Reclaiming the word 'dictatorship'

Barcelona"I have no idea. I'd rather Franco die than be there." loose, slack and pendulum"He had to die one way or another." Here's the thing. Raimon's responseOn Wednesday, in response to a question from Helena Garcia Melero in the Everything is movingabout what he did when Franco died. It wasn't the only moment that made the audience laugh, even though he was talking about censorship during the dictatorship. But, really, I suppose that's just how it is: as absurd as it was, humor emerged. The writer and screenwriter Anna Manso, who was on the set, asked him what he would say to young people who downplay what the dictatorship and Francoism represented, and Raimon replied that it wouldn't do much for their parents—"we didn't listen to them either," he said, "when we were young." That's why he suggested it should be explained properly in schools, "where they learn." I was watching on TV, to talk about Mercè Ibarz's latest book, A girl in the city (Anagrama), a chronicle of her arrival in Barcelona (she is from Saidí), at seventeen years old. Raimon's words led me to a passage in the book where I think Ibarz says something important: "I often ask myself how it is that the word dictatorship So little has been heard and written about it in the years since. We say and write postwar period, Francoism, the regime, but dictatorship Not much. The emptiness of this non-word has permeated journalism and literature itself for decades. As if it were a generational word that didn't apply to those born after the seventies. Well, we're doing great. What could that mean? Isn't it even worth thinking about? Of course it is, it's worth thinking about. Once again, the importance of calling things by their name, of using words that have "full" content and a clear meaning.

A few days ago, I was reading that the favorite Catalan word of ARA readers is whisperI really liked one of the explanations for the choice given by the newspaper's chief linguist, Pau Domènech: he believes it's possible we opt for words that mean beautiful things. Certainly, no one expected to find war either massacre In the ranking, those are words that carry weight. Also dictatorship, But that's all the more reason to use it to describe what happened. If we use words like regime either postwar periodWe are not being faithful to what happened; our words fall short, and the value of the words we choose can be decisive. I sometimes think of the Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb. Some readers are surprised by her vocabulary, sometimes quite unfamiliar words. For her, precision is important; she always explains this. If there is a perfect word to define or explain something, why not use it? Why not give it value? This is what Ibarz does in the book, which I enthusiastically recommend. I have been speaking to you about the word, starting from this excerpt. dictatorshipThis isn't just anecdotal, because the dictatorship is a recurring theme in the narrative. It speaks of the seventies and eighties, but goes far beyond that. I found it luminous, even though it begins with the death of her husband. It's full of love and the wonder of discovering a new place. Places are important; I read it as a celebration of Barcelona, ​​and the music and films of that era are recurring themes. It's full of reflections on friendship and memory, which accompany what seemed to me to be the author's will to live, to move forward. Or, as she says in a passage quoting Nathan Coley, to continue cultivating her garden.