A GOVERNMENT billboard in Catalan on Madrid’s Gran Via main street has triggered a political row as Spain marks 50 years since the death of dictator Francisco Franco.
The giant banner, installed on November 17 as part of a national campaign celebrating half a century of democracy, reads in Catalan: ‘Being able to put up an advert in Catalan in the middle of Gran Via. Democracy is power.’ (Poder posar un anunci en catala enmig de la Gran Via. La democracia es poder.’)
The government says the message is a symbol of how far Spain has come since Catalan, Basque and Galician were banned from public life under Franco, who died on November 20, 1975.
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But the gesture has swiftly backfired, with critics across the political spectrum using the campaign to reopen long-running battles from that era that are still unresolved.
They cover a panoply of sensitive issues that have either been repressed or glossed over in the past 50 years, including language rights, national identity and the legacy of the civil war and dictatorship.
Conservative commentators and Madrid officials called it ‘hypocrisy’ that the Catalan language can appear freely in the capital, while Spanish-language signage faces restrictions in Barcelona due to Catalonia’s linguistic normalisation laws.
One widely shared response read: “Now try putting up a Spanish advert on Passeig de Gracia and see what happens.”
Others accused the Sanchez government of using public money to appease Catalan nationalist parties whose votes it relies on in Congress, days before sensitive negotiations over budgets and concessions.
At the same time, some Catalan nationalists dismissed the banner as empty symbolism, saying it celebrates a freedom ‘granted’ by the state while avoiding deeper political disputes over autonomy and the fallout from the 2017 independence push.
The billboard has become a lightning rod for wider cultural tensions that date back to the dictatorship, when Catalan culture was suppressed and public use of the language was forbidden.
Its mixed reception highlights how questions of identity, language and historical memory continue to divide Spain even as the country marks five decades of democratic rule.
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