Dear Eduard,
We've never met before, nor have we ever met in person, but, like so many Catalans over the years you worked as a journalist, you are part of my memory. I don't remember when you became part of my daily life, but I only need to see a photograph of you to hear your voice inside my head, with that slightly sleepy, calm, and elegant tone. Although sports held no interest for me (I only paid attention to you when you talked about tennis), your face was attractive to me, and, like other colleagues of yours, your daily presence became embedded in what I now call memory. You already know that those of you who enter homes are very important, no matter what you say or think, so that you become familiar to thousands of strangers. You journalists in the audiovisual media have an influence that goes beyond simply reporting. And in the case of TV3, your relevance is also linguistic. Imagine, then, dear Eduardo, how important it was for my brothers and me, those young Moors who were learning Catalan in school and receiving sports news in the evenings in this language, freeing it from the strictly academic sphere, which is the way languages are real and, therefore, are charged with it. When we, the Moors aspiring to be new Catalans, saw you, Eduard, we thought you were also speaking to us, that as viewers we were equal to those born to Catalan parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. We didn't feel excluded from public television, we couldn't even imagine that that information, that content in the language we were learning, wasn't for us. Perhaps naively, because we didn't know the political context of the society we were integrating into, we thought that TV3 was also "ours," everyone's. But even my mother, who had never liked television and didn't master the language like we did, became fond of it. New Town.
I know that times have changed and that it may seem like the "new Catalans" of today aren't like us, but it was also said about us that it would be impossible for us to adapt. And look, all of them are deeply rooted. To the point that sometimes my mother complains about having grandchildren who "only speak Catalan." Grandchildren who grow up normally, believing they are like their "lifelong" peers, even though they are also "lifelong" peers, and have known nothing else. When I read that you not only joined the Catalan Alliance but that you are willing to take advantage of the fact that you know most of the executives of our public media to introduce Silvia Orriols's speech, I thought that perhaps you don't know the devastating effects that the ideology promoted by this party has on the lives of real people like my children, my children, so many people. We will be singled out and targeted, subjected to discrimination in every sphere, and those who concealed their racism will feel legitimized to practice it without qualms. While we are still fighting and defending ourselves in our daily lives from the numerous grievances we already experience, the spread of the ideas of the Catalan Alliance will open the floodgates, legitimizing the hatred of those who concealed it. And our lives will be worse, but so will that of the society we all form, not just those Catalans with eight surnames. Will you sleep peacefully, dear Eduard, actively participating in the spread of that hatred, in the unjust construction of a scapegoat that is us? How should I do it now to erase your voice from my memory, to accept that you weren't speaking to me too and that my children have no place in your idea of a country?
