5 Catalan TV series you should check out

One of my favourite ways of learning foreign languages is to immerse myself in the media that is produced in that language. When I was learning Catalan, I really enjoyed listening to podcasts, reading newspapers, and watching television in this wonderful language, so I thought I'd compile a list of my five of my favourite Catalan TV shows and tell you a little bit about each one.

Temps de silenci (2001-2005, TV3)

Temps de silenci focuses on the life of a wealthy Barcelona family, the Dalmau family, from shortly before the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) until the end of the last century. The series tells the stories of the Dalmau, Comes, Hernández families and frames them through the social, cultural, and political events of the epoch.

I started watching it as a way of revising for my Catalan finals at Birmingham last year and it taught me so much, not just about the Catalan language, but also about 20th-century Catalan history too.

The story follows the personal journey of the narrator, Isabel Dalmau, a young upper-class Catalan, and her working-class love interest, Ramon Comes. It is something of an impossible love because of the prevalent class differences and this serves as a thematic construction throughout the series, intertwining this narrative with the history of Catalonia from 1935 to the turn of the millennium.

In an easy-to-understand manner, it deals with events such as the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, daily life and repression in Catalonia during the Franco regime, the restoration of democracy, the 23-F coup, changing attitudes of the role of women in Catalan society, and the 1992 Olympics.

It was the first period series about 20th-century on Spanish television and its considerable success kicked off a trend that led to other period dramas, such as Cuéntame cómo pasó (Tell me how it happened - a series following the Alcántra family in the later years of the Franco dictatorship and the early years of the transition to democracy) and Amar en tiempos revueltos (To love in times of revolt - set in the times of the Spanish civil war and the early Francoism), being commissioned by the Spanish state broadcaster, TVE.

Merlí (2015-present, TV3)

When I was back visiting friends in Barcelona in December 2015, everybody was talking about this fantastic series that was being aired on the Catalan broadcaster, TV3, at the time. It features an A-level philosophy teacher, Merlí Bergeron, who stimulates his students to think freely through unorthodox teaching methods that divide his students, their families and his colleagues.

Merlí is clearly influenced by films like the Dead Poets Society and there is a conscious effort to bring a basic understanding of philosophy to the audience in an accessible way. Each episode features the approaches of some great thinker or school, such as the Peripatetics, Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, and these link with the events of the characters during that episode.

I've really enjoyed the two series of Merlí so far (a third is rumoured to be coming soon) and it has made me somewhat nostalgic for the passion and excitement of my own sixth form days.

Cites (2015-present, TV3)

Cites (Dates) is inspired by the 2013 British series Dates (created by Brian Elsley - which I still haven't seen).

It mixes romantic comedy and drama focussing on a number of first dates of people who have met via a Tinder-like app. Up to 24 actors are featured in the dates, which often leads to sexual or romantic relationships (unlike my own haha).

From the point that the two people meet (often in a bar or a restaurant), the characters aim to carry out their intentions while undergoing awkward and/or romantic moments (much like me on a date).

The dates are all set in Barcelona (there are very few series in Catalan that are focussed in Catalonia's other cities, it seems) and people of different ages, sexual orientations, and marital statuses are involved.

Nit i Dia (2016-present, TV3)

Nit i dia is a thriller that revolves around the daily lives of police, forensic doctors, and judges who must solve crimes and murders and deal with the darker side of reality.

Nit i dia chronicles the daily life of a coroner and the conflict between her desire to lead a normal life and daily contact with the harsh reality. The series begins on the day that a coroner Sara Grau, who is married to a senior executive of a multinational company, starts IVF treatment; that day, in an autopsy, recognises an unidentified corpse of a stranger with whom she had a brief affair and, from that point on, a chain of events occurs that disrupts the life of the protagonist and all those around her.

It also features wonderfully nuanced characters such as an elderly judge caught between two women, a psychiatrist traumatised by their past, two-faced executives or criminals who cannot stop themselves from reoffending.

