Originally published in Spanish. Aurora Nacarino-Brabo. The Objective.
“We are firing two Spanish employees this week. We are not hiring people from your country anymore. Bye, Spain”. I’m asked not to pay attention to some tweet. Alright. I’m not going to do so, not even to the friends that these days are telling me that they are afraid to leave home, to the ones that are going to leave Catalonia. I’m not going to make a case of close people who fear the moment of departing to office, who are considering to request a medical leave, who cannot go to gym anymore, or who need to be accompanied if they go out to do the shopping in their town. I’m going to accept that this is all anecdotal evidence.
I won’t let myself be carried away by the videos showing the Mossos, once the “perpetrators” (the 15-M Movement seems so far by now), and now stood at attention before the masses that, raising their fist high, intone Els Segadors —but they could be perfectly singing Tomorrow belongs to me. I will ignore the crowd applauding to La Caixa employees that blockade the highway: also the bankers and subprime mortgages sellers that today finds a way to make amends with the people that had turned their backs on them.
I’m going to avoid the demonstrations outside the hotels, where police, that demonized working class, is sieged due to the incitement by an eight-Catalan-surnames bourgeoisie. I’m going to forget the statistics; also that the independentists movement is related with middle and high incomes, and unionism is for the poor and the xarnegos. I’m not going to remember that García is the most common surname in Catalonia, while it is impossible to find any Castilian ancestor among their elites.
I’m going to ignore that Extremadurans are subsidized layabouts and Andalusians live off the Rural Development Plan. That Madrid robs them. The schools covered by esteladas [the independentist flag], the children soldiers confined in the schools with a pretended election, those songs they learn in the youth camps [in Catalan]: “We don’t want to be a region of Spain / we don’t want to be countries under occupation / we want, want, want, want independence / want, want, want Catalan Countries”. I’ll turn a blind eye to the fact that, in Catalonia, there are people who cannot study in the majority language of its citizens.
I will accept that a narrow majority in the Catalan Parliament has demolished the Catalan laws —and the Spanish ones as well— to the greater glory of plebiscitary populism. This giant picture, in the local magazine, where my friend was signaled: “The little girl has signed for Citizens party”. Albert Boadella’s cypresses, the empty Camp Nou, 20-year-old colleagues sieged at Citizens party offices. The fear and the hatred and the general strike —a different kind of referendum with no secret vote. I will let all these things pass, and then yes: I will be able to join you and say: how festive, and familiar, and democratic, and pacific is nationalism.
