PART: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [index]

FIRST PART

1) Which is the proper language of the valencian people ?
 
 The proper language of the valencian people is the Valencian language. A neo-Latin language derived from the vulgar Latin spoken in Valencian lands before the "Reconquest", and that, in the Middle Ages, was strongly influenced by other neo-Latin languages of the Iberian peninsula and south of France that came to Kingdom of Valencia.
 (Read more )

2) If before the "Reconquest" the Kingdom of Valencia was governed by the Moors. Who was speaking this "ancient Valencian language" that served as basic substratum of the current Valencian language ?
 
 The "ancient Valencian language" was spoken by the roman-iberic people and their descendants who continued living in Valencian lands after the conquest of the roman-gothic Hispania by the Moors.
 
 The Moors forced to the submitted autochthonous roman-iberic population to live in suburbs separated of the Muslims. Suburbs where they continued using their vernacular Latin language, even in the cases in which they had had to resign of the Christian religion and to accept the Moslem religion to avoid reprisals of certain fundamentalist Moslem groups.
 Besides, some of the Moslem men got married with roman-iberic women which continued speaking to their sons in "ancient Valencian language", the only language that they knew. In such a way that the Valencian language also was intruded and used relatively among the Moor.
 (Read more )

3) Is it true that in the epoch of the "Reconquest" the roman-iberic people of the Kingdom of Valencia and their ancient Valencian language had disappeared, and Valencian language of nowadays is product only and exclusively of the repopulation of catalan people in the Kingdom of Valencia ?
 
 It is a historical falsehood spread by those who want that the Valencian lands belong to a invented and fictitious political project named "Països catalans" ("catalan countries").
 
 The invading Moors did not massacre the autochthonous roman-iberic people but they submitted them and used them (with taxes and services), as one of the sources of richness of the dominant Moslem elites. The roman-iberic people, also known as "mossaraps" (christians living in Moorish part of Spain), were living in suburbs separated from the Moors, keeping their customs and their Valencian language.
 In very concrete epochs of Moslem fanaticism, the Moors forced to part of the valencian roman-iberic people to accept the Moslem religion without for it they were stopping speaking their Valencian language (actually a great part of the "converted" men would be bilingual due to the social and labour relations that they were having with the Moors, whereas their wives would continue speaking in Valencian language as consequence of being socially separated from the moorish community).
 Besides, many of these "converted ones" were only in appearance, ("cripto-Christians"), therefore they recovered the Christian religion after the "Reconquest" and they never lost their Valencian language.
 (Read more )

4) The catalanist people say that the chronicle of the catalan Ramon Muntaner where he speaks about of the "bell (beautiful) Cathalanesch" confirms that the Kingdom of Murcia (Murcia and the south of Alicante) was repopulated only by Catalans. What validity have the words of this catalan medieval chronicler ?
 
 No validity Ramon Muntaner's words have in this matter, because the repopulation to which he points was the effected by the aragonese king Jaume 1st "The conqueror" in the Kingdom of Murcia in the year 1265, and this year was the same one in which Ramon Muntaner was born.
 Besides, If we bear in mind that the king Jaume 1st died when Ramon Muntaner was only eleven years old is evident that Muntaner could never accompany the king Jaume 1st as his chronicler in any of his campaigns and he could not be be direct witness or presencial one of the facts that the catalan chronicler wants to present like directly lived.
 Even, it is so much of the misinformation and Ramon Muntaner's inaccuracy in this topic, that in his "chronicle" erroneously dates in the year 1238 the presence of the aragonese king Jaume 1st in lands of the kingdom of Murcia, when historically it is more that proved that was in the years 1265-1266 when the aragonese king was helping to his son-in-law, the castilian prince Alfonso (Alfonso X "the Wise") to suffocate the revolt of the Moors in the kingdom of Murcia.
 It is very possible that all this inaccuracy and distortion of the reality that the "chronicle" of Muntaner shows are due to three fundamental motives. The first one, the author wrote, using an idealistic style, what other people said, without having been direct witness of the majority of the facts that he reports. Other one, the author began to write his "chronicle", as "memories", in the year 1325 when he was sixty years old. And the third one, the author shows a strong chauvinist character promoting the Catalans and Catalonia, something proved in many passages of his "chronicle".
 
 In addition, some studies based on the documents of repopulation of localities of Murcia and Alicante demonstrate that the Catalan people only raised the 20 % of the repopulation effected during the "Reconquest" in those lands. Something that contradicts what the catalan Ramon Muntaner wrote of form idealized in his "chronicle".
 (Read more )

5) What context does correspond to the famous phrase "O Dio, la Chiesa Romana in mani dei catalani" ("Oh, God, the Roman church in hands of Catalan ones"), alluding to Alexaindre VI, Pope of Rome and member of the Borja's valencian family ?
 
 This phrase declared by the Italian Pietro Bembo in a sarcastic and malicious way is consequence that in Italy, in the 15th century (and before also) the "catalan" term was used in a contemptuous way to point to all people of Hispanic origin independently of the region that they were from.
 
 From the end of the 14th century, some gangs of Catalans had been committing plunders in Sicilian and Greek lands and they got the scorn of the inhabitants of these lands who turned the "Catalan" term in synonymous of insult applied to every people who were coming from the Iberian peninsula.
We can find a similar circumstance in Argentina where all the people that come from Spain are considered like "Galician ones" though they do not come from the spanish region of Galicia.
 (Read more )