Trick or treat

It seems everyone has infiltrated those WhatsApp groups of fourteen-year-olds who have "vandalized" (the verb is not mine) several cities, and we have therefore been able to see what's cooking there. "Guys, don't go after the workers!", said one. And he meant that if you have to break shop windows and steal items, they must be “from the rich”. That is, mobile phones and expensive bags. You have to steal from the rich to sell the rich people's stuff and look rich.

Among all the vandals, in those chats (in channels we didn't even know existed), there was one that deserves all our attention. The language of vandal communication was Spanish. But one of them in one of the chats exclaimed: “Is there no one here in Catalan?” And in the face of silence, he repeated: “No one in Catalan?” There was one who replied to him in Spanish: “Me, but I'm mixed-race. Half Catalan, half Russian”.

I don't know if the two hooded ones, the mixed-race guy and the other, continued in private. On Tinder, it seems it's also hard to flirt in Catalan, and perhaps that is why there were two young entrepreneurs from Manresa who set one up, a Tinder, in Catalan.

It is to be hoped that there will be many more vandals in the language of Verdaguer, at least that. “Come on, let's all go and screw the iPhones of these bourgeois devils!”, one would say. “Throw a stone at the Starbucks, the migrant working there will thank you by kissing your eyelids!”, the other will shout. I truly hope that on the day of the Castanyada, they all keep in mind that when it comes time to burn containers, you don't say “trick or treat” but rather “trick or treat”. And keep on burning.