The reasons for such irreverence

I've been pondering for some time whether one of the main moral characteristics of our country isn't irreverence. I say this in general terms, but when the Christmas holidays arrive, everything I see confirms it. To be more precise: we are irreverent with tradition, with the past, and with everything that identifies us as a historical nation. And, at the same time, reverential with the new, with intellectual trends, and with everything that comes from abroad. It's a distinctive trait of the Catalan character. Or, at least, of the dominant thought, even if it remains relatively disconnected from what guides genuine individual lifestyles.

It's not that I want to compete with what Josep Ferrater i Mora called "the ways of Catalan life." The philosopher, from exile and still with the memory of the Civil War fresh in his mind, imagined us in 1955 as sensible, measured, ironic, and steadfast in our continuity as a people. I must confess that I have never been convinced by approaches that presuppose a collective psychology of peoples. Moreover, if, since Ferrater and Mora wrote their essay, population growth in Catalonia alone has meant going from three and a half million to more than eight million inhabitants—almost two and a half times—assuming the permanence of those traits would be a pipe dream.

However, I am aware that I am now falling into the same psychological trap. But festive cycles like Christmas clearly demonstrate the irreverence towards one's own traditions, precisely for the sake of respect for those of other peoples who came later. Dr. Anna Jolonch explained this in detail in this newspaper a few days ago with regard to the school system in "Christmas in schools: anything new?And it's the same thing we see in many municipalities where all the Christmas decorations ignore the religious origins of the holiday and are reduced to stimulating commerce. From the definitions of Catalan identity by Pere Coromines or Rafael Campalans, and even those of President Jordi Pujol or Paco Candel, we have been—and still are—more xenophilic than xenophobic in our environment. It is true that in the case of Coromines, Campalans, Pujol, or Candel, their perspectives had a context that presupposed linguistic, cultural, and political "integration" into the nation.

In short, the question I raise is twofold. First, whether this thesis about irreverence towards our own culture and reverence for foreign cultures is consistent and could be demonstrated more solidly than with an opinion piece like this one. And second, if the thesis were plausible, we would have to ask what the reason is for such cultural flexibility and malleability of identity. To confirm my thesis, some systematic and comparative studies would have to be carried out. And I have some suspicions about the reasons for this irreverence.

Specifically, I suspect that due to the lack of strong power structures, those of an independent state, we Catalans have not only been weak in defending our own identifying characteristics, but we have ended up turning that weakness into a virtue for the sake of survival. Probably, a strong stance in defending who we are, without the tools to make it possible, would have led to our disappearance. So, the only way to resist, nationally speaking, to give "continuity" to Catalan identity—in the sense of Ferrater and Mora—paradoxically, would have been to be flexible, sometimes docile, to avoid being uprooted by the State that wanted, and still wants, to assimilate us.

I think this thesis is well exemplified in the field of artistic creation. Not only by our willingness to quickly absorb the latest global trends, but also by our obedience to the logic of breaking with our own tradition and showing a great inferiority complex regarding everything that is our own and authentic. This is evident, among other things, in our reluctance to demand a neat and polished use of the Catalan language, in our forgetting of the great thinkers of less than fifty years ago—absent from our universities—or in our notable disdain for our own literary and musical past of the 20th century. Yes: we Catalans are also what we ignore!