The sky on September 11th in Barcelona, not because it's centralist but because it's where I live and what's on my mind, outlined from morning until morning the mood with which so many people faced a new Diada. Or Díada, according to the Spanish government. A gray sky, with periods of sunshine; heavy rain, with periods of drizzle. The days of the great independence demonstrations are long gone, and nostalgia is easily triggered. In both senses. The streets belong to state repression and the political incapacity of leaders who had the people but lacked the tools. We gained a few days valuable to remember but fruitless for the present. Recriminations don't advance anything; in fact, they break relationships and hinder any reconciliation. Personalisms bring nothing good to a collective movement that doesn't need martyrs but sound strategies. I don't say this as an easy way. Nor as if the human condition constantly throws us over all kinds of obstacles. But before, we didn't believe it would be easy to mobilize two million people, and people came out to shake the foundations of a political structure that continues to show us the path to dissolution. September 11th has been cloudy for a while, and autumns have stopped being warm.
I am writing this article in Catalan. Like my entire working life, which I have carried out in Catalan. It has no merit. Catalan is my mother tongue. I have always spoken it at home and have been able to use it at work, where the language is my raw material. It has no merit, but it is exceptional. For the generation that preceded me, it wasn't always like this, far from it. For the younger generation, I don't know what it will be like. What we have now is not a good omen. It is a new pressure on language, knowing that language is not only the instrument we use to communicate but also serves to make us who we are, as each of us is with our own language, with no better or worse ones. There are forbidden ones and those imposed. The president of the Generalitat (Catalan regional government), Salvador Illa, announced that the Catalan government would appeal the ruling of the High Court of Justice (TSJC), saying, "We will not allow anyone to make political use of language because it is the worst thing that can be done to promote coexistence." It sounds somewhat naive, that no one should make political use of language, because language is, in itself, a political tool. We've seen it everywhere, not just in Catalonia, where, incidentally, the imposition of Spanish is also political. And, on the other hand, considering that the judiciary is also political, the impasse is quite obvious. Coexistence, for many of these judges, is resolved by everyone speaking the same language. And it's not Catalan, because, as they say, Catalan "violates the rights of the Spanish speaker." In other words, in case it wasn't understood and it's clear: the victim is Spanish. It's like when some people complain that you can't say anything while you're saying it, or when sexist people complain that they can't tie anyone up anymore because of feminists. And the fact that the TSJC ruling was announced the day before the Diada is a bureaucratic coincidence, of course. But nothing, not even the rain, has prevented the unfurling of a flag that could be used to make almost twenty tablecloths.
And while some attack Catalan to save Castilian, others defend the bulls by killing them because "if bullfighting didn't exist, the bull would become extinct." And for the moment, Castilian is not in danger, and neither are the bullfighters. So perhaps, to save Catalan and the bulls from death, we should start doing like them and defend ourselves with arguments totally absurd.
