Published originally in Spanish. Manuel Jabois. El País
On Wednesday afternoon, Andrea, 39, asked for sparkling water in an emblematic bar in the Malasaña neighbourhood of Madrid. The waiter warned her: “It is Catalan, eh?”. Andrea did not care. “I’m telling you”, replied the old man, “so you can’t complain later”. He showed her the bottle with its label: Vichy Catalán. “Catalans are being so annoying that you don’t know when someone is going to feel offended or what”, said the waiter as he served the water.
In Catalonia, the estrangement is clear. But what about the rest of the country? In Oviedo, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid, Madrid… They are hanging Spanish flags on the balconies. There have been several rallies to bid the agents of the national security forces farewell on their way to Catalonia, along with incidents of greater or lesser seriousness across the peninsula, including the aggression to the speaker of the Aragonese Parliament Violeta Barba by extremists.
“There is a reflex, a reaction. A dynamic of confrontation is formed, where anything “Spanish” is reduced to a caricature and vice versa”, says José Luis Pardo, author of the essay Estudios del malestar. To Mr Pardo, the said of “let’s see if they leave and leave us alone” is the last step in a broken relationship, with the rupture being embraced and encouraged by the subject they want to leave.
Luis Espuny, 45, a businessman, has placed the Spanish flag in his balcony in Madrid. “I want them to leave, and making their life impossible, as they did to us”.
On Thursday evening, Espuny had a family dinner that he did not attend to. With one of his relatives, who supports independence, he has had arguments at the table that always passed in an almost agreed tone of good vibes. This time it was not going to be the same: “What they are doing and what they are supporting is unspeakable. No, there are no good vibes anymore”.
“For the rest of Spain to understand what is going on in Catalonia, they should watch TV3 these days for 12 hours in a row”, said Alex Martínez, a Catalan resident in Madrid. His experience does not include personal offenses. “They ask us constantly. In Barcelona and Madrid: ‘What do they say here and there?’ And everybody is worried”.
“You can not review all Spain, but a Catalan being told something annoying because of his speaking of his own language is not new, it has always been like this; sometimes as a play and other for something beyond that”, explained Lluís, a real estate developer, who declines to disclose his family name. “This issue is a fucking mess”. “They do not make you feel natural, anyway. But the disaffection that might exist in the rest of Spain toward Catalonia is anecdotal if we compare it with the existing in the other direction. Everybody tells you: we are so tired of the subject that there is a logical impulse to say: ‘Let them go’. Ok, but, what do you do with the other half which wants to stay?”, he concluded.
