autonomy) claim for more or even independency (within the EU). It is difficult to know how popular are those views. I guess it depends on the exact question surveyed. Parties promoting straight independence remain minoritary. But local parties with independentist leanings can be majoritary in their areas. These pretensions are seen as crying for privileges by others. There even thos who vote "Spanishist" in Spanish elections and nationalist in local elections.

Actually Castile didn't enjoy much of its "superiority". It happened that Castilian institutions were weaker and gave more hand to kings. Thus, the kings tried to base the Spanish empire on Castile. The Spanish language became the common language in Spain, which is resented by many of the Spanish citizens who speak another mother tongue. Castile though since 19th century remained as a agricultural country. And the Basque Country and Catalonia went into industrialization, ensuing immigration from other parts of Spain (Andalusia, Galicia, Castile). Madrid, though, as the center of Castile and Spain, has also become developed. And it's currently peopled by large numbers of immigrants from Spain and now abroad (I guess this is similar to London, but lower-scale). There have been some attempts to develop a Madrilene identity, but it's rare for a current Madrilene to have ancient Madrilene ancestors. Thus, Madrilenes don't much understand what their former cousins are asking for.

So currently, there are those who claim for superposed identities. "I am Basque, I am Spanish and I am European" and those who prefer ethnic nationalism.

I hope I have not been too redundant with other WP pages. -- Error 02:20 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Spanish Language

Hi, error! (curious name) I mostly agree with your contribution, but I have some remarks, hope you don't mind ;) It is important to say that the Spanish language became the common language of Spain due not only to immigration but also to an active legal imposition of Castilian on other regions (or nations, nationalities, whatever). Some Spaniards deny this fact, saying that Spanish imposed itself by the will of the people, but the fact is laws and police action during the 19th and 20th century (!Actually, it wasn't only in the last 2 centuries, the imposition of castillian starts before in the 18th century and national opression with Conde Duque de Olivares in the 17th!) contributed to this: for instance, there were lots of regulations forbidding the use of Catalan in many places: in one of those laws, it was forbidden to speak Catalan on the phone, so, legally, you could speak Catalan with your mother unless you were speaking on the phone... In fact, Gaudí, the famous architect of Sagrada Familia, was arrested once for speaking Catalan in a specific situation. Ok, this doesn't deny what you said, it's just a remark. Another thing: it's true that Spaniards have much in common and many differences between themselves at the same time, but the fact is those 'commonalities' are shared, in their majority, with Portugal, creating an Iberian identity most people would rather say it's just Spanish (by the way, "Spanish" is a word that comes from the Latin for Iberian - it is applied to present-day Spain only since about 1714; any 15th-century Spaniard would speak of Spain as the entire Iberia, with its multiple independent states, calling himself some other thing, more specific). So, the present configuration of the Spanish state is rather an arbitrary one. Had Portugal remained in Spain and Catalonia stayed independent after 1640 (when both nations - at that time nobody said Catalonia was not a nation - tryed to free themselves from Castilia) it would seem as natural for as to speak about a Portuguese historical nationality and a Catalan nation as it is today to speak of Portugal as an independent country and Catalonia as a region of Spain. Happily, all this is confusing and interesting and languages and cultures never stop amazing us.

There was some of everything. As Latin lost its status as only prestige language, Spanish became the language of administration of power. Enterprising noblemen learnt it. Camo&etilde;s himself used it. So the elite used it to achieve power. Local institutions lose power to the common ones (read Castile-based). With the Borbons and liberalism, a politics of unification came, based on Castile and its language. Most of the scarce printed production in Galician and (in Spain) Basque until 19th or 20th century was religious works aimed to the common (literate) people. They were the language of peasants, not of the educated. I am meandering. I mean, there was legal pressure, and there was a process of "bettering" among people. I'd like to have something about the extension process in Spanish language but I am not sure if I could do it NPOV and wouldn't like to have too much battling with opposing views.

More on the validity of "Spain"

About the validity of "Spain", I think it is like "Italy". Certainly, 16th century Europeans knew that somebody was Italian, even though there wasn't a political unity until 1830? The same with Spain. I presume that the Portuguese fought against the evil Spaniards, not the Castilians, Galicians, etc. The same about the Americas, though the heavy weight was on Castile (in a late sense), the colonisation was by "Spain" (at least after the early stages).

