News

THE LAST WORD

“A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENED”

Often, the most obvious and simplest statements are the most effective

It was a year that, like all years, a lot of things hap­pened in.” Thus wrote the great Car­rie Fisher in The Princess Di­arist, her hi­lar­i­ous and re­veal­ing mem­oir of what it was like mak­ing the Star Wars movies. The ac­tress who so uniquely played Princess Leia in the se­ries died two years ago, on De­cem­ber 27, 2016. She was only 60 when a car­diac ar­rest pre­ma­turely took this quirky, wise, funny, but also slightly crazy fig­ure, whose death de­servedly dom­i­nated head­lines all over the world. In­cred­i­bly, Car­rie’s mother, the for­mer Hol­ly­wood ac­tress, Deb­bie Reynolds, died of a stroke just one day after her daugh­ter. The two women, who had been es­tranged for years, were thank­fully rec­on­ciled be­fore the dual tragedy struck.

Yet, what in­ter­ests me here is Fisher’s quote above. Often, the most ob­vi­ous and sim­plest state­ments are the most ef­fec­tive, and it’s true that in the past 12 months a lot of things have hap­pened. If you haven’t seen it al­ready, in this month’s issue we have a hand­picked se­lec­tion of some of those events, which took place, month-by-month, in Cat­alo­nia and the wider world (pages 22 to 45).

Re­view­ing the pre­vi­ous 12 months in the De­cem­ber issue of the mag­a­zine has be­come some­thing of a tra­di­tion at Cat­alo­nia Today. I don’t know about you, but I get a kick out of re­fresh­ing my mem­ory, and I can tell you it’s even more fun se­lect­ing the mo­ments to fea­ture, as clearly there are “a lot of things” there just isn’t room to in­clude. Check it out if you haven’t done so al­ready.

At the same time, Fisher’s quote ex­poses the ar­bi­trary na­ture of fram­ing events within a strict 12-month pe­riod. Most events in the news are not self-con­tained is­sues, most of them were al­ready around be­fore Jan­u­ary 1, and most of them will con­tinue into 2019, or even be­yond.

A good ex­am­ple is the sit­u­a­tion of Cata­lan po­lit­i­cal lead­ers held in cus­tody. On the face of it, 2018 was not a good year for the of­fi­cials be­hind last year’s in­de­pen­dence bid. Re­peated calls for their re­lease have fallen on deaf ears, all ap­peals have been re­jected by the courts, and the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor is ask­ing for long prison sen­tences should they be found guilty of re­bel­lion.

Yet, who knows, per­haps when their trial takes place next year they will (un­likely, I know) be ac­quit­ted, or con­victed and then par­doned. Or per­haps they’ll be hit with huge sen­tences that cause such an up­roar it com­pletely rein­vig­o­rates the in­de­pen­dence move­ment? Or fi­nally spurs the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity into re­spond­ing to the po­lit­i­cal con­flict?

In short, a 12-month pe­riod is prob­a­bly too short a win­dow to get a re­ally good han­dle on many of these is­sues. Yet, to my mind that does not in­val­i­date the ef­fort to re­view the re­cent past, as in many cases it serves to high­light top­ics that we need to keep an eye on in the com­ing months. The case of the im­pris­oned lead­ers is cer­tainly one of those.

Where a year in re­view is on firmer ground is when it cov­ers such events as the death of a beloved celebrity. It may be two years ago now, but Star Wars fans – as well as men of a cer­tain age (guilty!) – still re­gret the loss of the great Car­rie Fisher.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.