Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Borders and loyalties can be messy. Modern political borders are rarely clean when
it comes to dividing ethnic groups. And most of the terrorism and troubles in
Europe—whether Basque, Irish, Catalan, or Corsican—have been about ethnic-minority
separatist movements threatening national capitals. Appreciating the needs of these
people, peace-loving European leaders strive to make the Continent's minority groups feel
like they belong.
Brittany, in western France, is not ethnically French. People there are Celtic, cousins
of the Welsh and the Irish. Just a couple of generations ago, Paris was so threatened by
the secessionist dreams of these Celts that if parents gave their newborn a Celtic name,
that child would not be granted a French national identity card. Such a policy would be
laughable today.
When I first visited Barcelona in the 1970s, locals weren't allowed to speak Catalan
or dance their beloved Sardana. The Catalan flag was outlawed, so locals waved the flag
of the Barcelona soccer team instead. Now, in public schools, children speak Catalan first,
local flags fly proudly, and every Sunday in front of the cathedral, people gather to dance
the Sardana. This circle dance symbolizes national unity as all differences are cast aside
and Catalans raise their hands together to proudly celebrate their ethnicity. A Catalan per-
son in Barcelona told me, “Catalunya is Spain's Quebec. We don't like people calling our
corner of Iberia a 'region' of Spain…because that's what Franco called it. We do not ac-
cept subjugation as a region of Spain. We are a nation without a state.”
What's going on? Barcelona is less threatening to Madrid. Cardiff doesn't scare Lon-
don. Brittany gets along with Paris (and I don't mean Spears and Hilton). As power shifts
to the EU capital of Brussels, national capitals recognize and accept that their authority is
waning. And the European Union supports transnational groups in the hopes of reminding
big nations that they have more in common than they might realize.
A friend of mine, Armin Walch, is the “Indiana Jones” of Tirolean archaeologists.
Bursting with ideas and projects, he loves to renovate castles in western Austria. When
Armin wants money to excavate a castle, he goes to Brussels. If he says, “I'm doing
something for Austria,” he'll go home empty-handed. So instead, he says he's doing
something for the Tirol (an ethnic region that spans parts of Italy and Austria, ignoring the
modern national boundary)…and gets funding.