Not quite as Italy... 16th century Europeans used the word "Spanish" to include all Iberians, not only those in present-day Spain. Camões, the great Portuguese poet, said "Portuguese and Castilians, we are all Spanish", something that would shock any present-day Portuguese. Portuguese do think Spaniards to be their great enemies, but only retrospectively. Until 16th/17th century, Portuguese people distinguised between the various Iberian peoples, being Castilians the enemy and, for certain periods, Catalans the ally (Portugal, England and Catalonia were alies for some time, which is proved by the importance of Saint George for the three people). The term Spain has gone trough more or less three stages: (1st) Spain was a geographic labelling, meaning Iberia and a utopian project of uniting all Iberian peoples under the same king; (2nd) in 1580 all Iberians came under the same authority, in a loose confederation of kingdoms and statelets when Portugal was inherited by Philip II - some years later, the Count-Duque of Olivares started the foundations of a centralist state: that was the moment when Spain began meaning a unified state, acquiring political meaning beyond utopian desires. (3rd) When Portugal recovered independence after 1640, "Spain" kept that political meaning, and only then did the present-day configuration of Spain take shape - more specifically, it was inscribed in law when the Decretos de Nueva Planta abolished the independence of the Catalan-Aragonese part of the Spanish Crown, creating what Olivares had dreamt (and, before him, many Castilian and Portuguese kings), but without Portugal. I don't deny that the term was used by Castilians before 1580 to describe their state, but only sporadically, not following popular use and bearing always in mind the project of unifying Spain (latin Hispania, all Iberia). So, we can say Spain was a political project of Castilian kings which resulted in a truncated version of the first project: Spain never fully achieved its unification, since Portugal managed to remain independent. To speak of Catalans in the 14th/15th century as Spanish and common enemies of Portugal is an anachronism. Marco Neves 14:20 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)Marco Neves

But I'd say that in 16th century and later the feeling greatly changes. -- Error 02:38, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)~

Borders

I think most of the current borders have some of arbitrariness. Had the things gone different in the War of the Hundred Years or Satsuma or..., we could have the Royaume Unie de France, Angleterre, et Ecosse, a Christian Japan and a Shinto one, or one Great Colombia and several small Brazils. But, those events happened and certainly had some effect on reality. -- Error 04:18 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, all those events had an impact on reality, but in the case of Spain, political unification didn't mean the unification of people's hearts. For instance, France and Italy are unified nations, in spite of beginning as groups of nations; for same reason, Spain didn't achieve such homogeneity, in spite of all the efforts of central governments. But, of course, Spain do exist, a Spanish State is a reality and many people feel Spain to be their nation, with all legitimacy (with the same legitimacy as Portuguese have the right to feel themselves a nation and, for that matter, Catalans). Marco Neves 14:20 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)Marco Neves

Some Corsicans, New Caledonians and Padanians wouldn't agree with you. Sicily had chances for independence after World War II (Mafia-style independence, probably)

I would also like to add that it's disgusting that some people just can't understand that these questions are to be discussed in forums like this one and go on killing innocents to achieve some kind of ethnic Basque state (and it is also a pity - but not a crime! - that the Spanish government insistently tries to link every independentist in Spain with terrorism...). Marco Neves 02:43 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)ps: sorry for the confusing text...

History

I reworked the history section and found a number of problems to discuss/fix:

• The original peoples of Spain (Iberos in Spanish) should probably called Iberians, but this links to a Caucasian region. We need a good disambiguator to fix this.
  • We need to mention Tartessos
  • A look at Roman accounts of the conquest of Hispania will provide a partial list of tribes still existing around the 2nd Century BC. This includes at least Lusitania and Numantia.

More later. Miguel 03:30, 2004 Mar 21 (UTC)

• • • Didn't Spain practice some kind of communism in the past? I will suggest we briefly mention about it under the economy section

More issues fixed and the castilian/spanish language

The wikipedian

I fixed the following issues:

-missing info about the gascon language (aranese)

-Spain has four climate zones, not one

-moved the initial paragraphs to a new introduction section

-moved some text from the political issues to territorial claims

-renamed autonomous comuntities to administrative divisions to include provinces.

-Castilian is the offical name for spanish in Spain. It is prefered, therefore Castilian should be used in all article instead of spanish .

I don't really agree with this, as Spanish is the name of the language in English and Castilian is the name of a particular dialect of Spanish which is not even spoken on all of Spain. The use of castellano versus español is not even clearly delimited in Spanish, and different liguistic and political considerations have to be taken into account in each instance.

