According to the Royal Spanish Academy of the Language (RAE), “levant”, in the third definition of its first meaning, is the “generic name of the Mediterranean regions of Spain, and especially those corresponding to the ancient kingdoms of Valencia and Murcia” ; a description that, on the contrary, is not included in the Valencian Academy of Language for its name in Valencian (“llevant”). Nor does the Fundeu (Urgent Spanish Foundation) believe this way of referring to the Valencian Community (neither ‘Levante’ nor ‘Valencia’) is correct.
The name ‘levant’, commonly used in Madrid, generates a lot of controversy among Valencians. Without going any further, elDiario.es mistakenly used this term just a few days ago to refer to the Valencian territory, a circumstance that was quickly corrected after several readers warned of the mistake.
But this is just the latest example. The Valencian Courts had to remind Ecoembes in 2018 that this name “is neither historical nor in our Statute or in any statistical or geographical dictionary”, and did so based on a report from the Consell Valencian de Cultura from 1996; Ecoembes apologized. And there are more precedents. Rosa María Mateo, then sole administrator of RTVE, had to apologize in 2020 for the use of the term ‘levante’ on Spanish Radio Television to refer to the Valencian Community and assured that she was “aware” that the term “is not correct.” . Looking a little further back we find the cliché used by the Franco regime of ‘Get up happy’.
The report of the Consell Valencià de Cultura on the term ‘levant’ from 1996, to which the Corts Valencianes referred, has texts by Manuel Bas Carbonell and Francisco Pérez Moragón. Bas begins his writing by explaining: “The word ‘Levante’, referring to a region or place, is misleading and inducing error and confusion, since it will always be opposite to the west of the person who uses it, that is, Valencia is to the west of a Majorcan. already rise from a Castilian.” He also explained that, as the regional Parliament recalled, this reference does not appear in any geographical or statistical dictionary “as a word that represents a specific territory”, nor “in any of the three main guides of the 20th century: Fuster ( ‘The Valencian Country’), Guarner (‘Valencia, land and soul of a country’) and Almela (‘Valencia and its kingdom’)”. Bas also considers the indifference of Valencians “very serious”, which “has allowed” the RAE to admit this meaning.
He pointed out that there are no notable references until 1923, when the Calpe publishing house published the ‘Levante’ guide, which “had a lot of influence.” Its author, the Valencian Elías Tormo, director of Fine Arts, publicly acknowledged that that title “was not his thing, but rather the inspiration of the publisher, and even more so of its director Dantín Cereceda.” The writer Alfonso Pérez Nieva also used this name in his ‘Travel Notes: by Levante’ (1899), in reference to Valencia, Tarragona and Barcelona.
The report from the Consell Valencia de Cultura states that this name is “usually used” by Castilians, “and especially by people from Madrid when they come to our shores”, although it remembers that it was precisely a Valencian, Azorín, “steeped in centralism, who used it the most. This misleading term, always clear, is his trips from the Court to his native Monóvar.” Likewise, he refers to the work of the chronicler Francisco Almela y Vives, who “underlines the inappropriateness of the word”, and adds that it is “useless to determine territories that, like Valencia, have a specific name.”
Bas recalled the forcefulness of Xavier Casp, who attributes the vitality of the substantive meaning of the name ‘Levante’ to “pedantry, ignorance, convenience, bad faith…”, since it is a term “that has never been accepted by the Valencians when it is said and written to replace the name of Valencia”, but rather it refers to the view that one has “from Madrid”.
Pérez Moragón, for his part, pointed out that it is during most of the 20th century and “in the most diverse political situations” when it has become more common to find the name ‘Levante’ to refer to the Valencian territory. However, he highlighted that no draft Statute includes this name in relation to the Comunitat Valenciana, nor during the parliamentary discussions prior to the promulgation of the statutory text; and not in the Constitution either. Likewise, he expressed the rejection that this name generates among the Valencian movement.
“Depersonalization” and “radio reading”
The Valencian sociologist Vicent Flor, author among other books of ‘Societat Anònima. Els valencians, els diners i lapolitics’, insists that Levante is a geographical point, and that when it is used to refer to the Valencian territory “they are denying you through the depersonalization of the name.” Furthermore, “they are marking the political center, because the Valencian east is the Balearic Islands, or Italy, Greece, Turkey…”, indicates Flor, who criticizes that this description supposes a “radial reading” and centralist of Spain. Likewise, he points out that this name, in terms of geography, should refer, in addition to the Valencian Community and Murcia, to Catalonia, “but it is not used with Catalonia.”
The acceptance of ‘Levante’ as a synonym for the Valencian Community represents “a gesture of weakness”, and alerts to the fact that there are those who are bothered by the use of ‘País Valenciano’, an expression included in the preamble of the Statute of Autonomy , but not with this word: “We are the beach of Madrid.” In this sense, it is reminiscent of French centralist logic, with references to the North, the South or the Levant that are made taking into account the political, rather than geographical, center; in the case of Spain, Madrid; in the French case, Paris. All this, he continues, was based on the “myth” of the ‘Happy Levante’, in which it was conveyed that in the Valencian territory “we lived very well, we ate very well and we had a lot of sun… A vision that clashes with the current situation of underfinancing in the Valencian Country and that rules out the need for more resources.”
With the vision of ‘Levante’ we seek to “remove Valencian problems from the agenda”. However, he continues, it is a term that “annoys” Valencians: “Its use has been amplified since the Civil War, but it is still incorrect, because all territories are to the east, or east, of another; or to the north, or to the south, or to the west,” he concludes.
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