The delirious announcement that says hello to the Pope

While the Government struggles to get the Pope to speak a little more Catalan during his visit to Catalonia, the Generalitat has launched an absurd announcement to welcome Leo XIV. The spot looks like a project done by fourth-year ESO students with AI. Both the script and the visual approach are of a stale folklorism that makes you laugh, as it turns our traditions into ridiculous postcards from an eighties-style souvenir shop with a tourist criterion. It would be great to know how much this joke cost us. “A hello can explain our character,” the narration begins. Two young people walking through Montserrat greet each other kindly. And from here they have crammed in all the local themes: sardanas, gralles, tabalers, capgrossos, roses, the Sagrada Família, the Arc de Triomf, the Barcelona Olympic Games, a catalogue of Gaudí, some castellers, the Roman heritage of Tarragona, la Moreneta, Pau Casals and his cello, El cant dels ocells, 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 way we’re adding Miquel Milá’s lights too!”. And the other: “No? Come on! The lights and I’ll throw in the chairs for free!”. And they reuse a still life of furniture that they must have recorded for something else. They’ve only forgotten about Barça, pa amb tomàquet and fuet. All in an artificial montage in which the images are chained 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: “The roots break the sky and in April a thousand roses” or “Do you hear the jackdaws? The birds, singing, went to celebrate him”. Now the license to celebrate the welcome to the pontiff is understood, addressing him with a “Hola, Papa Leo XIV!” even though he will hardly tune in to TV3 to see it, but the approach is absurd and forced. They have condensed all the imaginary 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 worn-out catechism, 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 into the pupil, so that it may not be 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 Welcome Mr. Marshall", because faced with the possibility that the religious visit is not very concerned with the identity issue, it at least seems so.