RUTHFULLY YOURS

Barcelona has been in the news this summer for its many anti-tourism protests. Local residents have been firing water guns and blocking hotel entrances in protest against ‘over-tourism’ and its impact on living conditions.

In some ways this is not surprising. In Barcelona, there are already over four tourists for every local and this is only set to increase. Spain is soon expected to become the world’s No1 tourist destination. By 2040, it is predicted to receive 110million tourists a year, surpassing France (105million) and the United States (100million). Of course, tourism brings huge economic benefits, but the pressures it can place on accommodation and infrastructure have gone completely unaddressed by politicians. And this is far from the only issue plaguing Barcelona.

Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, is ruled by a political class with a pathological obsession with identity politics. Catalonia’s elites have for years promoted the idea of Catalan identity as a nationality – through public schools and state media – rather than as a regional identity within Spain. In Barcelona, a city that was built with the help of migrants from other parts of Spain, this has been particularly divisive.

Nowhere is this clearer than through the Catalan secessionists’ weaponisation of language. Despite both Spanish and Catalan being official languages of the region, children whose mother tongue is Spanish are excluded by design from the public-school system. Since the 1980s, children have been taught exclusively in Catalan from ages three to seven. Spanish is introduced in the second year of primary school, but even then, Spanish classes are limited to two or three hours per week. Until recently, before a 2021 Supreme Court ruling, Spanish was taught as if it were a foreign language and other school subjects were generally not taught in Spanish at all.

It’s fair to say that this system puts native Spanish speakers – a substantial minority – at a disadvantage. It is particularly tough for those with special needs, who consequently aren’t given the same level of support as Catalan speakers.

In the end, though, all children in Catalonia have ended up suffering from the regional government’s identitarian obsessions, Spanish-speaking or not. Catalonia’s results in the 2022 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests fell in maths, science and reading. This places Catalan students below the average for both Spain and other OECD countries. The authorities claimed that the drop in performance was due to underfunding, economic disparities, the Covid-19 pandemic and increased use of mobile phones – even though such issues are hardly unique to Catalonia. It refused to acknowledge that its separatist policies have had any impact at all.

Instead of addressing the dire state of its education system, Catalonia prefers to focus on indoctrinating kids with the latest woke fads, including gender-identity ideology. In fact, Catalonia was one of the first regions in Spain to update its textbooks to teach pupils that gender is a ‘social construct’. This was later adopted by the Spanish government and rolled out across the country.

Indeed, Catalonia has become something of a hotbed for trans ideology. The Catalonia Department of Health set up a gender-identity service in 2012, called Trànsit. Over the past 10 years, the number of children and young people seeking its services has increased by more than 7,000 per cent. The number of 10- to 14-year-old girls specifically surged by 5,700 per cent between 2015 and 2021.

Public funds might be better spent attempting to solve Barcelona’s out-of-control crime problem. In 2023, the city closed the year with an increase in all forms of crime – especially sexual assault, scams and all drug-related criminal activity. There was a 24.5 per cent increase in reports of sexual assault, a 21 per cent increase in gender-based violence and a nearly 15 per cent increase in domestic violence. It is not surprising that security is the top priority for the people of Barcelona.