It is hardly about Cécile Kyenge, a Francophone immigrant, at all.
To
affluent Northern Italians, “Garibaldi did not unite Italy, he
partitioned Africa”, and “Naples is the only Arab city without a
European quarter”.
Sicilians, by contrast, talk about “the Continent”
just as we do, and do so in what for some reason has to be referred to
as a particularly impenetrable dialect rather than as a distinct
language.
In fact, that language is, like so much else on their island, a
living monument to their identity as basically Latins, but Latins who
are also in large part Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Jews, all sorts.
Meanwhile, have you ever seen any people from those areas only incorporated into Spain in 1492 or not much earlier? How Roman or how Gothic did they look to you?
Meanwhile, have you ever seen any people from those areas only incorporated into Spain in 1492 or not much earlier? How Roman or how Gothic did they look to you?
The Moors and the Jews were there for a very long time, and
what goes on went on, Islam or no Islam, Judaism or no Judaism, and
Catholicism or no Catholicism.
Paella is a variant on a dish found all
the way to once-Mughal India and thence around the world, even to Saint
Helena, where a rice-based, yellowed staple is called “plow”, to rhyme
with “snow”.
Numerous fiesta practices are clearly North African. All
those very common “ez” names (Gomez, Fernandez, Gonzalez, Martinez, etc.) are really Jewish.
And so on, and on, and on.
The Northern Italians are a funny bunch. Lega Nord types like Roberto Calderoli think they are really Celts because of Cisalpine Gaul and such. Maybe there is some truth to this, but like the French they are linguistically and culturally Latin.
ReplyDeleteSoutherners are not much better, though. I know a lot of Sicilian girls who dye their hair because many Sicilian men only want to date blondes.
I am surprised, David, that you did not refer to flamenco music, which is quite different from most western European music and shows its non-european roots very clearly.
ReplyDeleteGypsies. Ask anyone else from the South of Spain. They are often quite resentful of the attention that it receives, on the grounds that "it is nothing to do with us".
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