1. I'm warning you from the start that this article will have a twist that might put you in a bad mood. As much as it put me this Saturday. For work reasons, I spent thirty hours in Ciutadella. The twentieth edition of the Catalan Book Fair was being held, and I was invited to give a talk at Saturday's Literary Vermouth. In the open-plan Plaça des Born, perhaps one of the most luminous squares in the entire Mediterranean, there was a tent, necessary to protect us from the October rains or the sunburns that would have burned our shells. Inside, seven of the eight bookstores in Menorca had a stall with books in Catalan on display, draped in the flag, a custom we've normalized without realizing how absurd it is to use a country's flag as a large sheet over our legs. On an island with one hundred thousand registered residents—roughly the size of Sant Cugat—there are eight bookstores. The ratio isn't bad. Even better is the crowds that have passed through this fair, which only lasts two days. On Friday, there were lots of schoolchildren. On Saturday, a crowd of families shuffling books and leisurely wandering from stall to stall.
2. Naturally, all the Fira events were in Catalan. Inside the venue, only one language was spoken, but I wanted to see what was happening outside, on the streets, in the shops, in everyday life. What worries us so much in the Principality is the social use of Catalan. I hadn't been to Menorca since before the pandemic, and the last time was at the end of July, when the road between Mahon and Ciutadella was a single file of cars and tourists everywhere. My pocket-sized fieldwork, this autumn weekend, had a result that surprised me. I lived solely in Catalan for thirty hours. I had three meals in three restaurants, and not only did they have menus in Catalan—and also in Spanish, French, English, and German—but all orders were made and taken in Catalan. I went to four cafes, entered two shops, bought a newspaper, and chatted with the hotel receptionist. Even at the airport, I was always served in Catalan. The blow to Enrique Tomás's ham sandwich is the same in any language. The problem was the Iberian pork, not the Menorcan pork they served me with.
3. Last Friday night, I was in luck. At the Teatro des Born, in one of the stately buildings on the same square, they were holding a tribute to Joan Pons, one of the greatest baritones of all time. A citizen like him, a man who opened the season at La Scala in Milan and who holds the record for having been booked for twenty-five consecutive years by the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, was a prophet in his own right. They were paying tribute to the theater where he had debuted more than fifty years earlier. There were still front-row seats available, and, another surprise, tickets were free. The two-hour show, which combined an interview with the star with videos of his performances, was entirely in Menorcan. When normality gives a sense of victory, it's in bad shape.
4. On Saturday, after the literary vermouth and while I was killing time to go watch Barça-Girona with the overwhelmed Barça fans from the Ciutadella Barça Supporters' Club, I sat on a street bench. A little further down was a restaurant with a terrace. After paying, two couples in their early 40s got up to light a cigarette and stretch their legs. They were speaking in Spanish, and just as I walked past, one of them said: "It's good that Menorca isn't like Catalonia, where they speak to you in Catalan all the time.". Everyone agreed with her and the other woman still hammered home the point: "Yes, but now the girl who charged us has said "goodbye"".
