What Duck (fiction is the fodder of reality) Donald Trump is doing is thanks to a Catalan. Calm down, ham. We're not referring to the economist Pau Pujolàs, from the Carlist Solsona (old west Catalan before the American Wild West), which according to Disney Trump Co. serves to justify the intifada of calculating global tariffs by quoting – erroneously – an academic article by this university professor in Canada. No. We're referring to another Catalan who already predicted tariffs in 1874 from the United States: "If all the Catalans scattered around the world returned to Catalonia, there wouldn't be enough room." Let's understand the burden.
Artur Cuyàs Armengol was born in Barcelona, but he goes on a path to New York. His Catalan father and Cuban mother are merchants. The guy makes a name for himself and a brand. He invests his money in many things, but above all in the future: The Llumanera of New YorkA Catalan-language magazine in the United States. Never seen before. With this proton of paper, still in the age of candles, it draws an economic-political-cultural triangle: Catalonia - Latin America - United States. A geometry of luminous Catalan interests. A real, virtual, global Catalonia. Money, pasta, top. Listen to the rattling of the New Yorker From Barcelona's Rec Street, now on Broadway. Wow!
They say the Catalans are just four cats in New York compared to the colonies: Irish, German, Dutch, Italian... But the Catalans are "bell-bell cats." The list of Catalans who play bells, flutes, peppers, carachos, and every other utensil Dolby Surround In the Big Apple in 1874, it's enough to make you deaf: the vice-consul and the secretary of the Spanish consulate; a newspaper editor; seven large companies run by Catalans; shops: a shoe store, a fruit store, two wine stores, two dried fruit stores, a tailor, two inns, and two etc., etc. Add up: musicians, teachers, artists... And, of course, "until There's a Catalan farmer called Balmes, and although he's lived here for many years, he drinks wine from a porrón and is more Catalan than Serrallonga." Four cats? In 1874 there's a colony of Catalans who've been there for twenty or thirty years and they're adding up, adding up... In the profit and loss account, watch out because they're your children, and they never forget their homeland, nor their language." Nice? Or not.
Cuyàs was in it for the money. moneyA golden example in the box: a frayed and dying 15-year-old boy who had left Barcelona for Cuba in 1877 built the Payret Theater in Havana. That had never been seen before. A butcher built an empire. There were hundreds like Joaquim Payret, Catalans with money in abundance. They were models. luminary For Cuyàs. That's why he defended Catalan protectionism with the triangle. Fees, taxes, royalties. That's why there are Catalans who opposed the Spanish-American War: for money. And because the Catalans were a parastate: real and virtual. That's why Cuyàs was persecuted by American justice. For an agitator. For a spy. For a Spanish agent. Witch hunt. Our toll.
"Catalans, the world is ours / since without struggle or war / there is no people on earth / where the Catalans are not," Cuyàs wrote. But for that, you need dollars, euros, shells. We are tariffs. Tariffs without a state. Human tariffs. The price to pay. The most expensive and painful. The tariff of freedom.
