Comte Arnau

My Invisible Country

Rating: 3 votes, 3.67 average.
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by
Comte Arnau
, 05-17-2011 at 07:28 PM (5428 Views)
It's a fact, I live in an invisible country. Up until now, I thought it was just invisible to the eyes of foreigners. Whenever I travel abroad, I can't say I am from Catalonia, because it doesn't exist. All I can say is I am from Barcelona, a city I'm not from, and then something lights up in the minds of people, as Barcelona rings a bell either as a Spanish/Mexican city or -to the best informed- as a European city vaguely located somewhere in the South by the Mediterranean Sea, cradle of a well-known blue & crimson soccer team. A theme park designed to appeal both Japanese Gaudí lovers and Brits looking for an English pub after a sunburning day.



1992 was a turning point for Barcelona. The Olympic Games placed a city in the world map, a city that so far had lived facing inland, ignoring the sea. But the native charm of the Catalan capital was soon to become everything but a Catalan capital. A city where one hour an Argentinian waiter can't understand your order in Catalan and you must change into Spanish if you want to be served, while the next hour you speak in Spanish to a Jamaican waitress who happened to speak perfect Catalan. A city where in the morning you dodge Romanian Gypsies skilled in pickpocketing, in the evening you dodge some native creepy trannies after a match behind the Barcelona stadium and you still must dodge at night a Colombian low-cost harlot parade in Syringe Avenue. A city where sangrias are twice more expensive in a tourist street than in the parallel one, and where souvenir stores hide their Catalan items because what tourists expect from Barcelona -who knows why- is a Mexican hat and an Andalusian Gypsy flamenco dress. And for a Catalan, a cent is a cent. A city, all in all, that represents Catalonia when it's the less Catalan city in the country.



My folk could have disappeared as soon as the 17th century, but they decided it was not the time yet. We began to disappear again by the beginning of the 18th century, and Romanticism refreshed some brains well enough so that my folk could grow stronger than ever. Now we may be running into extinction again because of this badly understood globalization. Perhaps, as our brave children climb and fall and climb again to reach the top of our human towers, we must fall a dozen times before reaching the top. The brave are not those who do not fall, but those who stand up after a fall. Perhaps it is a good thing, after all, to be invisible. More visible folks fell down never to rise again. We were Franks and Moors, we've been Aragonese and Occitans, now they say we are Spanish and French... Most people even say my country is a region. But if not to the world, in our hearts we are Catalans, and as long as we believe it, som i serem, we are and we shall be.

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Comments

  1. Treffie's Avatar
    Similar sentiments here, Bata. We're always overshadowed by our much more fashionable neighbours - the Irish and the Scots. Someone once told me that it's because we're the quiet Celts and that we just get on with the job in protecting our language and culture.
  2. Apina's Avatar
    Una anotació molt interessant - m'ha agradat molt A vegades em sento el mateix - normalment quan jo dic que sóc de Ticino, la majoria de la gent no sap res d'aixo. Ni saben molt sobre el meu país!
  3. Comte Arnau's Avatar
    Interessant. Consideres el Ticino un país, Apina? Et sents suís? O més aviat norditalià?
  4. Hesperión's Avatar
    I can see how mentioning Romanian and Andalusian gypsies, while at the same time ignoring Catalan gypsies, can be all convenient if your agenda is to show that gypsies are "a problem" that's been imported from other parts...especially from other parts of Spain (Andalucia).

    However, it is not easy to sweep under the carpet of oblivion gypsies like Pere Pubill Calaf, with family names that are unmistakably Catalan, nor others like the Gypsie clans/families Aiguader (Girona), Cantarell (Barcelona), or Pusal (Tarragona) just to name a few.

    So where's the difference? Interestingly enough in the 18th century Gypsies in Catalonia do not pose the same problem as in the rest of Spain as they were fairly integrated within the Catalan society. That is to say that they had been at least partly assimilated.

    Not surprising if we observe how Catalan independentists (like yourself) understand Catalan identity and ethnicity: solely on the basis of language. That is, anyone who speaks Catalan is a Catalan...

    In fact, haven't you stated that you prefer "a Riffian (a North African Berber) who speaks Catalan to a Castilian who refuses to learn it"?

    Why not! After all that's been central to Catalan pro-independence policies...assimilation through language learning. Which is why Muslim immigration has been promoted in Catalonia, in the hope that they'd learn and speak Catalan instead of Castilian. And why Catalan independentist leaders have gone begging for the vote of Muslims to their mosques.

    What an open-minded people! someone might say. Fine, but then again, why go into forums to cry about it and, worse, pretend that it's someone else's fault?

    Indeed Romanticism did for the Catalan identity...it created a fake one and buried the real. If you don't like that you only have yourself (and the likes of you) to blame for it.

    Live with it.
  5. Hesperión's Avatar
    I should also mention that you were never Franks nor Occitans...

    The Counts of Barcelona were vassals of the Carolingian Empire, but not even considered Carolingians. Which is why Catalonia maintained for a long time one of the harshest feudal systems in the whole of Europe, where men and beasts were sold or retained equally with the land. And that made a difference with the rest of the territories of the old Visigothic Kingdom of SPAIN, especially with Castile where men were free and in many instances they could even choose their nobleman and depose him.

    However, this was true only for the County of Barcelona. The Pyrenaic counties were different and as such more in line with the rest of the Spanish territories.

    As for Occitans, not only Catalonia was never part of Occitania but Occitania was never a one unitary people...more so if according to your views where language matters most, since e.g. Gascon and Provenzal are different enough from each other.

    But don't worry, your little world is not going to crumble just like that. In fact you'll be safe while you stay within the boundaries of the internet.