Race And Language In The Spanish Peninsula

The three great languages in the Iberian Península - Castilian or Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalán - correspond respectively to the three political agencies whicb drove out the Moorish invaders f rom the ninth century onward frorn three different directions and from distinct geographical centers. The mountains of Galicia, in the extreme northwest, served as the nucleus of the monarchy. Castile in the central north was the asylum of the refugees, expelled from the south by the Saracens, who afterward reasserted themselves in force under the leadership of the kings of Castile. Aragón in the northeast, whose people were mainly of Catalán speech, which they had derived from tlie south of Frauce, during their temporary forced sojourn in that country while the Moors were in active control of Spain, was a base of surpplies for the third organized opposition to the invaders. Each of these political units, as it reconquered territory from the Moors, imposed its oflicial speech upon the pie, where it retnains to-day. Were the present Spauish hation oíd enough and suffieiently unified ; wei'e the component parta of it umie firmly knitted together by education, modern means of transport, and economie interest; this disuuity of speech might disappear. Unfortunately, the character of tlie Iberian Península s such - arid, infertile, and sparsely populated in the interior - that these languages socially and commercially turn tlieir backs to one another. Of necessity, they do this also along the frontier between Spain and Portugal. The eyes of each coinmunity are directed not toward Madrid, but towards the sea; for there on the fertile littoral alone, is there the economie possibility of a population suffieiently dense for unifleation. Thus the divergence of language is truly the expression of natural causes workiug through political ones, which promise to perpetúate the ditt'erenees for some time. As for the Basques, they have been politically independent both of the French and the Spaniards until within a few years, and liave been enabled to preserve their unique speech largely for this reason. But now that their politica! airtonomy lias begun to disappear, the official Spunish is presmng the Basque language so forcibly that it seems to be every where on the retreat. - A lom' Popular Science Monthly for February.