The choice of castellano in the Spanish constitucion is to be able to call the other languages of Spain lenguas españolas.

I would therefore advocate using Spanish for the language, Castilian for the dialect of Castilla, and languages of Spain for Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician.

Miguel 23:44, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

Well, I did replace castilian to spanish after a similar discussion in talk:Spanish Language. Though, I still find strange that the english language considers castilian dialect and spanish the language.

TheWikipedian

The national language is called 'Spanish' in English, or alternatively 'Castilian' if contrasting with the other languages of Spain, or when talking about the middle ages. What is the 'Castilian dialect'? If you mean dialectalisms of Castile such as laísmo, then say so. If you mean standard Spanish, then say so. Catalan, Basque etc. are languages of Spain. —Chameleon 13:52, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

valencian

the status of valencian as a language is not clear in the wikipedia. The Catalan Languagewiki considers valencian a variant of catalan (..."Part of Valencia (País Valencià, Spain), where it is coofficial with Spanish and where the language is officially named Valencià (Valencian)."

However, the Valencian wiki states "Valencian is similar to the Catalan spoken in West Catalonia and Andorra and is nearly indistinguisable from the Catalan spoken in Southwest Catalonia. Linguists tend to regard Valencian simply as a variant or dialect of the Catalan language or even as merely a different name for the same reality. However, some groups in Valencia claim Valencian to be a distinct language."

For now, we should we should avoid an edit war on this issue, and find more sources on this subject.

Well, no serious scholar of the roamnce languages has any doubt that catalan is the language spoken in Valencia. It is rather sad that confusion exists in the wikipedia, since catalan is precisely a very unified language compared to other romance languages like italian or portuguese, or even spanish. This is a politically motivated confusion that should not have its place in a knowledge-aiming discussion. If a majority of valencians do not want anything to do with Catalonia, that is a political discussion where all opinions should be heard. What I think is unacceptable is to desinform about the catalan language to support political objectives.

Yes, we should avoid it, taking into attention the fact that some Valencians make it a point of honour to consider Valencià a language and not a dialect. However, I'm Portuguese and to me it would be just fine if Valencian were a language. But I've read and studied lots of texts in both varieties (Catalan and Valencian) and I have encounteres very few palpable differences. It seems just logic to consider them (Catalan and Valencian) two official standards of the same dialectal continuum (the same could be said of European and Brazilian Portuguese, even if the concept of dialectal continuum would be hard to apply in that case). With some work, a criterion could be devised to establish what is and what is not a language in Iberian Peninsula (to apply it in other places could be inaccurate): for instances, in contact zones between Spanish and Catalan and Spanish and Portuguese, a person can speak one or both languages, but it is hard to find someone who constantly speaks a mixture of both (even if it can be found as a joke or in same other contexts) - there is a break rather than a continuum. In the case of Valencian/Catalan, probably no one speaks both "languages", but speaks a variety (ideolect) which can be nearer to one or other standard. Very few people feel the need to learn Valencian if they speak Catalan and vice versa. It could be called the "continuum criterion". I've not created it, but I'm trying to apply it to this particular situation. It still needs some work, but I'd love to hear opinions on the subject.

--Marco Neves 23:25, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that the same name is used for a language and one of its dialects. In very broad terms, Catalan has three dilects, Catalan, Valencian and Majorcan. Politically this causes problems in Valencia and Majorca, because to say that Valencian and Majorcan are dialects of Catalan can be construed as meaning that they are dialects of the Catalan of Catalonia. In actual fact, the Catalan of Catalonia is a dialect of the Catalan language, and if you increase the level of detail in your analysis, the Catalan of Catalonia breaks down into a number of other dialects. The reaction of some in Valencia is to claim that Valencian is a separate language from Catalan in its own right, which is patent nonsense. A useful analogy might be the split of Serbocroatian into Serbian and Croatian since the early 1990s for purely political reasons. A choice was made to magnify the dialectal variation in order to claim two dialects of the same language to be two separate languages.

