«Katalanisch» oder «Valencianisch»?: zum sprachlichen Sezessionismus im Land València

Abstract

In 1932, spelling rules for the native language of the Valencian Country were accepted in the Valencian city of Castelló. In fact, this decision meant the acceptance of the rules proposed by Pompeu Fabra for the Catalan language and consequently also the implicit acceptance of the essential identity of Valencian with Catalan. Despite this almost unanimous verdict of all the Valencian cultural forces, attempts at linguistic secessionism that seek to establish Valencian as a literary language independent of Catalan have continued to this day. With the recent electoral successes of a political party (Unió Valenciana) defending this secessionist position, the issue is once again very acute. Against this background, the article re-examines the main claims of secessionists in their academic and philological form, in order to determine the extent to which they can claim to be scientific. It is concluded that none of its central claims have been accepted by the rest of the international scientific community and that the so-called valencianophilia of secessionists often seems to be nothing more than an irrational and ill-concealed catalanophobia whose ultimate goal is la replacement of Catalan in the Valencian Country by Spanish.