In many ways, it is similar to the BBC series Silent Witness, however rather than just focussing on the forensic doctors (as Silent Witness does very well), it is also a portrait of contemporary Barcelona, with its lights and its shadows.

Ventdelplà (2005-2010, TV3)

Ventdelplà tells the (fictional) story of how a woman from Barcelona, a former doctor no less, attempts to rebuild her life in a small, rural Catalan village in the province of Girona after fleeing with her two children from physical and emotional abuse from her lawyer husband. 

Despite the dramatic nature of the start of the series, Ventdelplà dramatises the dramas, love stories and issues that exist in the lives of the inhabitants of rural Catalan villages.

I must admit: I'm only 50 episodes into Ventdelplà (there are 330 episodes) and it is the only one of the series in this article that I haven't finished, So far, it's featured a woman liberated from an abusive marriage, conflict between rural and urban lifestyles, a character dying from terminal illness and its effects on her teenage son, and the difficulties that a young protagonist must endure after becoming paralysed in a car crash.

The fact that it is set in a rural Girona town is something that is really refreshing considering that the vast majority of Catalan-language dramas take place with Barcelona and its confines. In fact, most of the scenes in this series were shot in the small town of Breda, in the la Selva region.

5 questions I frequently get asked about the Catalan language

I'm forever being asked by foreigners and natives alike about the Catalan language is and why it was I decided to learn it, so I thought I'd do a wee post answering some of the questions that I'm most frequently asked.

What is Catalan? Isn't it some sort of dialect of Spanish? 

Catalan is a romance language. Simply put, it emerged from vulgar Latin in the 12th Century, much as other romance languages such as Castillian (Spanish), Italian, Portuguese, and modern-day French. It is very much its own language, with its own culture and history. 

Furthermore, it actually has a vast literary tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Blanquerna by the famous Mallorcan author Ramon Llull is considered by some to be the first novel written in Catalan, whilst Martorell's Tirant lo Blanch is said to have influenced the evolution of the Western novel in the Renaissance period.  

Catalan has around 10.5m speakers in the territories where it is spoken and is very much its own language; it is only similar to Castilian in that it shares similar origins and has borrowed some words over time as more Spanish speakers have arrived in Catalonia and other territories (however the Castilian that is spoken in Barcelona has borrowed some words from Catalan too: feina is often used instead of trabajo in everyday parlance).

  

Where's it spoken? 

Broadly speaking, there are two distinct forms of Catalan that have emerged: català oriental (Eastern Catalan) and català occidental (Western Catalan). 

Eastern Catalan is spoken in most of Catalonia (especially in the provinces of Girona, Tarragona, and Barcelona), the historic region of Roussillon in south-east of France, and in the Balearic Islands. The accents between these areas vary significantly, however. The 'central' dialect of Catalan (that which is spoken in Barcelona and Girona - albeit with different accents) is taken by many to be the "standard" form that is taught in most schools and imparted by the Catalan-speaking media: hearing the distinct Mallorcan dialect for the first time was something of a shock to my system whens I moved to Barcelona in 2014 and, at first, was rather difficult to understand (although I've now got the hang of it). 

Western Catalan is spoken in Valencia (where it is known as Valencian), the province of Lleida, the franja d'Aragó (the Catalan-speaking communities of in Eastern Aragon), and in Andorra (where Catalan is the official language). The debate over whether the Valencian form of Western Catalan is distinct from other forms is one that has got much attention in recent years and given the difference that exists between the Catalan spoken in Barcelona and in Valencia, this is a valid debate; that being said, from a linguistic perspective, there is much less difference between the Valencian dialect and other forms of Western Catalan - say, that of Lleida.

Curiously, Catalan (in its Eastern form) is also spoken in Alghero, a port town on the Italian island of Sardinia, where it is the co-official language. Part of Alghero's population descends from Catalan conquerors from the end of the Middle Ages, back when Sardinia was part of the Crown of Aragon.