See Croatian language, Serbian language, Bosnian language, Serbocroatian language. -- Error 01:52, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I mostly agree you you. However, the very division of Catalan in three dialects is rather political, since, linguistically, it would make more sense to divide Catalan in Western Catalan and Eastern Catalan (with further subdivisions). Linguistically, Catalan spoken in Andorra has more to do with Valencian than with "Barcelonese". Marco Neves 05:27, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Is the Catalan of the Balearic Islands the same as Western Catalan? — Miguel 00:08, 2004 Apr 18 (UTC)

Actually the Serbocroatian article (from memory) mentions that the difference between Serbian and Croatian does not match the linguistic division of dialects in whatever-kavski. Speakers of the same *-kavski would give different names for the language. Speakers of different *-kavskis may use the same standard version.

These articles showed me how encyclopedic my ignorance of the history of southern slavic languages is, I stand corrected. Taken collectively, however, the articles appear superficially to be completely contradictory on the issue of how many languages there are in the former Yugoslavia, how many dialects, and who is a dialect of who, apart from containing disputed sections. — Miguel 03:30, 2004 Apr 16 (UTC)

They had wars on that (and other issues), don't be surprised if Misplaced Pages can't raise a consensus.

While we're at it, it might be worth pointing out the example of the Norwegian Nynorsk. The Misplaced Pages article does not discuss the history, but there is an external link small country with two languages that explains the political origin of nynorsk (essentially created by a 19th century linguist to be as different as possible from Danish).

Another interesting case is the standard literary form of Basque, called Batua, did not exist before 1960, and was created by academics as a blend of the existing Basque dialects. — Miguel 03:49, 2004 Apr 16 (UTC)

Actually every language in Spain (but for Aranese?) underwent a phase of standardization by picking from dialects. (See Antonio de Nebrija for Spanish and others institutions for the other languages). The case of Basque was maybe the most recent and with most different dialects.

I am not trying to imply that languages that have been standarized lately are somehow "lesser". The point is that it takes a lot of knowledge of political as well as linguistic history to present a balanced account of these issues, and that Spanish and Catalan are by no means alone among European Languages in this respect. — Miguel 00:08, 2004 Apr 18 (UTC)

And I remember a passage in Canterbury Tales on how somebody asked for "eggs" and was answered that they had but "eyren".

This situation is avoided in Spanish by reserving the name Castilian for the Spanish of Castilla, but not all the time. As I have pointed out before, the choice of names for the language and its various dialects is a political statement, whether you intend it or not. The thing to remember is that language is a fundamental part of identity politics, and when languages or dialects are given the names of political entities, political problems arise and linguistic accuracy is lost. Within Catalan, the Valencian article correctly states that Valencian is indistinguishable from the catalan spoken in Tarragona, and sometimes one encounters the name "southern Catalan" for this dialect, as distinct from the "northern Catalan" of Lleida and Girona and from the catalan of the Balearic islands. In Spanish, one often sees "southern Spanish" (español meridional) used to refer to the Spanish of Estremadura and Andalusia and the Spanish of America which is descended from it. Then again, there is as much dialectal variation within the Spanish of America as there is in Spain, ans to put the Spanish of Mexico and Argentina in the same "dialect" is a definite stretch.

Anything I could write about Catalan/Valencian would probably be disliked both by Catalanists and Valencianists anyway, so I'll abstain. Miguel 16:38, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

I never saw the name "castellano" being used in Spanish for the Spanish of Castilla, but always as equivalent to "español". English uses Castilian to signify "Spanish spoken in Castilia", but Spanish don't. Marco Neves 05:27, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't remember is castellano is commonly used in Andalusia. Anyway, isn't it used when discussing the early history of the language?

Indeed, Castellano is the proper name for the dialect of Latin that Spanish is descended from, among other things because it originated in the territory of the County of Castilla. But already 1492 it must have had some of the dialectal variation it has today, as the Spanish of America and the modern dialects Andalusian and extremeño are supposed to be descended from the same southern Castilian dialect. — Miguel 00:08, 2004 Apr 18 (UTC)

Olivenza

I deleted the Olivenza disputy problem with Portugal. I first saw this in the CIA World Factbook, and was the first time I hearded about it. First of all nobody in Spain cares about Portuguese claim just because Olivenza has been Spanish for many centuries and it's located in the Spanish side of the Guadiana rived (the border between Spain and Portugal in that zone).

Congratulations; you have learned something. I restored the information, that others may learn too. - Montréalais

Yes, I've learned you don't have any idea about Spain. So for you Bin Laden's claim of Al-Andalus (Andalucía) must be considered seriously? Olivenza's disputy hasn't been a problem for centuries. I'm thinking to write about Great Britain's claim of Virginia and the other colonies...

