Linguistic trivia highlight Spain’s enduring cultural divisions

“WITH THEFC stroke of a pen” is a phrase usually used metaphorically. But just a single stroke differentiates the two forms of the name of a Spanish city: “Valencia” (in Spanish) and “València” (in the regional language). A left-wing regionalist party recently kicked off a debate in Spain’s Senate by insisting on “València” as the only spelling—even in Spanish (which does not have the letter è).Spain’s regional squabbles are often this tiny. Some Catalans detect an insult in the use of the letter ñ, which is used only in Castilian (Spanish), but not in Catalan. Barcelona’s second-biggest football club was named “Español” on its founding in 1900, to distinguish it from Barcelona, whose founder was Swiss. The club renamed itself Espanyol to appease local sensitivities in 1995.