Òscar Andreu: "I believe language is the most powerful thing we will give our children"

BarcelonaAfter walking through Catalonia, the monologue Crida als ocells de colors llampants —still on tour—, the communicator and humorist Òscar Andreu (Terrassa, 1975) turns that linguistic manifesto into Manual de defensa del català (Univers), a small book about practicing, understanding, and extending good linguistic habits. The co-director of La competència on RAC 1 and presenter of l'Està passant on TV3 explains his linguistic autobiography, a striptease that will make more than one blush.

The subtitle says you've found the formula to save the language. Spoiler?

— It's so simple it's scary: speak it. Speak it. This doesn't guarantee it will be spoken 100%, but it's a first step: don't give up on the language and keep it. It's extremely important. I was giving talks with the linguist Carme Junyent, and one day I asked her: "Imagine I have a megaphone and I want to address all Catalans to tell them what the first step is on the path to the survival of the language, what would you tell them?" I thought she would give me a very complicated speech, and she took the megaphone and said: "Speak it." Other things must also be done. We as speakers have a responsibility, but our political representatives, administrations, etc., have a responsibility that is not small.

Junyent said that "Catalan depends on you" but it also depends on those in power, if we take into account the current sociolinguistic and political conditions. I'm thinking about the 25% of foreign inhabitants in Barcelona or last week's ruling by the TSJC against Catalan schools. Are these conditions that make speaking Catalan not enough?

— Sure, because you can already speak it, but if in the end you are a minority in a minoritized country, you will end up being an Indian reservation. And that's not the plan. When it comes to shooting, it would be foolish to shoot to the sides because you run out of base. You have to shoot as high as possible, at the economic power and its political ramifications, because they are the ones who hold the key to many things, they have a lot of work ahead of them and they must be reminded.

There may be discourses that blame immigrants for this situation, but they are also precisely the ones we want to join Catalan...

— You have to take two reins [makes the gesture of horseback riding]: with one you have to be solid, you have to speak the language, you don't have to take a step back, and with the other you have to have a left hand and you have to know which buttons to press. I don't think it would be very intelligent to shoot at someone who has no weapons. In a situation of marginalization, creativity must be sharpened.

It has sometimes been sold as the opposite, but I would say that being a solid Catalan speaker does not close the doors of Catalan but rather opens them for everyone to participate.

— What does not add up is to back down. Who would want to speak the language of those who back down? Nobody. You want to speak English because they are a people who have dominated the world. If you arrive in this country and the first thing you detect is that the speakers renounce their own language, you say to yourself: why should I speak a language that they themselves cannot defend? It's obvious. That's why we must show ourselves to be solid and forceful, because, moreover, it is a matter of justice. On the other hand, if you learn and speak Catalan, integration is practically automatic. People who have to work outside their country do it: they learn the language of the other country, overwhelmingly, if they want to move up and have a decent life. Why shouldn't that happen here?

What is the latest gag that keeping Catalan in Barcelona has given you?

— It's just that, today, coming here, the taxi driver didn't even understand the street of the Angels... I'm going to eat at a bar where the waiter always makes the same joke: "What, the menu in Spanish, right?"

And does it also give you positive surprises?

— Yes. For example, talking to a guy who I think knew more or less who I was, and what my deal was, and he said to me: "Forgive me for not speaking Catalan very well, I come from northern Morocco, but my daughter speaks it perfectly." And she spoke it perfectly, but with an accent, like everyone else. And I said: "Man, if we're going to be like that, my phonetics and my way of constructing sentences is terrible." And suddenly we were both fighting to see who spoke Catalan worse. And it was absurd, because they understood each other perfectly and he really wanted someone to address him in Catalan and have a chat for a while. Because the only way to make the language expand is to speak it.

Now that, as you say, you're "into this," do people ask your forgiveness for not speaking well enough or for using Castilianisms?

— But it makes no sense, because I do it. I am no example of anything. I do not intend to be a beacon of good Catalan because it would not come out of me.

Do you consider yourself an activist for the language? Or I don't know if it is simply another condition of being Catalan.

— Yes, I am. There's the part I like, which is being active, because it means you're not dead, and the part I don't, because activism means something isn't working because you have to be an activist for your own country's language. But it comes with the pack. It shouldn't be like this, but it's what we've been dealt. Because when a language disappears, a worldview disappears, an entire country disappears, a way of thinking disappears, and it's not that it disappears, it's that they make it disappear. Languages don't die, languages are killed.

In the book you categorize speakers. Which one is the worst?

— The one who doesn't speak it. Those I call the gore-tex, because they are impermeable to Catalan; they are people who came 40 or 50 years ago and who do not participate in Catalan because they do not participate in Catalan identity, either. They are people who can say good morning, kalispera, in various languages but, for whatever reason, they don't know how to say good morning. They are absolutely impermeable. They row in favor of the minority language, which is Spanish. It's a joke, it's not a minority, just so you know.

There is a pathology that in the manual you define as "fragile supremacy".