While it's quite unheard of in Spain, there are some groups in Portugal that think it important. And it has some real-world influence, the bridge across the the Guadiana has been incomplete for years because both countries didn't agree. -- Error 01:32, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

They didn't agree about the payment. They reached an agreement but the Spanish PP goverment decided at first not to pay. Then they paid. Anyhow the problem was economic and not political in the same way the central Spanish goverment has problems with some project about roads, railroads, etc with many of Comunidades Autónomas goverments. And yes, it's true there are some Portuguese groups claiming Olivenza, so that territorial disputy should appear in Portugal but not in Spain because Spain and Spanish people doesn't have problems with Olivenza.

Let me get this straight:

1. a territorial claim by Osama Bin Laden is on the same footing as a claim by a neighbouring country.
2. a dispute that people on one side are not generally aware of does not need to be discussed in connection to that side.
3. the fact that the side having de facto control of the territory "doesn't have a problem" with it (and why should they?) means it should not be mentioned in connection with it

I don't think any of these arguments make sense, and all three are to some degree offensive to Portugal. The mention of Olivenza is appropriate in an article about Spain, all the more so if it would result in educating us Spaniards about our own history. Miguel 21:30, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• The problem here is that Olivenza is not claimed by Portugal. There does not exist a formal claim from the Portuguese government (unlike the Gibraltar case), and the claim is not supported by the Portuguese people. Olivenza is claimed by minoritary nationalist groups in Portugal.

So I guess the information can lead to misunderstanding among the people who is not aware of the issue, and therefore, I will remove it.

Oh Montrealais,

I am a little bit tired of foreign people who try to explain us how our country works. I am from Extremadura, from a city 20 km away from Olivenza. And you have not a clue about what you are talking about

*I happen to leave in that same country and I do believe that we need some help to understand how your country "works". Please, tell me more about Olivenza.

It seems to me that everything about Olivenza (or Olivença...) is explained in the article about it (at least if it isn't vandalised!). Check it out! User: The Ogre

Religion

There is no point to include the data from the CIA World Factbook in the religion section. The info from the CIA World Factbook is clearly wrong. It is not true that 94% of Spaniards are catholic. If an official Spanish poll in 2002 (performed when the right-wing and pro-catholic PP party was in power) says that 80% of Spaniards consider herself as catholic, it is clear that this value is closer to reality than 94%. If you want to say that 94% of Spaniards are baptised, maybe I would accept the deal.

I went in and added data from the latest CIS poll (someone had already done that, but I rearranged stuff a lot). I think the best readability is achieved by writing running test at the top avoiding statistics as much as possible, and then conclude with detailed statistics. — Miguel 15:26, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that many Spaniards use very different and looser criteria to identify themselves as Catholics than is used outside of Spain. So looking at the raw statistic that 80% of Spaniards consider themselves Catholics is very misleading to people who don't understand what being Catholic means to a Spaniard. I have added a couple of paragraphs which hopefully help to bring some clarity to this. JamesJohnson 29 June 2005 13:28 (UTC)

Link to wikitravel

I would like to make a link to the spain article from wikitravel. How I make this?--Pz-engl 19:45, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I fixed it for you. You just have to add a "{{wikitravel}}" tag, preferably in the External Links section. The link is automatically generated. =] – Kaonashi 01:27, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sanity!

Good to see that Spain has good levels of sanity http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Spain&curid=26667&diff=0&oldid=0. (Presumably it should be sanitation, but I'm going to leave it there for a while - just for the amusement factor.) Noisy | Talk 13:56, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Hahaha I think sanity is not one of the main features of the Spanish people. I will improve this

Flag

I uploaded the flag from encarta. It is better that the current or CIA counter parts. user:nicksukh

Identities

The latest CIS survey on "institutions and autonomous communities" was conducted in September 2002. The section on "nationalist and regionalist sentiments" is well worth looking at in relation to the Identities section of the article. — Miguel 19:00, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)

The end of the article has disappeared!!!

The paragraphs of Culture, Rankings and templates have disappeared. Could anyone repair this? --Waninoco 09:18, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe someone deleted it.

