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.