This week, Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party made sweeping gains in British local elections, leaving Labour facing its worst night in Wales in living memory. Fletcher and Octavio go far beyond the ballot box to explore what it means to hold a cultural identity that competes with the national one, and why minority languages are about far more than communication.
Esta semana, los nacionalistas galeses de Plaid Cymru y el Partido Nacional Escocés avanzaron con fuerza en las elecciones locales británicas, dejando al Partido Laborista en su peor noche en Gales en generaciones. Fletcher y Octavio van más allá del resultado electoral para explorar qué significa tener una identidad cultural que compite con la identidad nacional, y por qué las lenguas minoritarias son mucho más que palabras.
6 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| hiraeth | a deep, untranslatable longing (Welsh loanword used in cultural discussion) | La palabra galesa 'hiraeth' describe una nostalgia tan profunda que no existe un equivalente exacto en español. |
| añoranza | longing, deep nostalgia | Después de años fuera, sentía una añoranza enorme por los sonidos y olores de su ciudad natal. |
| centralismo | centralism, the concentration of power in a central authority | Muchos catalanes critican el centralismo de Madrid, que toma decisiones sin consultar a las regiones. |
| revitalización | revitalization, the process of bringing something back to life | El movimiento de revitalización del galés ha conseguido que hoy más niños hablen la lengua que hace cincuenta años. |
| moribundo | dying, moribund (on the verge of extinction) | A principios del siglo veinte, muchos lingüistas consideraban el galés una lengua moribunda sin futuro. |
| parentesco | kinship, relationship (linguistic or familial) | El euskera no tiene parentesco conocido con ninguna otra lengua del mundo, lo que lo hace único. |
Wales just voted out the party that's run it for a generation, and I had to stop and ask myself something embarrassing: do I actually know what Wales is?
Not the geography.
The thing underneath.
Es exactamente la pregunta correcta.
That's exactly the right question.
Porque Gales no es solo una región de Gran Bretaña.
Because Wales isn't just a region of Britain.
Es una nación con una lengua propia, una historia propia, y una identidad que ha sobrevivido siglos de presión para desaparecer.
It's a nation with its own language, its own history, and an identity that has survived centuries of pressure to disappear.
To set the scene: Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, made major gains this week.
The Scottish National Party claimed victory in Scotland.
And the Labour leader in Wales, Eluned Morgan, lost her own seat and resigned.
That is not a rough night.
That is an era ending.
El Partido Laborista ha dominado la política galesa durante décadas.
The Labour Party has dominated Welsh politics for decades.
Para muchos galeses, votar laborista era casi un reflejo, una lealtad heredada de los tiempos del carbón y del acero.
For many Welsh people, voting Labour was almost a reflex, an inherited loyalty from the days of coal and steel.
Que Plaid Cymru haya crecido tanto significa que algo fundamental ha cambiado en la relación entre los galeses y Londres.
For Plaid Cymru to have grown this much means something fundamental has shifted in the relationship between Wales and London.
Plaid Cymru -- and I want to flag this for listeners -- that name is Welsh.
It means Party of Wales.
And Welsh is not a dialect of English.
It is a completely separate Celtic language, one of the oldest living languages in Western Europe.
El galés pertenece a la familia de lenguas celtas, igual que el bretón de Francia o el córnico de Cornualles.
Welsh belongs to the Celtic language family, the same as Breton in France or Cornish in Cornwall.
En el siglo pasado, estuvo al borde de la extinción.
In the last century, it was on the edge of extinction.
A principios del siglo veinte, la proporción de galeses que lo hablaban había caído dramáticamente.
At the start of the twentieth century, the proportion of Welsh people who spoke it had fallen dramatically.
No fue un accidente.
That wasn't an accident.
Fue el resultado de políticas deliberadas.
It was the result of deliberate policies.
This is the part of British history that doesn't make it into the standard narrative.
In 1847, the British government published what became known as the Blue Books -- an official report that described Welsh people as ignorant and immoral, and blamed the Welsh language itself.
Y a partir de ese informe, el galés fue suprimido activamente en las escuelas.
And following that report, Welsh was actively suppressed in schools.
Hubo una práctica llamada el Welsh Not, un cartel de madera que los niños tenían que llevar colgado al cuello si los pillaban hablando galés en clase.
