Without act by the tongue

My godmother only went to school for six years. They left home at eight in the morning. A quarter-hour walk. They had classes until twelve. They returned for lunch. And in the afternoon for another two hours. She died on her 99th birthday. Rosa Finestres Oliva, 1921-2020. I have it all recorded.

I press the button and I hear her singing the songs from the school games: "Bump-bump beetle, / put oil in, put oil in, / bump-bump beetle, / put oil in the light. / Beetle, beetle, guess who got you." More play: "When the father has no bread, / the children, the children / when the father has no bread, the children he makes play. / When the father has no wine, / the children, the children, / when the father has no wine, the children he makes sleep..." She is not here. Nor is her house. Nor is her village, Miralpeix. All flooded by the water of the Rialb reservoir. Now all that remains is what came out of her mouth all her life.

Many Catalan children of 2025 do not understand the language of the godmother's songs. Nor do the teachers who are supposed to teach our children. As future teachers. As linguists, sociolinguists, metalinguists, cunnilinguists... Who must tell us I-don't-know-what-about-the-language. The people who have maintained Catalan have had no education. Respect. And fewer lessons. And fewer surveys, studies, papers, commissions. Come up here and dance.

Here it means that Catalan has been bad for years and years. Anyone who lives in reality knew it, knows it. But no: surveys, studies, papers... Fictions. All these scholars who never leave their offices and crunch numbers, figures, data, permutations, combinations, alliterations about Catalan. And they haven't set foot on any street, Plaza de Catalunya. Defeat. In Catalonia, the balance between theory and practice tips in favor of theory. Theory rules, not knowing the air, the sweat, the lettuce, the mud, the blood... nothing. Catalonia is an office. And here we've closed the language.

The language that conquered the Mediterranean. The language of Ramon Llull, of the popes. The language of everyone. From top to bottom, from bottom to top. Now we want it to be a friendly language, a domestic language, a hamster, a Mexican hat of the Rambla. No language in the world says and does this. We are the losing language of the offices. If we need a pact, it's because there's war. Conflict. And above all because it has been denied for years. "There are problems that the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) would solve more than philologists," Joan Sales and Joan Coromines wrote to each other in June 1959. Laws, not lilies. Laws. And milk, malice. Not light, heavy. Not theories, practices. Jaime I didn't fight shared battles. Language is a single sword.

In 1928, when my godmother sang songs in Catalan, there was no need for a National Language Pact. We were a language, we were a nation. All by transmission. We were. Because language is the landscape, the roads, the birds... We are us. And if you want a pact, it's because there is no action. The only National Language Pact is to speak Catalan. Always Catalan. But saying is one thing, and saying is another. And it hasn't been done for years and years. She has resigned. It's been believed. It's been... Lied about.

There are many studious, thoughtful people with doctorates. A lot of offices. A lot of human furniture. A lot of failed but paid generation. More funeral pomp than Pompeu Fabra. He tried a lot to pass off a war as a treasure hunt. What I'm sure of is that my godmother has done more for the language. A miserable peasant, from a miserable town. More than all those illiterate people. The greatest shame is that a language isn't even good enough to tell the truth. The truth? Pressing the button to hear the voice of the dead.