New Delhi, Nov 14 (EFE).- In India, where 22 official languages coexist and where a large part of the population speaks more than one language, the situation of Galician and Asturian is better understood than in a place a priori closer such as Madrid, as the poets Yolanda Castaño and Miguel Rodríguez Monteavaro defended this Monday.
“Often it is a situation of centralism and India has many centers (…) Sometimes from Galicia, from Asturias, it is difficult for people from Madrid to make us understand, who only work in one language, which is Spanish. Here it is much easier because many speak two or three languages, and do not have a nerve center,” Rodríguez, from Asturias, told EFE.
The Galician poet agrees: “This complicity that we are able to feel here is very interesting, because they don’t have these mental barriers, they don’t apply so many gradations, so much hierarchy of social status for languages, which are perhaps the prejudices that we still carry in the Spanish state”.
Yolanda Castaño (Santiago de Compostela, 1977) and Miguel Rodríguez Monteavaro (Bual, 1990) gave a poetry recital today at the Cervantes Institute in New Delhi, the last leg of a tour of India that also took them to the remote northeast state of Assam. and India’s cultural capital, Calcutta.
Among the audience were Indian poets in languages such as Hindi, Bengali or Kannada, who held poetry readings that “bring their world closer to us”, as one participant said.
SHARING POETRY WITH THE WORLD
An intention that Rodríguez has recognized, since for him his position with the Asturian is not only vindictive, but goes much further.
“We have this part of claiming our cultures, but we also have the part that we are artists and we teach our art, not only to our communities, but to the world. We must express ourselves not only for our own, but for everyone,” remarked the poet, speaking in the Galician spoken in Asturias.
A position shared by Castaño, creator in Galicia of the Poetas Di(n)verses cycle, in which recitals are organized in which “a voice in Galician coexists with a voice from the rest of the world, which aims to enhance what is written in Galician, but also designed on the same level as what is written in other languages”.
“Making Galician poetry coexist with other international poetics and even making it a host poetics,” emphasizes Castaño. “We have this consciousness and this awareness, and this sensitivity, and this kindness too, to not only make poetry for ourselves, but to take it out into the world”.
Returning to the origin, Rodríguez recalls that Asturian must be recognized as an official language in Spain, as is the case with Galician, Catalan and Basque, a possibility that is getting closer and closer.
“Asturias is a territory with three languages: Spanish on the one hand, Asturian on the other and Galician on the other. And it may be difficult to formalize this, but in reality we are in the process and I think it is necessary, ”noted this Asturian poet in Galician.