Xarnego
Xarnego (Catalan pronunciation: [ʃərˈnɛɣu]) in Catalan, or charnego in Spanish, is a pejorative or descriptive term used primarily in the 1950s–70s in the Catalonia region of Spain to refer to economic migrants from other—typically poorer—regions of Spain such as Andalusia or Extremadura. It can also refer to someone born in Catalonia of non-Catalan Spanish heritage. The word is never used to refer to the latest wave of immigrants from outside of Spain.
The term came into use in the 1950s and 1960s due to massive immigration from other Spanish speaking regions of Spain to Catalonia. About 1,800,000 people came into Catalonia during that period.[1] While the immigrants were a welcome source of cheap labour, they were also seen by Catalans as a threat to their language, which was already repressed by the Franco régime.[2] Immigrants who learned Catalan were more quickly integrated into the community.[2]
The term went out of use in the 1980s.[3]
In film
- The Bilingual Lover is a 1993 film in which the protagonist is a Catalan low-class man who reinvents himself as a charnego to recover his fetishist wife.
References
- ^ Illas, Edgar (2012). Thinking Barcelona: Ideologies of a Global City. Liverpool University Press. p. 34. ISBN 1846318327. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
- ^ a b Illas (2012), p. 35
- ^ Illas (2012), p. 49