A Companion to Catalan Culture (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Companion to Catalan Culture Donna M. Rogers Keown, Dominic, ed. A Companion to Catalan Culture. Serie A: Monografías, 293. Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2011. 268pp. In A Companion to Catalan Culture, Dominic Keown has produced a welcome collection of ten short essays dealing with varied cultural aspects of Catalonia past, present and future. These contributions are from scholars working in Catalonia, the U.K., the U.S. and Canada, thus providing some diversity of perspective. In his Introduction, Keown notes that the purpose of this volume is “to offer the English reader a first port of call for information” about Catalan culture (2). To that end, he has assembled essays that address contemporary culture, medieval culture, 19 th–21 stcentury political history, the notion of Barcelona as “siege city,” language, sport, music, cinema, festival and cuisine – manifestations of both “high” and “low” culture (3). As editor, Keown claims coherence for these disparate cultural expressions with the observation that their bestknown proponents – Antoni Gaudí, Salvador Dalí, Pau Casals, Bigas Luna, Ricard Bofill, Montserrat Caballé, among others – “did not emerge from a vacuum but are merely distinguished exponents of a cultural choir whose fellow protagonists – through repression, inaccessibility or just plain ignorance – have been denied the opportunity of the reception they so richly deserve” (4). The reader will find that the salient theme uniting these essays is that of identity: each contribution in this volume illuminates some aspect of Catalan identity, linking cultural expression with catalanitat(Catalan-ness). The primary cultural domain not included in this collection is that of literature; Keown directs the reader, however, to Arthur Terry’s A Companion to Catalan Literature(London: Tamesis, 2003) as both inspiration and complement to this work. It is also important to note that the collection’s scope is limited to Catalonia proper, and does not treat related cultural topics focused on Valencia, the Balearic Islands, or other Catalan-speaking regions, due to practical limitations (10). In addition to the specifically historical chapters 2 and 3, the remaining essays also bear some historical perspective on their subject. Keown acknowledges this in the Introduction, noting that the “recourse to collective nostalgia, that remembrance of another age filled with culture and influence,” would serve as “a catalyst for the restoration of national consciousness” (5). Indeed, the concept of enyorança, a nostalgia or longing for the past, informs much of the construction of Catalan cultural identity during the 19 th-century Renaixença. In his chapter on contemporary Catalan culture, Keown moves from the post-Habsburg period known as the decadènciathrough the Renaixençato provide pre-20 th-century background. He then takes us up to the Franco dictatorship with sections covering Catalan Modernisme, noucentismeand the avant-garde; next he traces the suppression of all things Catalan and the slow [End Page 144]beginnings of recovery during the Franco years (1939–75). Finally, he gives an overview of matters cultural since the transition to democracy in Spain, again drawing together manifestations of high and low culture in present-day Catalonia. In Chapter 2, Alexander Ibarz offers a succinct history of Catalan culture from 801–1492, an essential contextual piece in this collection, as is noted above. Ibarz does an admirable job of synthesizing a great deal of information about medieval Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon into 28 pages. In Chapter 3, a brief history of Catalonia from 19 th-century industrialization to 2008, Antoni Segura i Mas and Elisenda Barbé i Pou provide an understanding of the political events that are the backdrop to the contemporary cultural landscape, which is especially enlightening in its final section on 30 years of self-government and the 21 st-century Statute of Autonomy. Robert Davidson’s piece on Barcelona as “siege city” draws connections between the notion of physical siege and attack from without and within, and the city’s struggle to maintain an authentic cultural identity in the face of commodification, “brand” development and tourism. Miquel Strubell’s essay on the past, present and future of the Catalan language acknowledges differences of opinion among philologists as to its origins and earliest manifestations as a distinct and separate...