Castilian squares
In the square where we grew up, you no longer hear Catalan spoken. We children marched. Many never returned. Dinner time arrives, maturity. You're marching home. You don't know that will be the last day. Life is a game of cards you don't play: it plays you. You watch them fall on the mat. 15, 16, 17… Year after year we disappeared. Adolescence was a pandemic, a kidnapping, a goodbye without hands. And the square was left without children.
One day some of us returned. We were 35, 40, or 45. We did assisted breathing, blew on floats, puffed on foggy cigars. And there are days I see myself in a T-shirt and shorts. Hair. And summer hair. harvestedThere are days when I still see you on the white wooden bench that's no longer there: you, neither. We were happy. We were so happy that we always carry a childlike smile in our wallets. We are a digitalized paper photo in a brain with tired eyes. This light bounces off the walls of the plaza. match point of eternity. Shadows chasing each other in a prehistoric cave. Bare knees planted in the earth. Voices pressed against stones. Does it suit us?
We all spoke Catalan. Even "the Castilians." We said that in the eighties. And in the nineties. And… I can't explain it because we're no longer here. We left the square one day. And when we came back, we're no longer here. Okay, I fart myautotuneWe're like a decorative amphora in a fake traditional restaurant. We're not authentic. insert coin. Put a coin in and you'll hear the monkey. The anomaly of the system. An atypical swallow. We are social cholesterol. Because the children, the boys, who go up to play in the square all speak Spanish.
They are from everywhere: from Catalan families, from middle-middle families, from the other side of the world. But all United Colors of Spanish. They study in the same places. The same ones who turn 30, 40, 50. And Spanish is the tool of integration. Assimilation. Denial. Everything is Spanish. Linguistically, physically, spiritually. They play basketball in Spanish. They look into each other's eyes, out of the corner of their eyes, behind each other's backs, in Spanish. They don't want to know another language. The square is in Spanish. The squares are in Spanish. The occupied country, in the open air, is in Spanish. The streets will never be ours: the spoils of October 1st are language. And without language there is nothing. Note fromautotune for the future: if there is another October, get through it. coitus interruptus It's the classic Catalan dramatic genre. School is no longer useful for learning Catalan. Not the square. Not the children. So, why do we want a language, a square, children? No.
Denial: we have denied immigration. We have denied immigrants. But we have also denied resignation. We are dismissed. We have been saying it for years. Because we are not illiterate civil servants who carry out surveys that ignore reality. It has been years since we have resigned from our language. We are not a nation if we are dismissed. A step forward: Catalan speakers. I thought... What do you think? Nothing happens alone. Everything is painful, sad, miserable. The children at home. Watching detritus in Spanish on their cell phones. Catalan to pass the time with musarañas. The streets are in Spanish: not in Barcelona! To the villages! There is no one in the squares anymore. No one who speaks Catalan. The new Catalans. The old ones, dying. We're in the square and we haven't said the last word yet.