Living in a minority

We Catalans have internalized our minority status and, therefore, we have internalized all the psychological resources necessary to survive with all kinds of misunderstandings, simulations, aspirations, real achievements and resounding failures in the difficult task of surviving in a world that is not exactly as we would like it to be.

But there are weeks when you feel as if the circle is tightening even more around you. For example, I am part of the 32% of the population that has Catalan as their habitual language. Or I am part of the 46% of Barcelonans who were born in Barcelona. You think about it and it is as if you carry an extra weight of representation and need for commitment. If this is a battle, we ourselves are already in the trenches. And then you read in the media that two million people want to learn Catalan and that there is a lack of courses, spaces, teachers, money, that a movement called "Spanish for everyone" and after telling you "how we should see each other", you seriously consider becoming someone's linguistic partner, like when they say on the radio that there is a shortage of blood and you go into a bank to give it.

Now there is also a lack of blood, but not the kind that is shed, God protect us, but the kind that runs through our veins, the kind that makes us commit ourselves while we try not to lose our strength through our mouths. What we cannot do is live with and without trust, nor think that because we are in the minority we are going to solve it by voting for those who hate. The curious thing is that we are not the only ones whose life belt is being tightened. Europe is becoming aware that it is a minority. Trump stirs up alleged grievances against white Americans, just as Putin's Russia has always fed on grievances against Russia. But they play at being a minority. Worse still, they play at being victims.