Even with an intact Spain, the number of professorships in Spanish on this continent dropped x3 within just 15 years. If the Scots and Catalonians think anybody will start departments of Scottish and Catalonian Studies after they achieve independence, they are deranged. Now their culture is still preserved and studied. If they become tiny new countries, nobody will. And since Americans are the only people on the planet who are still interested in preserving the world’s cultural legacy, if Americans don’t study you, you don’t exist. The possibility that Scots and Catalonians will have resources to develop their own scholarship from scratch is non-existent.
The really funny part in all this is that Catalonians want independence because they say they are haunted by the memories of the time when Castilian-speaking Spaniards persecuted their language and culture. So to honor these memories, they will deliver a mortal blow to this very language and culture and finish the work of their long-dead oppressors.
Of course, as we all know, nationalism appeals to emotions precisely because it is so baseless and stupid that it can’t sustain the light of reason shining on to it even for 2 seconds. Nobody thinks logically when there is a slightest opportunity for joyous flag-waving. It is really curious to observe people who are willing to destroy their own culture for the sake of latching on to a state-form that is in its death throes anyway.
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