Antiblavers
Antiblavers is an internet project that intends to fight in a scientific and serious way against Blaverism.
History and evolution
At the end of 2004 a group of people around the Valencian Community was very concerned about the fact that there were many Blaverist websites, such as www.elpalleter.com, www.valenciafreedom.com or www.llenguavalencianasi.com. Moreover, these websites were very aggressive and offered a biased point of view. So they had the aim of creating a serious and scientific tool in order to fight against Blaverism. This is the way that www.antiblavers.info was born in May 2005. In the beginning the website offered only information, with a part of research materials and a gallery of images. During its first year it achieved 35,000 visits.[1] After some time, in August 2006, a forum was added.[2]
One of the most important milestones of the website during its first years was the gathering of old and modern evidences of the flag with four red stripes in Valencian territory. This way in February 2010 there were already 2100 evidences that had been gathered.[3]
At the end of 2010 the website creators suffered an outrageous attack campaign that was made by the Blaverists, who were very upset by the task of telling the historical truth and of fighting them that this website was doing. It caused the division of the project into two websites:
- antiblavers.org - The main website, that has most of the information and a debate forum.
- antiblavers.info - It was the first name of the website, before the project was divided into two websites. Nowadays it is a blog, whose content is varied and dynamic.
It is very probable that the administrators' personal data were gotten from the whois of the original website, and thus the whois of both websites was changed. Together with the division of the original project into these two websites, in the main website the content of the gallery of images was rebuilt a bit, since the content of the evidences of the coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon in the Valencian country was divided according to thematic areas.
Content structure
The contents of the main website are organized in the following way:
- Rebuttal of the four premises of the Blaverism: Different language, different local denominations for the language during the Middle Ages, and non-Catalan origin of most of the settlers in the Kingdom of Valencia after the conquest of James I. The Valencian condition of the flag with four red stripes is also analyzed. For this last aspect, the foundators of the web site had in the beginning direct advice of the great Valencian heraldist and historian Pere Maria Orts i Bosch.
- Historical origins of blaverism, focused on Josep Maria Bayarri and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.
- Analysis of the Xavier Casp's and Miquel Adlert's role as the first ideologists of Blaverism.
- Analysis of the birth of Blaverism during the Spanish Transition, focused on Fernando Abril Martorell, Juan Ferrando Badía, Emilio Attard, María Consuelo Reyna and Manuel Broseta. It deals also with the role of the Falles and of Valencia C.F. in this birth.
- Analysis of Blaverism during the 1980s and 1990s, focused on Unió Valenciana and Vicente González Lizondo.
- Account of the Blaverist groups nowadays, i.e.: political parties, trade unions, small and bigger groups, enterprises and individuals.
Once this historical vision is shown, the role of some groups and institucions and groups, that have collaborated actively or passively during various moments with Blaverism, is mentioned:
- An important fraction of the right-wing parties of Madrid, and also a part of the left-wing ones, together with a part of the intellectuals of the center of Spain.
- The already mentioned Valencia C.F.
- The Catholic Church, which in the Valencian Country has a policy that favours Castilian against Valencian which is directly influenced by Blaverism. Furthermore, many priests and people very linked to the Catholic Church took an active role in the birth of Blaverism.
- The Valencian Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, that has never fought seriously against Blaverism, since it has helped him to erode Valencian nationalism.
The phenomenon of the Blaverist violence is carefully studied. Data, images of the gallery and specially an important dossier[4] (that covers the years 1971-2015) are offered.
Finally, there are all kind of additional materials, both written and audiovisual.
It is important to point out that two important foreign professors collaborate with this project: the French Franck Martin, from the University of Saint-Étienne and the German Hans-Ingo Radatz, from the University Otto-Friedrich of Bamberg. Several works of both about Blaverism are offered. Prof. Martin studies the sociological point of view of the Blaverist phenomenon, whereas prof. Radatz studies its linguistic aspects. Their works are offered in its original language (French in the case of prof. Martin and German in the case of prof. Radatz), with translations into Catalan, Spanish and English.
Structure of the gallery of images
The gallery of images has the following structure:
Evidences of the four-striped flag in the Valencian Country
As of October 2016 there were already 2798 evidences. They are divided into the following thematic areas:
- Flags and shields of villages
- Civil
- Festivities
- Music
- Sport
- Medieval
- Religious
Origins
Images about the origins of the Valencian people, with a special regard to the two founding nations of the Crown of Aragon: Catalonia and Aragon.
Graphics
Several graphics about the Valencian territory and its history.
Transition
Photographs about the Spanish Transition in the Valencian Country.
Violence
Set of images about the Blaverist terrorism and violence.
Personalities
Photos and information about Blaverist and non-Blaverist people.
Documents
PDF documents about Blaverism. Several issues in PDF of the magazine Valencia Semanal are offered.
Digital books
There are several books in PDF. Most of them are the ones that have rebutted Blaverism, but there are some of them with historical Blaverist texts, such as Josep Maria Bayarri's El perill català (The Catalan Danger). The following ones must be pointed out:
- Joan Fuster's Nosaltres els valencians (We, the Valencians).
- Joan Fuster's Qüestió de noms (A matter of names).
- Joan Fuster's El blau en la senyera (The Blue Colours in Our Flag).
- Vicent Bello's La pesta blava (The Blue Plague). It is an essential book in order to know Blaverism during the 1970s and 1980s.
- Josep Maria Bayarri's El perill català (The Catalan Danger). The first known Anticatalanist brief treatise, written in 1932. The original orthography is respected.
- Pere Maria Orts i Bosch's Història de la senyera al País Valencià (History of the Flag of the Valencian Country). It is a thorough historical and vexillological study that proves that the real flag of the old Kingdom of Valencian was the four red striped flag.
- Armand de Fluvià's Els quatre pals. L'escut dels comtes de Barcelona (The Four Stripes. The Shield of the Counts of Barcelona). The author proves here that the four stripes symbol has Catalan origin (in the counts of Barcelona exactly) and not Aragonese.
- Enric Prat de la Riba's La nacionalitat catalana (The Catalan Nationality).
Francesc Eiximenis
The complete works and all kind of information about Francesc Eiximenis (Catalan writer in Catalan and Latin from the 14th century, who wrote most of his works in Valencia) are offered.
References
- ↑ News in Levante-EMV (Spanish).
- ↑ News in Racó català (Catalan).
- ↑ News in Racó català (Catalan).
- ↑ This is the Catalan version (Catalan). There is also an Spanish version (Spanish)