How did you learn Catalan? Where can I learn it?

This is a question that I get asked so often here in Barcelona that I'm thinking of having my response printed on a t-shirt: an English person speaking Catalan is still a relatively novel thing for many here.

When I was studying Castilian (Spanish) for my A-levels, I decided that I wanted to learn Catalan during my degree. I was fortunate enough to study at the University of Birmingham, whose Hispanic Studies faculty had a wee Catalan section (a lecturer, the wonderful Elisenda Marcer, and a teaching assistant), and so I took Catalan classes there for my first and second years. 

I got the opportunity to study my third year at the Universitat de Barcelona. Prior to classes commencing, I took a more advanced course in Catalan at the Escola d'Idiomes Moderns of the Universitat de Barcelona so that my Catalan would be up to scratch (and also to get to know the city better). 

That course was a great investment as around 75% of my classes at my beloved Facultat de Dret were in Catalan, and at the Col-legi Major Penyafort-Montserrat, where I stayed two years ago and am now, many of my friends held conversations solely in Catalan. Needless to say, my Catalan majorly improved during my year abroad (it's now my favourite language) and upon my graduation at Birmingham, I received the Catalan prize.

If you want to learn Catalan, then your best bet is checking out your local university to see if they have a Catalan lecturer/teaching assistant. Here are the universities that I know for sure have a Catalan Studies department: King’s College, London; Queen Mary, University of London; and the Universities of Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cork, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kent, Leeds, Liverpool, Oxford, and Sheffield. If there's not one near you, get in touch with the Institut Ramon Llull.

So, do people in Barcelona just speak Catalan then?

No, Barcelona is an (almost) completely bilingual city. The vast majority of people here are equally comfortable in both of the local languages. Generally, the way it goes is that if you speak to some in Catalan and they respond to you in Castilian/Catalan, then the conversation will thus continue in Castilian/Catalan; if you speak to someone in Castilian and they respond to you in Catalan but you can't speak it, they will respond in Castilian. 

I haven't heard of any negative experiences where someone has spoken to a local in Castilian and they have refused to respond to them in Castilian: Barcelona is a very tolerant city and its linguistic openness is one of the things that makes it so great.  

Contrary to the rumours in the Madrid-based press, speaking Catalan doesn't make you an independentist. There are, of course, many Catalan-speaking Barcelonians (and Castilian-speaking too) who support greater sovereignty for Catalunya and many who back independence, yet, equally, there are many Catalan speakers who are not convinced by the need for independence. Just the simple act of speaking Catalan doesn't automatically mean that you want to see Catalonia separate from Spain, but, rather, that you appreciate this beautiful language and want to ensure its survival.

Is it necessary to speak Catalan to study/live in Barcelona? 

Well, considering that this year I'm studying a Masters here in Barcelona on a course that is 4/5 foreigners and I'm the only foreigner who speaks Catalan, I'd say that, rather regrettably, it's becoming less and less necessary in the higher education system here (at least at the Pompeu Fabra - the UB was very much focussed on teaching in Catalan). 

Globalisation means that, in many industries and walks of life, you can get by in Barcelona with English and a very basic level of Castilian these days. An ever-increasing number of industries are looking for English-speaking workers these and some are stipulating that workers have at least a basic knowledge of English. 

Conversely, if you're intending on living here for a period of time longer than just a few months, I would advise you to learn at least one of the local languages - if not both - as it will help you feel much more integrated into city life. My advice would be that if you have a basic knowledge of French, Italian, or Latin, I'd learn Catalan before Castilian as it'll be easier to pick up.

To round this off, learn Catalan: it really is a beautiful language. 

There are amazing books, plays, music, and poetry out there just waiting to be discovered in this ancient romance language. Of English, Spanish, and Catalan, the latter is my favourite tongue by far.

Adéu-siau