The delirious announcement that says hello to the Pope

While the Government is struggling for the Pope to speak a little more in Catalan on his visit to Catalonia, the Generalitat has launched a bizarre advertisement to welcome Leo XIV. The spot looks like a job done by fourth-year ESO students with AI. Both the script and the visual approach are of a stale folklorism that makes you laugh, because it turns our traditions into ridiculous postcards from a souvenir shop with the tourist criteria of the eighties. It would be very good to know how much this joke cost us. "A hello can explain our character," begins the narration. Two young people walking through Montserrat greet each other kindly. And from here they have crammed all the local themes: the sardanes, the gralles, the tabalers, the capgrossos, the roses, the Sagrada Família, the Arc de Triomf, the Barcelona Olympic Games, a catalogue of Gaudí, a few castellers, the Roman heritage of Tarragona, La Moreneta, Pau Casals and his cello, El cant dels ocells, the espardenyes and the four bars. All in 55 seconds. Can you imagine the people responsible for this audiovisual work of art of the most recalcitrant Catalanism making fun of the creative process: "There's no guts to add Miquel Milá's lights, too!" And the other: "No? Come on! The lights and I'll throw in the chairs as a bonus!" And they reuse a still life of furniture that they must have recorded for something else. They have only forgotten about Barça, pan con tomate, and fuet. All in an artificial montage in which images are chained together to give it an air of modernity, using all the digital manipulation filters that the editing program allows. Catalonia is a land of surrealism. The text enhances it: “Roots break the sky and in April a thousand roses” or “Do you hear the jackdaws? The birds, singing, went to celebrate him”. It is understandable to grant permission to celebrate the welcome to the pontiff by addressing him with a "Hello, Pope Leo XIV!" even though he will hardly tune in to TV3 to watch it, but the approach is absurd and forced. They have condensed all the imagery of the most typical Catalonia mixed, of course, with the right dose of ethnic diversity so that it does not seem reductionist and fosters brotherhood between peoples. It has the infantilism typical of the most old-fashioned catechesis, and seeks a kind of exhibition of symbols that reduces us to a stereotype.   The announcement is an injection of condensed Catalan substance impossible to assimilate directly to the pupil, so it is not said that "the government of everyone" does not put its heart and soul into it if the negotiations for the use of Catalan with the Episcopal Conference are not entirely successful. A precautionary strategy for show. A kind of Catalan Benvingut Mr. Marshall", because in view of the possibility that the religious visit is not very concerned with the identity issue, at least it seems so.