2013/12/09

A Nightmare Experience






We were driving down a street towards the Avinguda Diagonal which splits Barcelona in two, from the north. As i turned the wheel at the last bend before reaching the avenue the car's electrical system packed up. Completely. I managed to bring it to a stop, stamping on the brake and struggling with the steering wheel. And to our surprise we saw that all the traffic around us had also shuddered to a halt.


The silence was eerie. But just a couple of minutes later (or less: no-one seemed to have left their vehicle) the problem disappeared. The dashboards lit up again and, still shaken, we all got underway again. But not for long: blocking our entry into the avenue were two Spanish army tanks with their cannons aiming at a point just beyond the oncoming, screeching traffic. In front of them, dressed inappropriately in full bright red parade uniform regalia, were four heavily armed soldiers. I think there were more troops behind the tanks, but at that moment my mind was not working too well.


God, I thought, this is it, it really is. All those threats, about the army being sent in if we went ahead with the referendum on independence that the Spanish refused point blank to even contemplate, weren't a bluff (in Catalan we call it "fum", smoke) after all.


My instant reaction was to get out and stand defiantly in front of the tanks, holding an independence flag above my head, with both hands. But I didn't have it on me. To be honest, I don't go about my daily life with an emergency kit in my pocket, to cope with any tanks I may happen to casually bump into (tut tut! I can hear you saying: what a thoughtless man, he can't have been a boy scout!) . And if I did, the carnation or the rose I'd want to stick down the soldier's gun barrel would, I'm afraid, have to be made of plastic.


My next thought was that they must have taken control of all the strategic points and buildings in the city at the same moment in time. I phoned my top contact in the grassroots, umbrella organization working for a non-violent, democratic way forward in our independence process. Engaged. My mother's phone, engaged. Oh Lord, I realized, they've cut the telephone services. Of course (no-one has ever thought they're stupid).


It was only at this moment that I got nervous, beginning to feel helpless and on my own.
Well, what am I to do? Go home and sit back and watch how the Catalan people are snubbed for the nth time in their, in our history, in front of the TV screen? How can these people do this to us? They keep reminding that a free Catalonia would be tossed, nay, hurled out of NATO (an idle threat actually: Catalonia was the only part of Spain - alongside our good friends, the Basques - to vote against Spain belonging to NATO in the famous referendum in 1982). I mention that organization because I thought that armed interventions by its members had to get authorization, and never in my wildest, most drink-sodden moods have I thought the allies would pat Spain on the back for moving to prevent by force a people's perfectly legitimate, democratically and peacefully expressed will to decide its future at the ballot box. Okay, a European Parliament Vice-president said it would be fine to send in the police to forcibly remove the ballot boxes, and no-one at the top of the EP hierarchy dared say out loud what I hope, I honestly hope, they felt in private. But perhaps they thought that his lunatic ideas, even though he has actually repeated them in the media several times, were a good exercise of poetic licence.


Suddenly I knew what I could do, I had to get to the Plaça de Sant Jaume (the Catalan 10 Downing Street, though the Catalan seat of government is somewhat older, built in the 14th century) and join the milling crowds that I was sure would, even this soon, be gathering there to make a human blockade to defend the Government building and our President). We parked the car and walked quickly towards the nearest underground station, luckily little more than a quarter of a mile away. My family came with me, I was pleased, and proud of them!


But almost as we crossed the threshold we sensed there was something odd. Were there more travellers than usual? Fewer? Were they more excited? Were they walking faster, with their faces looking down? I couldn't quite put my finger on it.


And then I swore quietly. The underground stations within a mile of the Government, the Green line, the Yellow line, maybe the Red line too, are sure to have been closed. Trains will have been instructed not to stop there. I was stuck. And deep down, I thought, the sudden and large increase in secret service staff in Barcelona, after the largest demonstration in Catalonia's history, exactly 15 months ago - how fast this has all happened, only to end up like this! - was paying dividends. Oh I know their chief hotly denied the claim in a leaked report, never investigated, from a statement he made (did he really?) in what everyone thought was a legally and politically leak-proof official secrets committee in the Spanish Parliament...


Yet again I was at a loss. What could I do? What was I to do? I was annoyed to think that those Spanish nationalist neo-Nazis were probably going take to the streets again, as they had in many towns the night of Colonel Tejero's coup in 1981. Perhaps they're their kids: they looked fairly young at that Unionist rally, full of Nazi and Fascist symbols, in Barcelona's Plaça d'Espanya last October 12. I feel sorry for the photographer who, after receiving death threats, has had to take precautionary measures.


I felt annoyed. No, that's not strong enough a word to describe it. Hadn't even the European Union quietly whispered in Spain's ear that you simply can't play around with over seven million Europeans like that, denying what "all" peoples (not just the list that Spain has) have a right of self-determination? And look what the Basques were led to believe: once ETA violence is over, we'll sit down and talk, for the sky's the limit. Ha! Ha! It turns out that their sky is a peculiar, convoluted and restrictive interpretation of the Spanish constitution, written in 1978 less than three years after Franco had died in his bed, with people with rattling sabres breathing hotly down the drafters' necks and achieving a number of articles that would make any decent democrat blush. "Atado y bien atado", as Franco had foreseen. Well bolted down.


I promise you all of this is true.


Then I woke up with a start.


Miquel Strubell


@mstrubell


More by this author: Fair do's!

Born in Oxford, England, in 1949, he holds degrees in Psychology from the University of Oxford, the University of London and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Since 1999 he is a lecturer in Sociolinguistics and Language planning, at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. He is the coordinator of a number of European projects (Atlantis, Adum, Eunom…) and, since 2006, he is the Executive Secretary of Linguamón-U.O.C. Since 2007: EUNoM (European Universities Network on Multilingualism), a 3-year project cop-funded by the European Union, 2009-2012. Catalan National Assembly leading member.

Bibliography: Querol, E., & Strubell, M. (2009). Llengua i reivindicacions nacionals a Catalunya: Evolució de les habilitats dels usos i de la transmissió lingüística (1999-2008). Barcelona: Edicions UOC.

Strubell, Miquel; Sergi Vilaró, Glyn Williams & Gruffudd Owain Williams. Report on the diversity of language teaching offered in the European Union (DiTLang). European Commission, 2007. Web version http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/doc/divlang_en.pdf.


Williams, Glyn; Miquel Strubell, Jordi Busquet, Dolors Solé & Sergi Vilaró. Detecting and Removing Obstacles to Foreign Language Teaching Abroad (DROFoLTA). European Commission, 2006. Web version: http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/doc/detect_en.pdf.


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1 comentaris:

  • gawd_almighty says:
    10 de desembre del 2013, a les 8:43

    I recommend Stelazine, 5mg, twice daily.

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