ANA BOTELLA AND LLANITO

One of the declared aims of setting up the Cervantes Institute in Gibraltar was to teach Gibraltarians how to speak Spanish. True, the majority of Gibraltarians speak Spanish already, and Llanito, and English, but the Castellano heard on Main Street is not the same as they speak in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol.

So the logic in Madrid was and I guess still is if Gibraltar Español is one day to become a reality then it would help if Gibraltarians could speak the language properly. I know not whether the ability of Gibraltarians to speak the King’s Spanish is better now than when the institute was opened but by all accounts its Spanish classes are very busy indeed.

Ironically leading Spanish politicians have been ridiculed over recent years for not being able to speak English. The media have labelled recent Spanish Prime Ministers as being an embarrassment to the nation because when they appear before international forums, such as in Davos, they cannot communicate in the language of business: English. Hence you have a Spanish leader having to be accompanied by his translator so he knows what everybody else is saying. Indeed Zapatero was blasted for avoiding international gatherings in favour of Moratinos because of his poor language skills.

Which brings me to the weekend’s events in Buenos Aires. I am sure many Gibraltarians were delighted when Madrid’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games fell flat on its face. It would be nice to think that the chaos at the border played a part in the Spanish capital being eliminated in the first round. However what played on the delegates’ minds far more was the fact that Spain is a financial basket case.

How could the IOC ask Spain to spend multi-millions of euros on creating the infrastructure for the games when the first priorities should be combating the economic and indeed corruption crises? So it follows that success was never really on the cards. To lose in those circumstances to Tokyo would have been no shame. However to be dumped in favour of Istanbul in the first round, with all the problems that country faces, was nothing short of humiliating.

To hide the national embarrassment Spaniards have rounded on the Mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, who is also the wife of the former PP premier José María Aznar, to vent their collective spleens. Botella is in the firing line over both her use of English and her lack of proficiency. Her words to the IOC Committee were cruelly subtitled on YouTube as “Diar Allosi Menbers, Leidisan yentelman”. By the by Rajoy wisely spoke to the Olympic chiefs only in Spanish.

Her phrase: “relaxing cup of café con leche en la plaza Mayor” has a certain element of Llanito about it. By Monday, T-shirts were on sale at 18 euros each with a parody of the Starbucks logo, featuring a profile of Botella and the logo: “Relaxing Cup of Cafe Con Leche in Plaza Mayor”.

Now that Botella has woken up and smelt the coffee it begs the question should the Gibraltar Government set up a Llanito Institute in Madrid to teach Madrileños our tongue? After all hell will freeze over before Gibraltar becomes Español so the sooner they learn to speak to us on our terms the better.

The hapless Ana Botella also caused a stir on social networks because of the press conference on Friday in Buenos Aires in which she defended the candidature of Madrid to host the 2020 Olympics. She was questioned in English by a journalist and judging by her response, she did not understand what the reporter was asking. Botella dispensed with headphones to hear the question and talked about the infrastructure in Madrid when the journalist had asked about the suitability of organizing the Olympics in a country that is in a very serious crisis with a 27 per cent unemployment rate.  To her humiliation she was duly upbraided by the Chairman of the Spanish Olympic Committee who did not realize his table microphone was on.

The incident has now gone viral... as has Botella’s shame.

WHAT IS OUR LANGUAGE?

I am British, I speak English primarily but also Spanish. I can get by in French and have a handful of words in Bulgarian, Hungarian, Zulu and Afrikaans. If you asked me what languages do Gibraltarians speak I would say they are trilingual speaking English, Spanish and Llanito.

Given Gibraltar’s close links with Britain it is natural that English should be the major language. Apart from anything else we need English for our education, in law as well as business. Spain is our neighbour so it is equally sensible for Gibraltarians to be able to speak Spanish. To be bilingual in this day and age is a great asset and in English and Spanish we have the two major languages other than Chinese.

Across the border in Spain they are busy trying to teach their children English not specifically because of the closeness of Gibraltar but because it is the major language internationally. Schools that offer a bilingual curriculum are cropping up in every town: the problem is the quality of the teachers often leaves a lot to be desired.

Over the generations that border workers have come to work in Gibraltar they have developed their own patois originally based on words that dock workers collected from English speakers and visiting ships. These words now make up part of the argot of La Linea.

All this came to mind because in the Spanish media recently there have been articles bemoaning the fact that Gibraltarian children do not now speak Spanish as a natural tongue. The point being made is that their parents learnt by ear and are natural Spanish speakers whilst their children are not and only learn Spanish in classes at school.

I was surprised to learn this fact and when I was first told a year or so ago I asked a teacher who informed me that this was so. Curious really given the influence of Spanish in our lives in cross border visits and the media.

I remember talking to a retired Gibraltarian teacher who told me that prior to the evacuation at the time of the Second World War the majority of Gibraltarians spoke Spanish and not English. Those who spoke English would probably have been the business classes who had close links with the military. He added that when the evacuees returned and schools were re-established on the Rock the Religious Brothers who came to teach here had to first undergo Spanish lessons.

I have no reason to doubt his words but that would mean that in the period of 60 years Gibraltar’s children had gone from being Spanish speakers to English speakers.

