Look how big the Sant Jordi festival is, that every year it completely bypasses all the country's news agendas and reduces the day's events to the category of “the rest of the day's news”.
Tomorrow, the queues of people to regularize their status will be news, but not much. Queues in front of the administration, as has been seen. It couldn't be known what would happen. As a welcome, it's not badly conceived: in a country where teachers, doctors, farmers, the self-employed, applicants for aid to install solar panels, and so on to infinity complain about bureaucracy, the new citizens with full rights have had to also taste the bread that is given. When it came to queuing, there was indeed no “national priority”. Everyone the same: queues and unclear instructions.
There is also no national priority for celebrating Sant Jordi, which is for everyone who wants to enjoy it. And such a big festival —however much editorial interests inflate it and the Catalan communication system multiplies it— deserves respect, because it speaks of the society that invented it, and it speaks very well of it. So tomorrow is, among other things, a day of national self-esteem for Catalonia, always so watched, and now especially watched, lest we exceed the permitted grams of self-esteem in blood. Sant Jordi gives society a formidable boost, which we must know how to take advantage of to complain less and earn more. Thousands of people will experience their first Sant Jordi in Catalonia tomorrow, and thousands of Catalans scattered around the world will experience it with longing. We remember them from afar with a rose.