There was a practice called the Welsh Not, a wooden placard that children had to wear around their necks if they were caught speaking Welsh in class.
El último niño al que le tocaba al final del día recibía un castigo.
The last child left holding it at the end of the day was punished.
Children punished for speaking their mother tongue in their own country.
That detail lands differently the more you sit with it.
Es un patrón que conocemos bien en España.
It's a pattern we know well in Spain.
Durante el franquismo, el catalán, el euskera y el gallego estaban prohibidos en las escuelas, en los medios de comunicación, incluso en los actos públicos.
Under Franco, Catalan, Basque, and Galician were banned in schools, in the media, even in public gatherings.
La represión de una lengua no es solo lingüística.
Suppressing a language isn't just a linguistic act.
Es una forma de decirle a alguien que lo que es, en lo más profundo, está mal.
It's a way of telling someone that what they are, at the deepest level, is wrong.
You lived through the aftermath of that.
Growing up in Madrid, what did you actually understand about what Catalonia was experiencing?
Sinceramente, de pequeño lo entendía muy poco.
Honestly, as a child I understood very little.
En casa se hablaba de la unidad de España como si fuera algo natural, algo que no necesitaba explicación.
At home, the unity of Spain was talked about as something natural, something that needed no explanation.
Fue cuando fui a Barcelona por primera vez, con unos dieciséis años, cuando empecé a entender que había personas que vivían en un país diferente al mío aunque usáramos el mismo pasaporte.
It was when I went to Barcelona for the first time, around sixteen, that I began to understand that there were people living in a different country from mine, even though we carried the same passport.
Same passport, different country.
That's a precise way to describe something that's genuinely hard to articulate.
Y en Gales es algo parecido.
And in Wales it's something similar.
El galés ha sobrevivido porque hubo personas que lucharon activamente para mantenerlo vivo.
Welsh survived because there were people who actively fought to keep it alive.
Hoy lo hablan aproximadamente setecientas mil personas.
Today around seven hundred thousand people speak it.
No es una cifra enorme, pero tampoco es una lengua moribunda.
That's not an enormous number, but it's not a dying language either.
Es una lengua que está creciendo de nuevo.
It's a language that is growing again.
The revival is real and it didn't happen on its own.
Welsh-medium schools have expanded significantly since the eighties.
There's a Welsh-language television channel, S4C.
The language has protected legal status.
All of that came from sustained political pressure over decades.
Y eso es lo que hace tan significativa esta elección.
And that's what makes this election so significant.
Cuando Plaid Cymru avanza, no es solo un partido político que gana votos.
When Plaid Cymru advances, it isn't just a political party gaining votes.
Es una señal de que la identidad galesa, incluyendo la lengua, está ocupando más espacio en la vida pública.
It's a signal that Welsh identity, including the language, is taking up more space in public life.
La gente vota con su identidad, no solo con su bolsillo.
People vote with their identity, not just their wallets.
Though -- and push back on me if I'm wrong -- not everyone who voted Plaid Cymru speaks Welsh.
Plenty of them don't.
So what exactly are they voting for?
Es una pregunta importante.
It's an important question.
Creo que votan por algo más amplio que la lengua.
I think they're voting for something broader than language.
Votan contra la sensación de que Londres toma decisiones que afectan a Gales sin entender realmente qué es Gales, sin escuchar de verdad.
They're voting against the feeling that London makes decisions affecting Wales without truly understanding what Wales is, without genuinely listening.
Es un rechazo del centralismo, de la distancia entre el poder y la gente.
It's a rejection of centralism, of the distance between power and people.
Scotland has been doing the same thing for longer.
The SNP has dominated Scottish politics for over a decade.
But Scotland and Wales are actually quite different cases, historically and culturally.
Sí, son muy distintos.
Yes, they're very different.
Escocia fue un reino independiente hasta 1707, lo que no hace tanto tiempo en términos históricos.
Scotland was an independent kingdom until 1707, which isn't that long ago in historical terms.
Tiene su propio sistema legal, su propio sistema educativo, su propia Iglesia.
It has its own legal system, its own education system, its own Church.
La identidad escocesa ha tenido siempre más instituciones propias que la galesa.