Language defines a people and the mixture of language in Gibraltar is part of what makes a Gibraltarian a Gibraltarian. The unique ability to switch from English to Spanish at the drop of a hat with a stop along the way into Llanito. However if the Spanish are correct and our young people speak English and only treat Spanish as a foreign language then could that also endanger the future of Llanito which requires a knowledge of both tongues.

THE LANGUAGE DEBATE CONTINUES

Following my article in Panorama on Tuesday about whether our young people are learning Spanish as a second language or speaking it naturally I received a kind message from Bart Van Thienen. Bart had read the article in Panorama on the internet and posted it for his friends.

Although I am grateful for his kind words what interested me more is what he posted on his Facebook page. Bart wrote: “A very interesting article for my Belgian friends, we too as Flemish people had to await the Second World War to get education in our own language and even justice in Flemish (dialect of Dutch). Even today the Belgian king speaks Flemish with a heavy French accent although French speakers are only 30% of the population...”

I was in Brussels a short while ago and the French – Flemish divide is a bit of a nightmare. When I go to Paris I always try to use what French I have and I have to say despite their reputation Parisians are normally generous in allowing for mistakes. However what do you speak in Brussels? How do you know if a person, restaurant or shop is French or Flemish?

My guidebook told me as people can be offended if you speak French to a Flemish speaker or vice versa the best thing to do is speak English. Which is what I did. When I thought a person was French I did risk a mumbled few words but was never quite sure whether they were actually Flemish in disguise.

I know there are people in Gibraltar who believe that as the Rock is British then English should be the common language. I know people are annoyed when they go into a shop and find if they speak English they are simply not understood because the staff are Spanish. You have seen these issues debated in Panorama either in articles or in the letters column oft times before.

However it is a fact that if Gibraltarians can speak English and Spanish then it is an enormous asset to our community because we have the two major languages in the world, other than Chinese, covered. So both in the worlds of business and tourism we are one jump ahead. Compare that to Spain where few speak English, not even the country’s leaders, or the UK where they speak English normally at home and very loudly and slowly when confronting Johnny Foreigner abroad.

The trick for Gibraltarians is to use their language skills to enhance the nation and have a balance so that Gibraltar is neither a language colony of the UK or Spain. However I believe that what really defines a Gibraltarian is the ability to slip in to Llanito: but as I said in my last article surely to do so you need to speak Spanish.

Some 20 years ago I used to record a radio programme called “If It’s In The Press, It’s Got To Be True!” For some episodes I took the Llanito conversation columns from Panorama and used them in the script. We had a Spanish actress on the show, who spoke good English and was in fact an English teacher. I duly presented her with the script and her face was a picture. She said I know most of these words, but I haven’t a clue what it means. That’s Llanito for you.

RAJOY DOESN’T UNDERSTAND ENGLISH

Before and shortly after Mariano Rajoy became Spain’s prime minister he was been mocked in that country’s media for not speaking English. Many media commentators felt he let his country down when he went to international forums and had to have a translator to hand because unlike other national and business leaders he spoke only his native tongue.

This problem seems to have translated to the United Nations which Rajoy addressed on Tuesday. There, in Spanish but with simultaneous translations in to other languages, he called on the UK to re-open dialogue with his government on the sovereignty of Gibraltar.

Of course since the Partido Popular has been in power in Madrid the British Government has made it as clear as can be that it will not re-open talks on the sovereignty of Gibraltar without our government participating as equals  or without our government’s agreement. I have suggested here in the past this has more to do with the sovereignty of the Falklands than Gibraltar but we cannot look this gift horse in the mouth.

The British Government is clear, there is no reason to believe a Labour Government would take a different view, and hence the future sovereignty of Gibraltar is safe – so what doesn’t Rajoy understand? English!

If he doesn’t understand what Cameron, Hague, the Foreign Office, our ambassador in Madrid and Gibraltar’s own government and people are telling him (except Caruana) no wonder he still believes this is a matter for discussion.

Rajoy has called for a dialogue, “direct and sincere” on the decolonisation of Gibraltar which he told the UN had been lost for ten years. He lamented there had been no discussions on a bilateral basis between the UK and Spain since 2002 because the Gibraltarians had objected.

Well the dialogue may be direct but it can hardly be sincere when you are calling on Britain to disregard the people of Gibraltar’s right to self-determine their own future and impose one, not of their making or to their liking, decreed by London and Madrid.

It cannot be sincere when you call for London to decolonise Gibraltar by in effect making it a colony of Madrid.

It cannot be sincere when you treat Gibraltarians as non-people who have no right to a say in the future of their nation.

With the Catalans going to the polls on November 25 in what will be a referendum, except in law, on that region’s determination to seek independence, with a further referendum proposed for the next legislature, you would have thought Rajoy had more to worry about than Gibraltar. Then of course he doesn’t speak Catalan either.

As I wrote here on Tuesday Spain is in very real danger of disintegration or at least descending in to a series of federal states. In that scenario any imagined claim a Spanish federation of autonomous regions may have over Gibraltar will go out of the window.

The key issue in Spain isn’t Gibraltar is it the economy, unemployment, major cuts, homelessness and the determination of the autonomous regions to break from Rajoy’s Madrid. That is what the protests in regional parliaments and on the streets are all about. Rajoy doesn’t seem to have got that message either.