This thing about going to the doctor and expecting him to understand you in Catalan

File image of a doctor in consultation.
11/07/2025
2 min

The company is called Teatro Sin Papeles, which already tells you that those who are part of it "act like dissidents." The kind, controlled, and necessary measure of dissent. Yes, they're called Sin Papeles, but undocumented the administration is not billed, and this work, which has raised dust and has forced several councilors to apologize (I believe them), it was a commission from Barcelona City Council.

In one of the fragments of the piece, the performers say: "What's more important: that I speak Catalan or my health? That I speak Catalan or that I find a job? What's really important?". This dichotomy, as false as it is just, is scripted for us from Madrid, something we are grateful for, because we indigenous people always need to be saved from there. Where have we ever seen such a crazy pretension of going to the doctor and telling him that our liver hurts in our own language? And such self-satisfied protagonists (the play is called Those Latinas). Is it more important that they speak Catalan or their health? Neither. That they find work? Well, for me it's not necessary. But with the play they already have it (I know real actresses who are unemployed).

What's really important, so as not to stop quoting this unbeatable script, is that now, in the talk shows, the moderate right-wing opinion-maker doesn't tell us that "in Vic" (it's always Vic) it's normal for doctors to know Catalan to treat "a grandmother." Because the grandmothers of Vic speak Spanish, there's no need for them to be condescending. Catalan is a language of peasants, yes, luckily, and of grandmothers, yes, and of taxi drivers, and of writers, and ofinfluencersGrandmothers and not-so-grandmothers in Vic and everywhere have the right to be served (and understood) in Catalan, a language that already existed when Columbus, with some missionary friends, went to explore the New World, with the linguistic results we know.

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