What is "convivencia"

Convivència is the public policy on social coexistence in Catalonia, Spain; government projects, departments and ordinances promote the principle broadly. Originally, convivència was presented as a policy to integrate immigrant populations and build social cohesion following the divisive Spanish Civil War and dictatorship. Today, convivència can encompass conflict mediation, policing, civic participation, language policy, public education, civility, public celebrations and the promotion of neighborhood-based initiatives. As the dominant paradigm of social coexistence, convivència is the frequent subject of political, scholarly, media and popular discourse. Unlike the cognate Castilian term, convivencia, which refers to an imagined Medieval Iberian past, the Catalan word and policy emerged in the late 1970s and refers to contemporary social life and recent history.