Let me tell you a tale that I'm sure will remind you of people you know, and who are even close to you. It might even be similar, at least a little, to the story of those of you who are reading this.
It's the tale of a boy who was born in Barcelona in the 1960s, to a Spanish-speaking family just like many others who settled in Catalonia, specially in the second half of the 20th Century.
The parents of that child were really good people. Commendable parents in every way.
Unlike many other Spanish-speaking families in Catalonia at that time, this couple were not, from a social point of view, classic immigrant industrial labourers. They were both civil servants who had lived their prior lives elsewhere, of families most of which were resident in Madrid and of a conservative bent, some of whom were members of the military class, and as you might imagine, with a national sentiment clearly identified with Spain.
That child grew happily within the family that loved him so. Around him, in a majority Spanish-speaking neighbourhood, people hardly ever spoke Catalan. So he never spoke it either, and in fact, the few times he ever heard it spoken, it would sound strange, practically foreign. A language that didn't spark any sympathy and with which he didn't identify at all.
The years went by and eventually Gen. Franco the dictator died. A new age arose. The boy began to see new things. Demonstrations in his neighbourhood, very angry people shouting things like “Amnesty! Freedom!” and other words that sounded very strange and which frightened him. At home, there were very critical comments on the political changes that were coming about. At school, the very first Catalan classes (at the age of twelve!) and an impression of feeling foreign where he had always lived, because that long-haired teacher would speak to him for an hour in a language that he didn't really understand and he didn't even like the sound of.
The child became a teenager, and then a young man, who adopted an attitude of rejection towards any show of Catalan identity. Even though he was able to write in Catalan reasonably well (thanks to those classes that he disliked so), he wouldn't even consider speaking the language. He spoke Spanish everywhere, with friends, in the shops, at college...
The young man was first taken aback when he encountered the reality of working life. He realised that if he wanted to take the opportunities given him, he would have to look sharp and begin to speak Catalan. And he soon got to realise that it wasn't all that difficult. He continually used Spanish barbarisms, he was very doubtful... but he had taken that first step.
Days, weeks and months went by and the young man gradually began speaking Catalan more fluently. In other words, at 23-24 he began to become integrated. Little by little, the comments he would hear from some of his relatives on Catalonia and the Catalans whenever he visited them in Madrid began to sound more and more absurd.
Years later, the young man had children of his own and decided he would not commit the same mistake with them as his parents had unwittingly made, that “there was no need” … Well, there was: it was necessary to speak to them in a language in which they would evolve normally as they grew up. Their uncles and aunts in Madrid would comment in disbelief, “Oh, you speak to them in Catalan... well...”
The young man, even though he was far from being a nationalist, began to tire of hearing, not just from his relatives but from the media in Madrid, that “Spanish is persecuted in Catalonia”, that “Children in Catalonia don't learn Spanish”, and stuff like that. He knew, because he saw it with his own eyes, that it wasn't true, that his children spoke Spanish even better than Catalan, like many children, specially in the area of Barcelona.
It was tough for him, but eventually the young man who described himself as “non-nationalist” because he felt nationalism to be primaeval or provincial and lowbrow, realised that there was a true Spanish jingoism that did not doubt to invent lies and slander in order to have an excuse to attack that which it did not understand. Like, for example, “the Catalans”.
And as his curiosity arose, the man began to find out about the imbalances of all kinds Catalonia had suffered, and still suffers, with respect to Spain. As he began to drive around Spain he would see that in central Spain the word “toll” is practically unknown, while in Catalonia he could hardly get out of paying just to drive out of Barcelona, forking out the price of a restaurant meal just to go from Castelldefels to Sitges ... and that upon building the AVE high-speed train out of Madrid, any route, however irrelevant, had priority over Barcelona … and that … (need I go on?)
So, once the evidence was confirmed that the Catalans have been and are being humiliated by Spanish governments of all stripes and colours... once he though about his children, Catalans, still suffering the same treatment all their lives... that day, our man became, at last and with pride, a Catalan patriot.
Once that line had been crossed, he began taking negative comments from Spain about Catalonia rather badly. And all the evidence brought him to the conclusion that Spain would never understand Catalonia or the Catalans. The attitude of its governments (all of them) and of most of its inhabitants (fortunately not all) is that Catalonia is their property (“whether you like it or not, you're all Spanish”) and therefore we cannot decide about anything to do with our future if they don't authorise us to, and that we have to provide “solidarity” (forced, or course) with moneys they decide upon, and “what do you want to speak Catalan for, if it's hardly spoken by anyone, and everyone understands Spanish”... They have created the Catalan independence movement all by themselves. They have themselves to blame.
Our man has thus decided he will stand by an oppressed nation that has seen him and his children grow up: Catalonia.
And the only way we can do away with this situation is with divorce. Amicable, if they'll have it, so will we. But divorce. Let's be good neighbours... but we can't go on with the marriage. One party feels continuously humiliated, exploited, ignored, despised, and often even insulted. She can't take any more, any longer, and says ENOUGH, IT'S OVER, it's useless to go on with self-delusion... Living together is not feasible.
Our man is not simply a nationalist. This man, a true Spaniard by family tradition in the first half of his life, is ME! I declare myself to be, today and with pride, an SEPARATIST.
INDEPENDENCE NOW! NO TURNING BACK!
LONG LIVE CATALONIA!
P.S. Oh... and I know they'll come now, as I've often read lately all over, with “the worst of all are you renegade half-breeds, dullards, how you've been brainwashed!” People like that don't have any other arguments and, as I've said above, are the best breeders of separatists. Just keep it up boys!
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