— Castilian Spanish is a very beautiful language, with 500 million speakers, it is the majority language in this country, in schools, in leisure, in the media, everywhere. They have an army that defends them, they have judges, they have kings, they have the Ibex 35, but suddenly, I don't know what happens to them, when they go somewhere in the Catalan Countries... We went to Barcelona, we entered a bakery and they spoke to us in Catalan. Suddenly, this supremacism breaks and it is an absolute drama, they make a casus belli, they could start a war. "It's just that they have the signs in Catalan, give way to peace". They have a strong language, they are winning 5-0 and they start crying over this little piece of shit. It's incredible. This is what for me is fragile supremacism. If you see them on the internet, they are people absolutely broken inside. You don't know what you have, you are not enjoying it; I am enjoying a little bit seeing how foolish you are.

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— I also come from this language. What at one point I disliked is that the language in which I spoke with my father or my brother or my best friend, that is, Spanish, was used to impose itself on my mother's language and the country's own language. And when this type of distortion occurs, I feel called to participate in this activism because, among other things, language and having it sharp, that is, having reflected on the tool, is having reflected on the country, on ourselves.

As a descendant of Andalusians, what percentage would you say you have of chaboli?

— Well, look, I don't think there's a way to measure it. But if grandparents or parents, if origin is what marks your degree of xarneguismo, or the fact that I was immersed in a Castilian-centric culture until a mature age, because practically all my references were from Madrid and Spain, I have been a lot. If xarnego is a person who has ancestors from outside, 75% of Catalans are. In this sense, we are not special. If you think you are special for being xarnego in Catalonia, maybe it is special but not in the way you think, because we are hegemonic. The language of power in Catalonia is Spanish, because it is the majority language in the media, on the internet, on the street, in leisure, etcetera. It doesn't matter my degree of xarneguismo, I like to consider myself Catalan, which is much easier and that's it, that way I get rid of this absurd label. Once you access Catalan identity and perceive yourself as Catalan, you are Catalan. Americans don't spend all their time looking to see if they came from the Netherlands, if my grandparents, if the other was German... If you are from the United States, you are from the United States.

It is that Pujolian precept of "a Catalan is one who lives and works in Catalonia..."

— "...And wants to be Catalan". This part of the sentence is not said very often, but, of course, there must be an intention. You don't arrive here and say: "I live and work and that's it, I already have my nationality", which is another thing. You have to have a certain intention of wanting to put down roots and a very clear way of putting down roots is the language, which allows you to graft yourself onto the country.

It's funny because you make a living from making humor, therefore, from being funny in Catalan. This contradicts one of the stereotypes that Catalan is unfriendly.

— This is a stigmatization that occurs in processes of linguistic substitution where you have to dehumanize the other. To dehumanize them you have to call them a peasant, as if it were something bad; or they are descendants of slave owners; or they are bourgeois; or they are rats; or they are elusive; or they are not supportive. And of course, this, whether you believe it or not —because they repeat it so much that you often act against all of this— is part of a stigmatization process. One should not participate. Because being Catalan does not make you particularly elusive, or funny, or one thing or the other.

It is attributing characteristics of individuals to languages, such as being fascist.

— Absolutely. The problem lies with the speakers and certain groups of speakers, those who hold power and want to impose their language in a place where it is not the native language. The language itself is not a problem, it's like a knife: you can use it to cut meat or you can use it to stab someone.

Doing the monologue you feel a bit like an evangelizer, like Fray Junípero Serra through California?

— No, not an evangelist. I feel we have a need to express certain things ourselves, to fix certain ideas, and that is appreciated. It's a topic that, to a certain extent, was and is taboo because everything goes with language, the nation goes with it, politics goes with it. Self-awareness is very good because you discover you are not alone, and discovering a community makes the gas of humor make you smile, or laugh, depending on the moment. And it's a safe place, which is something that often happens to me when I arrive somewhere, like yesterday in a restaurant in El Raval, and I discover that three tables are speaking Catalan, the waiters are speaking Catalan, the cook is shouting in Catalan, and I relax. I had that feeling of security that, in situations of marginalization or in situations of pressure, I know you experience, for example, women when they don't have to be constantly vigilant, or racialized people when they are in an environment where they don't have to be alert. Without intending to trivialize, I felt safe: the tranquility of being able to express myself, of not having to ask for the menu in Catalan, is part of a quiet dinner. Creating these kinds of safe environments in language I think is interesting and explains a lot of things.

Now you have to tell us which bar in the Raval it was.

— It is called Arraval, it is very new and the food is very good.

Are you worried about only speaking to your own people?

— I worry about not going beyond the bubble, but I think not everyone is in the same place. There are people who have one leg here, one leg there. I've been right there. And the tools I've found are what I express in the book, often in the form of a joke, and that it would have been very good for me if someone had explained it to me like that.

Now that you have young children, has your perspective changed after having them and seeing them socialize?

— One of the fundamental reasons for writing this book is that I want to leave my children something truly relevant, dignified, and that will serve them in the future, and these are some reflections on language, on what it means to be a minority language and what to do to stop being one. I believe that language is the most powerful thing their mother and I will give them, it's no small thing. A language is a place to return to, it is home, it is how you configure your entire brain, all your experiences, all your history, it is your roots. My son has become a language keeper and it has surprised me, because at his age I didn't have this awareness. It has taken me 40 years to reach this conclusion that my son has reached in 6 years. In this regard, I am proud, I am optimistic, and I am hopeful.