Scottish identity has always had more of its own institutions than Welsh identity.
Eso marca la diferencia.
That makes a difference.
And Scots Gaelic -- the language -- is actually in much worse shape than Welsh.
Roughly sixty thousand speakers.
But Scottish identity doesn't lean on the language the way Welsh identity does.
Scotland built its national character around other things.
Law, education, whisky, and a very specific relationship with England that involves absolutely no inferiority complex whatsoever.
Hay algo interesante en eso.
There's something interesting in that.
En España tenemos el caso del País Vasco, que también es revelador.
In Spain we have the case of the Basque Country, which is also revealing.
El euskera es una lengua completamente aislada, sin parentesco conocido con ninguna otra lengua del mundo, un misterio para los lingüistas.
Basque is a completely isolated language, with no known relationship to any other language in the world, a genuine mystery for linguists.
Y sin embargo, no todos los vascos la hablan.
And yet not all Basque people speak it.
Pero la identidad vasca es muy fuerte, muy definida, con o sin la lengua.
But Basque identity is very strong, very defined, with or without the language.
The Basque comparison opens a complicated door, though.
That independence movement had a violent phase with ETA that neither the Scottish nor Welsh movements ever did.
And that shapes how these things are perceived internationally -- who gets sympathy, who gets suspicion.
Completamente.
Completely.
Y es por eso que el movimiento independentista escocés ha conseguido tanto apoyo internacional: porque ha operado siempre dentro del sistema democrático, sin violencia.
And that's precisely why the Scottish independence movement has gained so much international sympathy: because it has always operated within the democratic system, without violence.
El referéndum de 2014 fue notable.
The 2014 referendum was remarkable.
Una participación del ochenta y cinco por ciento.
An eighty-five percent turnout.
Eso es una democracia funcionando.
That is democracy working.
And they voted to stay.
Fifty-five to forty-five percent for remaining in the UK.
But then Brexit happened two years later, and Scotland had voted heavily to remain in the EU, and suddenly the ground had completely shifted under that result.
Ese es el punto que cambia todo.
That's the point that changes everything.
Brexit transformó el contexto por completo.
Brexit completely transformed the context.
Muchos escoceses que en 2014 dijeron 'prefiero quedarme en el Reino Unido para seguir en Europa' se encontraron fuera de Europa sin haberlo votado.
Many Scots who in 2014 said 'I prefer to stay in the UK to remain in Europe' found themselves outside Europe without having voted for it.
Esa contradicción todavía no se ha resuelto, y el SNP la utiliza como argumento central.
That contradiction still hasn't been resolved, and the SNP uses it as a central argument.
And now, this week: SNP wins again in Scotland, Plaid Cymru surges in Wales, Labour's leader in Wales loses her seat.
Eluned Morgan gone.
When you stack all of that together, it's hard to read it as anything other than a structural shift.
Para el Partido Laborista, Gales era casi un territorio sagrado.
For the Labour Party, Wales was almost sacred ground.
Históricamente, los galeses de clase trabajadora votaban laborista de manera casi automática, como una lealtad transmitida de padres a hijos.
Historically, Welsh working-class voters supported Labour almost automatically, as a loyalty passed from parents to children.
Que eso haya cambiado dice mucho sobre cómo han evolucionado las identidades políticas y culturales en los últimos veinte años.
That this has changed says a great deal about how political and cultural identities have evolved over the last twenty years.
What does this mean for the UK going forward?
You've covered European politics for a long time.
Does this feel like a country slowly pulling apart, or something more manageable than that?
Creo que el Reino Unido está en un proceso de redefinición de lo que es.
I think the United Kingdom is in a process of redefining what it is.
No necesariamente de ruptura, pero sí de transformación profunda.
Not necessarily breaking apart, but undergoing deep transformation.
La pregunta de fondo es si la idea de ser 'británico' es suficientemente flexible para acomodar a personas que también son, y quizás primero, galesas o escocesas.
The fundamental question is whether the idea of being 'British' is flexible enough to accommodate people who are also, and perhaps primarily, Welsh or Scottish.
That tension -- the layered identity, being both Welsh and British simultaneously -- is something that genuinely puzzles a lot of Americans.
We have regional pride, but it rarely competes with national identity in the same existential way.
