Originally published in Spanish. Pablo Mediavilla Costa.
I was born in Barcelona, though we haven’t get along well. I always felt weird in it, as if it was a film set −one of the most fascinating ones− or me an extra. I lived there until my 23, in a town in the outskirts, and I visited the city almost every day, but without staying for the night or really having a life in it. I guess we lacked human touch to be more united, more walks up Las Ramblas from the Jamboree to Boadas. Maybe a girlfriend could have helped, but I left for Madrid, New York and back to Madrid, from where I now write. I left because I don’t like to toe the line, I don’t like groups nor tribes, I don’t like to see my individuality slim down. I left because I don’t want to obey more that what’s fair and necessary.
One of the earliest memories I have is that of my mother studying at the living room’s table. It remains sharp: a list with the names of the rivers of Catalonia and my mother readying them out loud as good as she could. My parents were teachers (they are now retired) and my aunt, who lived with us, was and still is. They all came to Catalonia at a young age from Palencia and Santander. They all learnt Catalan and used it on a daily basis. They all acknowledged and respected the culture of the place that had taken them in, despite the fact that they didn’t cross any border. Catalonia never lacked affection from the new Catalans.
The first time I went to a summer youth camp, at eleven or twelve, I came back singing a song which our instructors would make us rehearse every night by the fire: «We don’t want to be a region of Spain / we don’t want to be an occupied country / we want, we want, we want, we want independence / we want, we want, we want a Catalan nation». I have witnessed hatred towards Spain in my university classes, my then professors scale up to the Generalitat and the media, distorting history, implying the superiority of the Catalan people or denying the use of Spanish to foreign students. I have shaken hands with Pujol −former president of the Generalitat− and Núñez −former president of FC Barcelona−. I have sung the FC Barcelona anthem in the Camp Nou −though celebrating deep inside the goals of its rivals−. I have argued and I have gotten mad at it but I also shut up and duck my head.
I know Catalan just perfectly, more than three out of four parts of my education was conducted in that language that I now let die inside me, if that is possible. The last times I have been to Barcelona −fewer and fewer as the strangeness has grown with time− I almost didn’t use it; with a nice old lady who sold me an oil cruet near La Boquería market, to answer someone who asked me in the street or, it is only fair to admit it, to prove, as a circus monkey, that I knew how to speak it. I don’t use it now because I don’t want to, because all the Catalan governments −with the acquiescence of every single Spanish president and cabinet− have turned it into a sick imposition, a razor with which mark the board in two.
I laugh at the naive or malicious ones who say they don’t know any case in which this whole thing has broken a friendship, a family, a tie. I laugh at the ones who ask for dialogue and love. These days, my very friends write me to tell me that to hell with the law, that they are sick of Spain, that, ultimately, they are better than me and my parents, still in our town in the outskirts, eluding conversations and the nationalist flood sweeping through the streets and the media. I have been informed, since long ago, that I am a bad Catalan. I carry it as a medal, it is a great honor for me in this time I have been given, but that doesn’t avoid me the hard time of witnessing the slow collapse of a world in which my past inhabits. I will not degrade myself, I will not forget.
