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

BarcelonaAfter walking through Catalonia with 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 booklet about practicing, understanding, and extending good linguistic habits. The co-director of La competència on RAC 1 and presenter of Està passant on TV3 explains his linguistic autobiography, a striptease that will make more than one blush.

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

— It's so simple it's frightening: speak it. Speak it. This doesn't guarantee it will end up being spoken 100%, but it's a first step: not giving up on the language and keeping it. It's very important. I used to give 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 language's survival, what would you tell them?" I thought she would give me a very complicated long 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, etcetera, have a responsibility that is not small.

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

— Of course, because you can already speak it, but if in the end you are a minority in a marginalized country, you will end up being an Indian reservation. And that is not the plan. If we are going to shoot, it would be foolish to shoot at the sides because you are left without a base. We must shoot as high as possible, at economic power and its political extensions, 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 of it.

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

— There are two rules you must keep in mind: with one you must be solid, you must speak the language, you must not take a step back, and with the other you must be tactful and 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.

Sometimes it has 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 so that everyone can participate.

— Not moving backward is what adds up. Who would want to speak the language of those who move backward? 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 give up their own language, you tell yourself: why should I speak a language that they themselves cannot defend? It is evident. That is 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 this: they learn the language of the other country, overwhelmingly, if they want to move up and have a dignified 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 have lunch 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 says to me: "Sorry I don't speak Catalan very well, I come from the north of Morocco, but my daughter speaks it perfectly." And she spoke it perfectly, but with an accent, like everyone. And me: "Man, if we put it that way my phonetics and my way of constructing sentences are terrible." And suddenly we were both fighting to see who spoke Catalan worse. And it was absurd, because it was perfectly understood and he really wanted someone to address him in Catalan and chat for a while. Because the only way to make the language expand is to speak it.

Now that, as you say, you are "of this type", do people ask for your forgiveness for not speaking well enough or for using Castilianisms?

— But it doesn't make sense, because I do it. I am no example of anything. I don't pretend to be a beacon of good Catalan because I wouldn't manage.

Do you consider yourself an activist for the language? Or I don't know if it's 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 for you to 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 is the worst?

— The ones who don'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 bon dia. They are absolutely impermeable. They stir 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".

— Spanish is a very nice 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 it a casus belli, they could start a war. "It's just that the signs are in Catalan, give us the pax"! They have a strong language, they are winning 5-0 and they start crying over this little 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 it a little bit seeing how foolish you are.

La teva salut és la nostra prioritat.

— I also come from this language. What I regretted at one point is that the language in which I spoke with my father or my brother or my best friend, that is to say, Spanish, was used to impose itself on my mother's language and the country's own language. And when this kind 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 being a mestizo?

— 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 being a 'xarnego', or the fact that I, until a mature age, was immersed in a Castilian-centric culture, because practically all my references were from Madrid and Spain, I have been very much so. If a 'xarnego' is a person who has ancestors from outside, 75% of Catalans are. In that sense, we are not special. If you think it's special, being a 'xarnego' in Catalonia might be special, as I say in the book, but not in the sense you think, because we are hegemonic. The language of power in Catalonia is Spanish, because it is the majority language in media, on the internet, in the street, in leisure, etcetera. It doesn't matter my degree of being a 'xarnego', 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 "one is Catalan who lives and works in Catalonia..."

— "...And I want to be Catalan". This part of the phrase 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 the nationality", which is another thing. You have to have a certain intention to want to put down roots, and a very clear way to put down roots is the language, which allows you to graft yourself onto the country.

It's curious because you live by making humor, therefore, by making yourself likeable 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 tell them they are a peasant, as if it were a bad thing; or they are descended from slave owners; or they are bourgeois; or they are rats; or they are unfriendly; or they are not supportive. And of course, this, whether you believe it or not —because they repeat it so much that many times you act against all of this— is part of a stigmatization process. You should not participate in it. Because being Catalan does not make you particularly unfriendly, or funny, or anything else.

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

— Absolutely. The problem is the speakers and certain groups of speakers, those who have 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 do you feel a bit like a preacher, like Friar Juníper Serra through California?

— No, not an evangelist. I feel we have a need to hear ourselves say certain things, to fix certain ideas, and that this is appreciated. It's a topic that, to some extent, was and is taboo because language carries everything with it, the nation, politics. 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 the 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 safety that, in situations of marginalization or pressure, I know you experience, for example, women when you don't have to be vigilant all the time, 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 peaceful dinner. Creating these kinds of safe environments in language, I think, is interesting and explains a lot.

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

— It's called Arraval, it's very new and you eat very well there.

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 foot here, one foot 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 would have been very good for me if someone had explained them 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 for the future, and that is 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 that their mother and I will give them, it is not a 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, they are your roots. My son has become a preserver of the language and it has surprised me, because at his age I did not have this awareness. It has taken me 40 years to reach this conclusion that my son has reached in 6 years. In this sense, I am proud, I am optimistic and I am hopeful.