On the 9th, the last stage of the Correllengua Agermanat will take place in Brussels, a mobilization that has managed to unite the Catalan Countries, from end to end, in a popular race that is actually a declaration of collective esteem for the Catalan language. The Flame of Language has been passed on, from relay to relay, from hand to hand, through towns, cities, and islands, symbolically drawing a cultural and civic community that recognizes itself by the Catalan language. Everywhere (in Catalonia, in the Valencian Country, in the Balearic Islands, in L'Alguer), participation has been massive and has made the Correllengua Agermanat an act of self-affirmation with a truly massive mobilization capacity. And with a tone —as in Estellés's verse— festive, joyful, and combative, the result of the organization's excellent work, which has also taken up the baton from the history of the different Correllenguas, first celebrated in Mallorca in 1993.Just last Sunday, the Flame arrived in Palma, and the citizens' reception was once again enthusiastic and massive, as it was during the Yes to Language two years ago. The songs of the group Música Nostra (with the singing of La Balanguera as the closing act) and the speeches of the organizers —far from routine, certainly powerful— set the tone for a great civic affirmation of a feeling, but above all of a right: the inalienable right to live fully in one's own language and, therefore, to be the country we are and not another. The Palma event was so successful that the next day the spokesperson for Marga Prohens' party, Sebastià Sagreras, came out to congratulate the organizers of the Correllengua Agermanat and try to put a good face on it. Naturally, the Popular Party (which governs in the Balearic Islands not with the support, but on the orders of Vox) had turned a deaf ear to the call precisely until the moment of seeing (once again) thousands of people clamoring in the street for the language. The linguistic policy of the PP-Vox government in the Balearic Islands consists of suppressing or marginalizing Catalan from public life (in healthcare, in administrations, in education), although at the same time they try to perform a balancing act by avoiding what they call “linguistic confrontation”.Whatever the rulers do, the Correllengua Agermanat leaves a decisive message: there is a living, awake, and organized citizenry and civil society, with a large base of young people who are both children of deeply rooted families and recent immigrants, willing to defend Catalan and Catalan culture as a way of living and being in the world, and who will not allow it to be taken away from them. This realization should not lead to any triumphalism (the very existence of governments with Vox in the Catalan Countries makes the magnitude of the problem quite clear), but above all it nullifies the catastrophic discourses and hate speeches that want to present Catalan as a semi-dead language due to immigration. Enough whining and finger-pointing, and much more Flame.
