Midnight Mass is approaching. We've spoken with him. What will happen this year, kid? He says he doesn't know, that he still has to sing. Centuries like this. Announcing the birth of Jesus, freeze-dried cream pastries, or the invention of the octagonal wheel. Every year I celebrate Midnight Mass. Cock-a-doodle-doo!
At midnight Zulu time, people I swarm descend on my house. They don't have to know each other. I act as a lightning rod. We celebrate Mass accompanied, warmed by bottles of cava. A liquid religion of sacred words. We chat until dawn. About everything and nothing. And we celebrate the birth of life. Something happened at Midnight Mass in 2023. Cock-a-doodle-doo! Be quiet and drink.
There are always between 10 and 15 of us. Apostle types. That year, practically everyone expressed that they liked, intended to, or would vote for Aliança Catalana. The unanimity and humanity were astonishing. More mother and rooster. The year 2024 was different. Not only did everyone say they would vote for Aliança Catalana, but they had the arguments ready and waiting. We'll see what happens in 2025. Quequeroqueco!
Repetitive, heterogeneous, numerous apostles, like these, from all over Catalonia, will not vote for AC because of immigration, the depression of the Process, or a new independence. They will vote for them because they have been abandoned for years and locked away. The AC phenomenon explains more the failure of urban Catalonia and the success of territorial Barcelona. Many have little experience with hard work and sweat. Little travel within Catalonia. A brutal resentment has been brewing for years. I have seen legions of people I've known since birth tell me to do incredible things. Amazing. There is a part of Catalonia that has abandoned itself and now abandons the other part. Respect has been lost. More than it seems. It's not the extreme right: it's an extreme lack of love. For years, things have been said that no one wants to hear. For years, things have been happening that no one wants to see, that no one believes. There is pain, born of mourning. There is death and little life.
Catalonia is not (re)cognized, as we have been saying for many years. Now it has reached the level of total illiteracy. Increasingly closed off. Amish society. Apache stronghold. Masturbatory. Self-sufficient. Everyone will live in their burrow, bunker, village, safe. We will repeat until we die: there are many ants (people) in the 360 degrees of the country, but there is no anthill (institutions, project...). And the ants, disoriented, neglected, indifferent, so self-absorbed, don't know where to take the food or why they should take it. There's no such thing as a country's aioli. Today it's the real and metaphorical Catalan Alliance, and tomorrow it'll be the Party of Raticulín de Arriba. But never confuse the smoke with the roast. Nor the smoke: which can be a sign of fire or a dung heap.
We live in a country that is dying. Language, values, money, truth, rationality, reality, hope, illusion, dreams… And they say no. It's not like that. Let's give birth to panthers. Now water, fire, nitrogen, shit arrives at your doorstep. The rooster means something.
Many of us feel like we did in 1936-1939, which we are heirs to: trapped by red and black. Trapped like salted ham between slices. While we exhale with the wheezing of a tubercular patient, inoculated by the paid and propagandistic air. While they tell us we're not dying, that we're taking off in a space elevator rocket, others will want to impale us by democratic decree. And we'll have to pluck the rooster to eat, to survive. Let's all meet again, face to face, at Mass, with or without the beast.
