Catalonia No(rd)
Catalonia is a great godfather factory. Our R&D is our grandparents. We have a nursery where the winter of life grows. From Maria Branyas, who at 117 became the oldest person on earth, to Sheriff Josep Vallverdú, who is already approaching 102. Piñau-pinyau.
Yes, one of the Catalan grandparents who has caused the most talk is a warrior. The lord of the warlike seafood feasts of dead fireflies from the First World War: Marshal Josep Joffre. His bayonet-mustaches led France to victory. The deluded Catalans believe that the great war will bring its own little peace. That the new Europe will recognize a free Catalonia. And that that soldier from Ribesaltes, from Northern Catalonia, who was our brother from above, would also help us. That's why we like to solve laughter and tears at the table of dialogue: in the alifara, food and drink, and screw the rotito and the verse: they invited him to the national garden center moldy.
In 1919, an official delegation from the Commonwealth of Catalonia went to Perpignan. Guerrero Joffre, we asked you to preside over the 1920 Floral Games in Barcelona. He said: Yes! And another war began: a diplomatic conflict between Spain and France. He had a weapon of mass destruction. And when he got on the train, he showed it to his wife: "Now we can speak Catalan!"
He was dressed as a general. With medals on his chest, he commanded an army of naturalness: he was just another Catalan among those on the train. But he fired left and right: he never stopped chattering in Catalan. And he launched a public missile: "Upon arriving on Catalan soil, that country I have known and loved for so many years, I greet all the brother people of my Roussillon." In Barcelona, he threw another tomahawk Native: "When I'm in Barcelona, I feel like I'm home." The city explodes like an atomic fiesta. In Canaletes, people snap with lost happiness and force him to cross the Rambla as if a heroic astronaut had returned. The other side is firing from their neurons. what does it say on your IDAnd even the monarchy is burning. Joffre shows the conflict as the battlefield.
Before the arrival of the soldier, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, president of the Mancomunitat (Catalan Commonwealth), the first Catalan army since 1714, issued the final war communiqué: Catalonia is like "a devastated area of Europe." And he calls for "every effort to be made if we want to save Catalonia and continue our work of returning it to itself: if not, within a few years we will be as far from Europe as the states that intervene with conquest operations; and neither commerce, nor industry, nor the efforts for our culture will be possible."
A century later, the delegate of the Generalitat (Catalan Government) in Perpignan refuses to use "Catalunya Nord" out of "institutional neutrality" and justifies it by saying that he respects the French name for the Eastern Pyrenees. This is also a war communiqué. He informs us that Grandfather Joffre has been killed, that the landscape and feelings have been conquered by the occupier. And only the battle of names remains. The officer shows us the mirror of the conflict: the Catalonia of the South will become the Catalonia of the North.
In Barcelona, Joffre fell dead in 1942. The street that bore his name becomes Avenida Borbón. They finish him off in the transition-pansition-pacification when he becomes the Fifteen. We lose names, streets, people searching for a peace that exists neither in heaven nor on earth. We are always moral heroes, but we lack real heroes. We lose wanting to win. But to win, you need soldiers. To win is to shoot, and we have the weapon that Joffre had: calling things by their name and in their language.