After singing 'La Balanguera'

The popular singing of La Balanguera last Friday in Mallorca was a massive success. Tens of thousands of Majorcans took to the streets and squares (or educational centers, as was the case for many students) to participate in an act of affirmation as a country, as a society, and as a cultural and linguistic community that recognizes itself in a series of references and in a common heritage.The most valuable element of this common heritage is the Catalan language: Majorcans have been speaking Catalan for eight hundred years and it is the native language of the Balearic Islands. Catalan from Mallorca, speaking it and sharing it, is the attribute that identifies us as Majorcans and is the best we can offer to people arriving on the island, as immigrants or for whatever reason. Catalan is the tool that will allow them to live fully as Majorcans, the instrument that will allow them to share their own cultural and linguistic contributions. That is why it is so, so important.At the same time, Catalan finds itself in a delicate situation in Mallorca due to linguistic gentrification, which corresponds to territorial, housing, labor, and economic gentrification. Gentrification as a synonym for overexploitation and speculation. The protests of the Mallorcans in defense of the language and public school (two things that go together) are also against this reality, in which the exaggerated economic benefits of a few come at the expense of the common good and enormous inequalities between the citizens of this island.The mobilizations of Majorcans for Catalan are successful. This first singing of La Balanguera has been so, as had been, a few weeks ago, the arrival of the Correllengua Agermanat flame in Palma, or the Yes to the language of 2024 and 2025: large vindictive demonstrations, with a strong participation and presence of young people who do move and commit themselves to defend Catalan. The entity that has promoted the mobilizations (or has supported them, in the case of Correllengua Agermanat, organized by a conglomerate of entities) is Obra Cultural Balear, which has addressed its demands to a deaf and turned-away PP government, which has made it its main priority to please the far-right and ultra-Spanishist partners of Vox. The novelty in the singing of La Balanguera was that the main institutional representatives of the PP of the Balearic Islands attended: the president of the Government, Marga Prohens; the president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, and the mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez. It has been a show of skill by the president of the OCB, Antoni Llabrés, and his team to have left these rulers literally without excuses for not joining an act that could only annoy fanatics. At the same time, it obliges them to review the calamitous linguistic and educational policy they have pursued so far. The opposition parties also have homework, and it is not minor: all this citizen energy hopes to find a channel, a political articulation, proposals that will make them vote with enthusiasm.