To speak Catalan and something else

Happy coincidence: the two books most sold by Sant Jordi share the fact of being written with a lot of humor. The fiction of Crispetes de matinada is a wisely managed festival of hilarious situations, conversations, and thoughts, and the non-fiction of Manual de defensa del català (yes, unfortunately, it is non-fiction) presents itself to readers with humor that acts like the mustard and ketchup that make a shoe-sole type burger digestible.

In other words, Regina Rodríguez Sirvent and Òscar Andreu keep high one of the traditionally high pillars of Catalan culture, which is the sense of humor that makes you laugh while saying very serious things. And both also share the fact of belonging to families where Spanish has been present at home but it has been in Catalan that they have written and said what they wanted to say.

The first is written from the happiness that is possible to find (provided we don't expect the delivery person to bring it to us) and to the second we must be grateful that it has made us feel accompanied, but not in the feeling, but, on the contrary, remembering what Pere Calders used to say and which he collects: “I haven't seen pessimism serve any purpose [...], pessimism is absolutely useless and, on the other hand, optimism I know for a fact has served to save a lot of situations”. If to this positive spirit we add Carme Junyent's cry for Catalan (“Speak it!”), all that will be missing are the necessary economic resources for all those new citizens who these days are queuing to get their papers to join Catalan. We are going from the “Hispanic-Catalan city” that Raimon sang about to the Hispanic-American-Catalan city that we are now. The work is immense.