This is a translation of an article written in 2008 by Quim Torra, who is now the Premier of
Catalonia. The racism and hatred of everything Spanish is now the guiding thread of his government.
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At home there was an old copy of a book that all my brothers and
sisters had read When the beasts could talk by Manuel Folch i Torres. Father
was unbending and, like The Rose and the Ring by Thackeray and Bolavà by Josep
Maria Folch, he felt that nobody could grow up without reading them. It was a delightful
book in which lettuces, bears, elephants, deer and bumblebees could talk, a collection
of fables intended for the education of children.
Now look at your country and the beasts are talking again. But they’re
of a different type. Carrion-eaters, vipers, hyenas. Beasts in human shape but who
savour hate. A disturbed, nauseating hate, like mouldy false teeth, against
everything that the Catalan language represents.
They are here, among us. They find any expression of Catalan-ness
repugnant. It is a sick phobia. There is something Freudian in these beasts. Or
a small blip in their DNA chain. Poor individuals! They live in a country of which
they know nothing: its culture, its traditions, its history. They move around impermeable
to any event that represents Catalan reality. It brings them out in a rash. They
are repelled by anything that is not Spanish and written in the Spanish language.
The beasts are well known. We all know one of them. There are lots of them,
the beasts. They live, die and multiply. The other day one of them caused an incident
that hasn’t got to Catalonia and is worth explaining as an extraordinary example
of the beastliness of these beings. Poor beasts, they can’t help it.
One of the few airlines that accept the Catalan language as normal is
Swiss. If you have taken any of their flights to the old Confederation, you
will have noticed that they use our language on take-off and landing. An
exception since unfortunately, with the other companies, we are treated exactly
as what we are, the last colony in Europe.
Well, a couple of weeks ago one of these beasts was travelling on a
Swiss flight. On arrival, there was the typical announcement in Catalan prior
to landing. The beast, automatically, foamed rabidly at the mouth. A stench
like a sewer came from her seat. She stirred restlessly, desperately, horrified
at hearing four words in Catalan. She had no way out. A mucous sweat, as of a
flu-ridden toad, poured from her armpits. Just imagine her, the beast, after so
much time (!), those however, can live in their Spanish world with no problems,
hearing four words in a language that she hates. Indignant, she decided to
write a letter to a German newspaper in Zurich, complaining about how she had
been treated as "her rights had been violated", Spanish being the
"first official language of Spain ", and the beast’s complaint was published
on a full page.
Thank God, the good friends of the Catalan Centre in Zurich replied
putting the matter straight, just a small centre acting thanks to the decency and
dignity of its members.
But why should it be necessary to take action every time? When will the
beasts stop attacking? In 2008 how can we put up with so much strife, so much humiliation
and so much disdain?
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The Catalan original can be found here.
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