En Europa, la historia es diferente.
In Europe, history is different.
Las fronteras han cambiado muchas veces.
Borders have changed many times.
Las lenguas han sobrevivido a imperios.
Languages have outlasted empires.
Hay familias en las que los abuelos hablaban una lengua y los padres hablaban otra porque la frontera se movió o porque el estado cambió de política.
There are families where grandparents spoke one language and parents spoke another because the border moved or the state changed its policy.
Esa experiencia crea una relación con la identidad que es mucho más compleja, más cargada.
That experience creates a relationship with identity that is far more complex, far more loaded.
I did a piece on the Flemish-Walloon divide in Belgium years ago, and what struck me was that this is a country held together largely by the monarchy and the national football team.
The cultural split runs through everything else -- schools, media, workplaces.
And it has functioned, more or less, for over a century.
Bélgica es quizás el ejemplo más extremo en Europa occidental.
Belgium is perhaps the most extreme example in Western Europe.
Hay ciudades donde las comunidades flamenca y valona prácticamente no se mezclan socialmente.
There are cities where the Flemish and Walloon communities barely mix socially.
Viven una junto a la otra, no una con la otra.
They live next to each other, not with each other.
Y sin embargo, siguen siendo un solo país.
And yet they remain a single country.
Es un experimento político que nunca termina.
It's a political experiment that never ends.
Which circles me back to Wales and Scotland.
What I take from this week is that cultural identity is not a historical curiosity or a folk museum exhibit.
It is a living political force.
It shows up at the ballot box.
Se presenta, sí.
It shows up, yes.
Y hay una frase en galés que me parece muy hermosa: 'Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon.' Significa 'una nación sin lengua es una nación sin corazón.' Es el lema que ha inspirado el movimiento de revitalización del galés durante décadas.
And there's a phrase in Welsh that I find very beautiful: 'Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon.' It means 'a nation without a language is a nation without a heart.' It's the motto that has inspired the Welsh language revival movement for decades.
No es política.
It isn't politics.
Es algo más profundo.
It's something deeper.
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart.
That genuinely stops me.
Because that's not just a Welsh statement -- that's a claim about what language does for any culture, anywhere.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y hay una palabra en galés que los lingüistas y los escritores mencionan constantemente cuando hablan de identidad cultural: 'hiraeth.' Es casi imposible de traducir.
And there's a word in Welsh that linguists and writers constantly mention when talking about cultural identity: 'hiraeth.' It's almost impossible to translate.
Significa algo parecido a una nostalgia profunda por un lugar o un tiempo que quizás nunca existió, o al que ya no puedes volver.
It means something like a deep longing for a place or a time that perhaps never existed, or to which you can no longer return.
Hiraeth.
Once you hear that word you start reaching for it everywhere.
English has nostalgia, which is technically Greek.
Does Spanish have anything close?
Tenemos 'añoranza,' que se acerca, pero no llega exactamente al mismo sitio.
We have 'añoranza,' which comes close, but doesn't quite reach the same place.
'Añoranza' es la tristeza por algo que perdiste.
'Añoranza' is the sadness for something you lost.
'Hiraeth' lleva algo más dentro: es la nostalgia por algo que quizás nunca tuviste claramente, o que no puedes nombrar con precisión.
'Hiraeth' carries something more: it's the longing for something you may never have had clearly, or that you can't name precisely.
Tiene la historia entera de un pueblo cargada dentro.
It carries an entire people's history inside it.
So añoranza is the emotion of losing something specific.
Hiraeth is the emotion of losing something you can't quite locate.
That distinction is itself a kind of argument for why languages matter -- each one is holding a shape of human experience that others can only approximate.
Y mira, lo interesante es que 'añoranza' viene del verbo 'añorar,' que en catalán es 'anyorar,' y que procede del latín 'ignorare,' ignorar, en el sentido de no saber dónde está algo que buscas.
And look, what's interesting is that 'añoranza' comes from the verb 'añorar,' which in Catalan is 'anyorar,' and which comes from the Latin 'ignorare,' to be ignorant of, in the sense of not knowing where something you're searching for has gone.
La lengua guarda historias que ni siquiera sabemos que estamos contando cuando hablamos.
Language keeps histories inside it that we don't even know we're telling when we speak.