Dear European people,
How could a Catalan, writing from a village in Girona, born from a Catalan father and a Spanish mother, help you understand that Catalonia is a Nation? (if so, I’d have double nationality)
How can I reach to you my hurting soul, that yearns for shouting that Catalonia Is plural, unique, a country?
How can I forward you, from this little piece of land in Girona, the anguish my land carries from years ago?
How can I make you understand that I’m dragging desires of patriotism because they don’t let me say where I’m from and that they’re taking my freedom off?
How can I make you see that I’m fighting in silence sometimes, sometimes not, day by day, just to let history do justice to us?
You, sirs, you don’t know what is like having a flag in your town’s balcony and not feeling its colors. You don’t know what does it mean not having the opportunity of talking about your symbols and showing them naturally and with Nation pride.
You don’t know what is like being in a podium, receiving a prize and hearing an anthem that you don’t recognize as yours. That moment should be a happy moment, but becomes sad. We experiment, somehow, contradictory emotions, trapped as if they hadn’t evolved in time, passed on by generations, and new feelings that sometimes make us see it as impossible, and sometimes they take us and we want to shout, claim and put the records straight.
The most important thing is not oppression, but mutilation. First is your toe, then the ankle, the knee, the leg… and finally they stick the sword into our essence: our culture and our language. It’s easy, European people… you only have to see and do a little history review.
Few pages back you will find, without a doubt, traces of what I’m saying. Few pages, I’m not giving you a lot of work, and you should see clearly that Catalonia is, and will be, and will live as a Nation.
Even though it can be turned into different resisting redoubts, because of our nature and character, not inclined to unity. Having said that, I don’t know if I should send you this letter, because we are our first problem.
Or maybe I will do it, to show my fellow countrymen that they are all the time fighting with statements and childish facts.
Yes, you can thing that’s something temporary. But I write wishing to contribute a little to what you can call Catalan cause and obsession. If so, don’t call it obsession, but stubbornness for recovering a country.
Excited about recovering my flag, about showing my children that finally we invoked our own rights, and thinking that my generation will live a free Catalonia, as other European countries do.
Yours sincerely,
Cristina Trias.
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