Guadalajara or the cultural showcase
BarcelonaIn the essay Critique of the victimIn his book published by Herder, Professor Daniele Giglioli of the University of Bergamo describes how the victim has become "the hero of our time." Being a victim confers prestige, demands to be heard, promises recognition, generates identity, and immunizes against criticism. The victim, he says, does not act: they suffer; they do not respond: they are irresponsible. And, for that very reason, they are "the dream of any kind of power." It is no wonder, he concludes, that battles are being fought today to establish who is the greatest victim, who has been one before, and who has been one for the longest time.
Reading it these past few days has made me think about the controversy generated as a result of Barcelona's participation as guest of honor at the Guadalajara Book Fair And then there's the announcement by Barcelona City Council about the creation of an €80,000 grant for Latin American writers who will spend three months in the city writing in Spanish about the Catalan capital. The substantial amount has generated a strong reaction from Catalan-language writers: the Montserrat Roig grants for literary creation, also awarded by the council, are €6,000, do not include publication or translation, and are also granted to authors who write in Spanish.
Catalan is an objectively minority language, with structural deficits in presence, investment, and visibility. The injustice is evident and measurable. And yet, there are still those who claim not to understand the reasons for these complaints or who whitewash the linguistic conflict by presenting it as a matter of personal affinities. The problem isn't about sympathies, friendships, or good relations between authors who write in different languages: it's about power, resources, and whose voices occupy the central space.
In this sense, of the sixty invited authors, The fact that Eduardo Mendoza was chosen to open the fair is not a neutral decision.Mendoza is known for interpreting the linguistic conflict in terms of mutual victimhood, trivializing bilingualism as if it were the natural solution and not another stage in the process of linguistic substitution that is being imposed by institutions, often disguised as cosmopolitanism and openness.
To project a depoliticized image of Barcelona
This symbolic act is significant because it involves considerable public investment: the Barcelona City Council has allocated €3.5 million from the tourist tax, and this point is far from trivial. The money generated by an economic model that is displacing residents, creating tension in neighborhoods, and eroding the city's daily life has, paradoxically, been used for a cultural showcase that ultimately reinforces the very machinery making Barcelona increasingly unlivable for its inhabitants. Literature, in the end, has been instrumentalized to project a depoliticized image of the city (that is, of the country), seemingly cosmopolitan and friendly—in other words, pacified for the sake of consumption.
If the internationalization of Catalan literature If that were truly the priority, these resources could have been used to translate, promote, and consolidate authors. However, the risk we Catalan-language writers face is that of becoming trapped in dwelling on the harm done and denouncing the injustice. As Giglioli warns, when the victim becomes the defining characteristic, they cease to be a political subject. And since this is one of the ills plaguing Catalonia, we must be able to think in terms of the future: Catalan will not thrive on the harm it accumulates, but on the future we dare to contest.