Vandalism

Removed vandalism---68.81.105.166 23:13, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mistake

The sentence "(for instance, some have their own educational and health systems, others do not)" is wrong since all Autonomous Communities have already their own education and health systems. Anyway "have their own" sounds odd to me because Ministries of Education and Health exist... maybe it would be better to say that the Autonomous Communities "manage" or something like this.

President or PM

All the bio articles use President. This one needs to as well to conform, wikipedia should not be using President in one place and PM in others. The Spanish clearly use the word Presidente not the words Primer Ministro. While they use a system similar but by no means identical to the British I don't see that as relevant. We need the common usage word not a word that will supposedly of itself explain the type of system the Spanish have, --SqueakBox 17:46, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

In Spain, "Presidente del gobierno" (literary "president of government") is the same meaning as "Premier Minister". "Jefe del Estado" is the same meaning as the "Head of State", wich in some states is the same as "President". --Martorell 17:50, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

The important thing is to be consistent throughout the series of articles, including List of Presidents of the Government of Spain,--SqueakBox 18:24, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

We should change everything to "Prime Minister", which is the correct translation of presidente del gobierno according to my translation teacher at University, who was right. — Chameleon 18:29, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

If we wan to do that as a consensus that is fine with me, but lets start with List of Presidents of the Government of Spain, which will need an admin to change. I don't oppose changin that article name, and if it does change then is the time to change all the other articles, including this one, --SqueakBox 18:41, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Let's start with the articles that don't require admin intervention, by which time an admin may step in to do those that require it. — Chameleon 19:03, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. I think we need to start with the list article. As there appears to be consensus this should be easy enough to persuade an admin to do. Glaring inconsistency merely weakens Misplaced Pages's reputation, and otherwise I can see the list won't get changed. So please start there, --SqueakBox 19:07, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

The problem is not helped by having 2 articles: List of Presidents of the Government of Spain and List of Presidents of Spain. List of Prime Minister's of the Government of Spain is still open but List of Prime Ministers of Spain is a redirect. I am highly sceptical about having 2 articles listing this office's holders,

Do you realize that back in the time of the 2nd Republic there was a Presidente de la República and also a Presidente del Gobierno? What does the List of Presidents of Spain contain, then? And remember that Franco was Generalísimo and Caudillo but never Presidente, and his heads of Government were called Presidente del Gobierno.

I think it is best (and least ambiguous) to have a Head of State of Spain and a Head of Government of Spain, plus a disambiguation page at President of Spain and a redirect at Prime Minister of Spain. The same goes for the list articles. Regarding Head of State vs. Head of Government, bear inmind that the EU uses these titles because, for instance, there are both Monarchies and Republics within Europe, and any other usage would be confusing or misleading. — Miguel 19:56, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

There is no rush to rename List of Presidents of the Government of Spain, as its title is not too bad. It is an over-literal translation, but at least it is clear that the head of government is referred to, rather than the head of state which implied by the English word "President". In this article, however, you are reverting to a version that implies that Zapatero is the President of Spain. — Chameleon 19:20, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, I see you've done some moving about. List of Prime Ministers of the Government of Spain is a bad name still. The "Government" part is redundant. A Prime Minister is the Head of Government. You also need to fix all the now numerous redirects. — Chameleon 19:29, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Fixed the redirects, but there is clearly still a naming issue (that has rumbled on for years). All I want is consistency, Miguel's head of government sounds good, --SqueakBox 20:01, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Muslim Spain

Whoa, Muslims controlled the Iberian peninsula for 700 years, and we only have two sentences on this? I would love to learn more about this if anyone could write more. Yafujifide 1 July 2005 15:52 (UTC)

I agree. In fact I came to the talk page to make the same point. I am no expert in history, but I know that there is an extremely rich one of Islamic Spain. It was a great society in its day; I've always found it very interesting. Also, the article's notes about linguistic ties to Arabic are understated. It was not merely about a few borrowed words. I have read that the Moors fundementally changed the way Spanish is pronounced, in particular, the current Spanish pronunciation of the letters J and R and possibly others owe a large part to them. Also, I'm pretty sure that many Arabic words entered other European languages through the Spanish. But I am not knowledgable enough to be an expert about any of this or write about it in any detail. --Anonymous 3 July 2005 21:43 (UTC)

Don't speak about Arab influence to a Spaniard, I was literally attacked in Madrid for asking a group of Spaniards what influence Arabs had on their country.

You just came across the wrong type of people.

