The Catalan battle is played out in the bars carajilleros. In the mountain ranges of breakfasts. Between lamb ribs and bean and spinach tortillas. Through pig's trotters and fried eggs. Breaking down with lamb shanks and herring. Bread. Wine. Grasiosa. Carajillo. Here is the war.
There are thousands of bars carajilleros In the real Catalonia. Thermometers. Seismograms. Opinion Research Centers that never screw up. Between a plate grilled to the millimeter and scientific lamps in the shirt. Fork and knife demoscopy. The muscle and transmission of Catalan puts all the meat on the grill in the cholesterol tables. There is fact. They are of life. There is life. Behind them there are more hands than skin. They are the Catalans who have raised Catalonia and now are sticking out their bellies. They were already there. Soon they will be gone, but even more so they will have nothing to eat. Not them, not their children, not their grandchildren. Open your mouth. Withdraw your tongue and go: Ahhh…
In 9 out of 10 cases this Ahhh changes its path. Like a herpes outbreak caused by bad news. Ahhh! In Spanish. Mathematically and biologically, in most bars carajilleros Mr. Ramón and Mrs. Pepita are no longer here. Those unbreakable marriages that lived in the bar are gone. Mannequins of everyday life. Before dying, before killing the bar… Their children have wanted to be firefighters, teachers, taxidermists. The bar is being transferred. It's called resurrection. And it takes the remains, movable and immovable, the Romanian, the Bulgarian, the Chinese, the Guatemalan… And it makes the same changed pig's trotters, flame-cooked sardines, smokeless bacon… There has been a transmission of know-how, chup-chup, saó… But the only dish they don't have is Catalan.
You have rooftops with five, ten, fifteen people. All speaking and eating in the language of sausage. And the girl gets all worked up in Spanish. And there's the deal: 15 to 1 and 1 wins. Multiply to infinity bars, shops, streets, impersonal meeting centers, offices with static behavior, dependencies against discrimination against left-handed people… Everything is said and told. We're taking a chance here.
The bars carajilleros They are an army. Every table is a victory. Every soldier in the cheat sheet has a mission. The weapon is in the tongue. They are the CIA. Intelligence, information, transmission, contagion centers. Our war is here. The click. So that everything changes. The somatén. The interrupting institution. The Catalan state. Wait for no one. Here is the army. The Catalan soldiers who have preceded us know it. At the table and in bed, at the first cry.
Joan Sales, officer at the Generalitat's War School. Fog lights. Anti-ruquería. Anti-everything. He said in 1936: "And think of the horrors we could have avoided if last July there had been an Army of Catalonia to confront the fascists and the anarchists at the same time." Losing the country, the people, the language... And going into exile. And to go back in 1948 and say: "I saw my nephews who hadn't read anything in Catalan. I told my eldest nephew, 'Before the war, newspapers were published in Catalan...' and he burst out laughing!" This is happening in 2025.
The godparents' grandchildren carajilleros They speak Spanish. Because the godparents and parents answer in Spanish. And the children of the bar owner, and the grandchildren of those who go to the bar, have their common bar food in Spanish. carajillero Daily. And stuffed to death. As Sales and Joan Coromines used to say: "There are problems that the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) would solve more than philologists." Every bar is a trench.
