History

Blue and Red and Gold

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

 

Two big pieces of news here.
One is the World Cup final which takes place tonight and will be a match between Spain and Holland. As a Scot I always have to resolve the vexed question of who to support when England has qualified and Scotland has not. I’m not very interested in football but I do get annoyed when people assume that I want England to win when it really doesn’t feel like my country. And something rather similar is the case here in Catalunya but it is also more complicated. As the graffiti says, Catalunya is Not Espanya! Catalunya is officially an Autonomous Region but to the majority of Catalans it is a country with its own language, culture, customs and history. Catalans do not feel they are Spanish which is why it feels complicated to support La Roja. At the start of play in the semi final 7 out of the team of 11 were players from Barça – the Barcelona football team inspires love, respect, admiration, adoration, obsession from people of all ages here and beyond. On nights when Barça plays you don’t need to watch TV – you know when there is a goal as the streets thunder with explosions and horns tooting. And if they win – cars stream along with horns never stopping and scarves and shirts hanging from the windows. Sounds from the streets after the match were loud and excited but to my ears rather less than after a Barça/Madrid game. Four of the eleven players in the semi final were Catalan. So although it is not the national team which would swell the hearts of people here it is also hard to ignore the match tonight. Mixed and complicated emotions.

Connected to this and even more complicated is the news of the demonstration yesterday which took place in Barcelona. I have struggled to get a good enough grip on the facts so I can write about it here. But in brief, the Catalunian government created a constitutional law called the Estatut. It describes how the people want the country to be organised and what is the vision for the future. But while Catalan people see themselves as a nation the Spanish government see Catalunya as no more than a region and herein lies a quagmire of power struggles, reactions, fear and anger, frustration and suppression. Within the Spanish state there is a lot of fear of Catalan independence. Financially Catalunya is a wealthy region and pays a lot into the central coffers while receiving less in return. What things make up a separate identity? Culture, history, laws, taxes, self determination, education and language. If you want to suppress a culture these are the areas to try and control. And as the Estatut gives the Catalan people rights to organise and control these areas there was a reaction from the Spanish government especially in the guise of the PP – the Spanish Right Wing party. They took the Estatut to court and in the past few days the verdict has been announced. Some parts are deemed unacceptable and others need to be changed. Now that I have read through more of the detail I can see why yesterday more than one million people – ONE MILLION – marched through the streets of Barcelona to protest that Catalunya should decide on its future. That Catalunya is not a small region of Spain and that now it seems that full independence is the only way forward.
All the areas I mentioned above are under attack –
* Catalunya should not call itself a nation
* Catalan language should not take precedence in Catalunya
* Catalan government cannot make decisions on creation of taxes
* Only the Spanish government can control and oversee Catalan banks
* As it is not a nation it cannot possess a national flag nor a national anthem
….and more…look at this site if you want to know more – its in english written by a Catalan man who lives in Holland.
I watch all this of course from the outer edges – it is interesting and also another little minefield to tread and I try to remember not to say the wrong things or put my foot in it too deeply. After years of being ‘anti english’ in Scotland, ‘anti carnivores’ as a vegetarian and more than a little ‘anti men’ as a feminist I am now more pro things than anti and I don’t like to feel carried along on emotions which make me forget my humanity or stop thinking critically. But…I can see there is a problem here – there is something out of balance and eventually there will be a shift.
The newspaper headline at the beginning of this post says ‘Catalunya shouts ENOUGH!’ I begin to think an independent Catalunya could be a positive way forward and it is an interesting time to be here and part of the story.

Bon Any 2010

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

 

Because I am not in the UK I am not sure what ‘we’ are calling this new year.

Is it Two Thousand and Ten or Twenty Ten or just Ten?

I heard that some people here are calling it Any Deu – ‘year ten’ in Catalan but generally it is Dos Mil Deu. When deu is accented – ‘Déu’- it is the word for god but my ear still can’t tell the difference except when I hear Adéu (goodbye) and the vowel sound is often very long.
I brought in the new year on the Costa Brava in a beautiful place called Port de la SelvaWe drove there one morning without anywhere booked to stay which felt very much more the Catalan way than the British one! In Cornwall this would result in a very stressful search for a room at one of the years busiest times. But the Costa Brava is a summer destination so we easily found a small apartment overlooking the harbour with the mountains in the distance and again amazingly there was no problem about the presence of one DogThe first morning there was a very small market with fruit, vegetables and lots of pork! Also CDs and I bought one by Joan Manuel Serrat who is a Catalan singer-songwriter. In 1968 Spain entered him in the Eurovision Song Contest but later withdrew him when he asked to sing in his native Catalan. This was during the Franco years when the Catalan language was repressed by the dictatorship. Serrat’s records were then banned.
It is a short drive across the border to France or Catalunya Nord as it is also called as it was historically a part of Catalunya. We stopped to eat crepes in Colliure a beautiful medieval town which has attracted many artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque and the British writer Patrick O’Brian (Master and Commander) who lived here for many years.Another day we walked up to the Benedictine monastery Sant Pere de Rodes which nestles on the hillside. Its origins date from the 1st century and it used to be a centre of political power..It is very windy at Cap de Creus and any shelter is welcomeThe area is often blasted by a north wind called Tramuntana(beyond mountains) and although I don’t think it was blowing that day it was still almost unbearably cold. But out of the wind…..also very peacefulOn the way home a visit to the nature reserves at Aiguamolls de L’Empordà
It is one of the most important staging posts in Europe for the Spring and Autumn migrations of millions of birds crossing the Mediterranean to and from AfricaIt is protected and yet much smaller than in the past due to land drainage and development. If you want to see what can happen when development is permitted then look no further than nearby Empuriabrava a development build on the marshes begun in the 60’s and now an eyesore on the horizon. But thanks to a campaign that began in 1976 the whole coast has not disappeared under concrete and there is still a haven here albeit much smaller than before. I thought of all the birds which may stop off here on their long journey to Penwith. Here I saw my first storks – not nesting on cartwheels but on special platforms in a large colony.