J (zsh) to h sound

I think J used to be X and pronounced as in French/Portugese, something like zsh? Jabon used to be xabon pronounced zshabon. ? --Jondel 03:02, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

It's no use trying to tell a English-speaking person how the J is pronounced in Spanish...

J in Spanish is pronounced as G in dutch (Gratis, Golf, Gulit, etc... in Dutch), and the letter is called "jota". It has nothing to do with X or zsh. In Latin America, they use to pronounce it as an H. Svest 21:09, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, svest, but you're way off. The "jota" is pronounced the same throughout the spanish-speaking world, as a fricative, 'h'-type sound(not sure of the precise linguistic classification, I think it might be "voiceless fricative"). The 'x' is where a divergence has occurred in pronunciation over the centuries. This is most obvious in the Spain-Spanish spelling of Mexico--"Mejico". Most of us know that Mexico is pronounced ME-hico in Spanish. What we don't know is that in Spain, the spelling Mexico would be prounounced ME-shico. This is why in Spain you don't find any Xaviers--it's spelled Javier now. In mexico and latin america, however, the x spelling is still quite common. Looks a lot cooler, too, in my opinion. ThePedanticPrick 16:18, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

The example of Mexico/Mejico is a good one. In Mexico City they pronounce it Mehico while in Madrid they pronounce it Mejico. And as I said also that the jota is pronounced simply as in dutch gratis in Spain. The jota is not pronounced the same through the spanish-speaking world and I've been speaking spanish for 28 years. The differnece can be found even inside mainland spain.

Therefore, j in spain is as g in dutch or as if you pronounce Khomeini in english. j in latin america is as h. I am listening to guajira Guantanamera now and guajira is pronounced gauhira by the cuban Groupo Raison.

The X is another story. In mainland spain it is pronounced somehow like ch as for Charles in english. The example is Xabi Alonso the football player. So, in spain x it is still pronounced ch. Cheers -- Svest 17:26, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Most of what you're saying makes sense, but I don't understand why you keep comparing 'j' to various hard-g sounds. There is nowhere in the spanish-speaking world where a 'j' makes a hard 'g' sound. ThePedanticPrick 14:14, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry for the confusion. I compare 'j' with 'g' in dutch as it is pronounced the same. It's not the hard-g but the soft one. You are right of course that in Spanish there is no soft 'g' but only hard one as for 'G'loria Estefan. But, as I said, the best example is the one in dutch when you pronounce 'G'ratis or the one in English when you pronounce 'Kh'omeini. I am sure everybody knows how Khomeini is pronounced in all languages of the world. Cheers. Svest 17:26, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

G8

Spain has already surpassed 2 G8 countries are there any plans to let Spain in the G8?

I don't know, but I think that has much more good reasons to be part of G8 than Russia...

Pedro Almodóvar

I couldn't find any spain related notice board, so posting it here. I have nominated Pedro Almodóvar for next week's Cinema Collaboration of the Week. pamri 17:02, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Its the current CCOTW. Plese help improve it. pamri 16:50, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Spanish portal

Hi folks. I've just started the Spanish portal. I need some help to develop it and keep it updated. Cheers - Svest 22:29, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

The map

The map included in this article is almost ridiculous. It lacks some important cities, and shows a tiny town were there should be another city (Pasajes -> St. Sebastian). Canary Islands are not even displayed. Should be changed ASAP.

Tartessos

I think Tartessos should be elaborated more int he article, it is afterall the first civilization of Iberia and possibly western Europe... -Zulu, King Of The Dwarf People

Vandalism/Troll Warning!

Hi there!

I'm just writing here to advice of vandalism danger from user Gibraltarian. This user is a known vandal/troll at wikipedia spanish. You can see his contributions here. When he was blocked by wiki spanish administrators, he start to vandalize from a wide range of IP's, such as:

212.120.230.162, 212.120.229.134, 212.120.227.124, 212.120.225.12, 212.120.226.221, 212.120.228.239, 212.120.225.91, 212.120.226.147, 212.120.227.68, 212.120.227.116, 212.120.227.176

To avoid this kind of vandalism, we had to block all IP range from where he was "working". We hope this story to end soon to unblock all these IP's, but not while he continues vandalizing our wiki. Now he's threating some of our administrators by e-mail (you can see the e-mails here)

I don't want to start any flame post with this warning, just to allow you to know who's posting here. Greetings and sorry my English, Hispa 14:57, 16 October 2005 (UTC)