It is difficult to imagine. But please try: Imagine being in a plane of Swiss air to Barcelona. When landing the welcome message and information is given in English, German, Spanish and then Catalan. What problem should that be for passengers who don’t speak Catalan? Non. As a matter of fact, most of the passengers will not understand one of the other languages either.
But still, there seem to be passengers (if we believe what Swiss air says) that have complained because the Catalan language was used in the plane.
I find it very, very difficult to imagine. That someone has so much hatred towards Catalan language, that someone finds it so irritating that the Catalan language is being used that he/she takes pen and paper to make a letter of complaint to Swiss air.
I also find it very difficult to understand how on earth an airline company listens to this people.
If you don’t understand Catalan, why do you care about it being spoken? What’s the problem? Why does it bother you?
Up till now Swiss air was using English, German, Spanish and Catalan when landing in or taking off from Barcelona. Now they have listened to these Spanish complaints and are doing it only in English, German and Spanish.
The only reason to make such a complaint is hatred. And it really hurts me to see that hatred is being listened to instead of love.
There are no practical reasons to stop using Catalan. When Swiss air lands in Brussels they also use 4 languages, English, French, German and Dutch. And nobody complaints about it.
EVERYBODY HAPPY! Why on earth would one of these communities not be happy with it?
The use of more languages is giving attention to everyone in an equal way. If we don’t speak French when landing in Brussels we are discriminating the French speaking Belgian people. If we don’t speak Dutch when landing in Brussels we are discriminating the Flemish.
Yes, the Flemish understand perfectly French and English and most of them German too, and still it is a matter of saying: You exist, we take care of you, welcome home, welcome to your own country.
Catalans understand perfectly Spanish, but it is not my language, and by not speaking in Catalan to me you are saying to me: You don’t exist, you don’t care, we don’t care about you, your language is worthless, you are worthless, fuck you!
So, it is not about respect, it is about hatred. So simple is this.
Here again I have an argument to stand for the independence of Catalonia from Spain.
As you can see, Spain is full of people who deliberately want to boycott us (21% of Madrid citizens boycott Catalan products according to the Spanish paper ABC), to avoid us to exist, to avoid us to participate in international sports competitions, and now who find it irritating that our language is spoken in air planes.
The only way to protect ourselves from people like this is independence.
Original article in Catalan only:
http://www.directe.cat/article/swiss-air-retira-el-catala-dels-seus-vols-per-pressions-dun-afiliat-del-partit-de-rosa-die-11360
