Valencian is a key element of Valencian identity, both historically and nowadays. However, for decades we have been witnessing a conflict over its uses, status and affiliation. In the end, languages are also flags, symbols. In Europe, political conflicts are channeled to a large extent through cultural struggles. At home, the users of the second most spoken language in the Kingdom of Spain, official in the Valencian territory, see their rights questioned. While Spanish reinforces its unity, transoceanic, certain groups reinforce the particularism of Valencian and question the unity accepted by the university community and the majority of speakers. Conflicting the use of Valencian is a strategy to keep it in a subordinate position with respect to Spanish, to make it dispensable, secondary. The main discourses on Valencian will be analyzed from a comparative perspective.
Brief description of the speaker’s curriculum:
Vicent Flor (Valencia, 1971). Degree in political science and social and cultural anthropology and PhD in sociology. Cultural manager and curator of the Museu Valencià de la Il-lustració i de la Modernitat. He was for more than fifteen years professor at the University of Valencia and from 2015 to 2024 director of the Institució Alfons el Magnànim. Author of the books Noves glòries a Espanya. Anticatalanisme i identitat valenciana (2022, 2nd edition), about Valencian anti-Catalanist regionalism; Societat Anònima. Els diners, el poder i la política (2015), on Valencian society in relation to the Spanish state; Nosaltres som el València. Futbol, poder i identitats (2020), about sport and collective identities and ara Contra la llengua dels valencians. Una batalla per la cultura, all four published by Afers. He is also the author of El carrer de baix (2022), Joanot Martorell Award, published by Edicions 62, a novel about friendship, fatherhood and foster children. In 2026 he will publish the second novel.
Place: Sala d’actes d’actes de l’Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria Aeroespacial i Disseny Industrial (Edifici 7B)
Organized by: Department of Applied Linguistics UPV