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6 April 2025 2.00 h

Neil Stokes

Journalist and Catalonia today contributor

“This is my homage to Catalonia”

Catalonia Through English Eyes 20 Years Living Among the Catalans Author: Neil Stokes Pages: 180 Publisher: Unhinged Books
“I’ve tried to appeal to both foreigners and natives. As an expat who’s well integrated, I’m in a good position to achieve that”

Neil Stokes has con­tributed to Cat­alo­nia Today for over 20 years. Here he talks about his new book, Cat­alo­nia Through Eng­lish Eyes, a se­lec­tion of opin­ion ar­ti­cles about his adopted home pub­lished in the mag­a­zine over the past two decades.

Why did you come to Cat­alo­nia 30 years ago and what in­spired you to stay?
After uni­ver­sity I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do as a pro­fes­sion and so I thought I’d travel around Eu­rope. I ap­plied for a job as an Eng­lish teacher in Barcelona – it was ac­tu­ally Sabadell but I thought I was going to Barcelona – and as I en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence I stayed an­other year. Then I stayed an­other year, then I met the woman who be­came my wife, and then we bought a house, and then we had chil­dren, and be­fore I knew it I was here for good. But I don’t re­gret it and one rea­son I wrote this book was to pay my own homage to Cat­alo­nia.
The book con­tains opin­ion ar­ti­cles writ­ten over two decades. How did you de­cide which pieces to in­clude?
In 20 years I’ve writ­ten hun­dreds of opin­ion ar­ti­cles of dif­fer­ent types but when I thought about com­pil­ing a book it seemed clear it had to be with ar­ti­cles about Cat­alo­nia. They deal with dif­fer­ent as­pects of life here: the peo­ple, the tra­di­tions, the pol­i­tics, the food, the sport, and so on.
The title sug­gests a unique out­sider’s per­spec­tive. How do you think your Eng­lish back­ground shaped your ob­ser­va­tions of Cata­lan so­ci­ety?
I still feel very Eng­lish even after liv­ing here for so long, but I also feel well in­te­grated into Cata­lan so­ci­ety. Half my fam­ily is Cata­lan, even my chil­dren are Cata­lan. Cata­lan is my sec­ond lan­guage. I live a life that’s much the same as any Cata­lan per­son. I still drink Eng­lish tea and I’ll some­times make Eng­lish food, like shep­herd’s pie. I still fol­low my home­town foot­ball club Ever­ton. That puts me in a po­si­tion with a foot in each world and I wanted to lever­age that for the book.
Cat­alo­nia has un­der­gone major po­lit­i­cal up­heavals in 20 years. How did events like the 2017 in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum in­flu­ence your writ­ing?
I’ve wit­nessed lots of land­mark mo­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, the po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion has been dra­matic at times, com­ing to a head with the in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum. I was al­ways re­luc­tant to pin my colours to the mast of in­de­pen­dence, which doesn’t mean I’m not gen­er­ally in favour. I think in a free so­ci­ety peo­ple should choose how they want to live their lives and I also buy the ar­gu­ment that things would prob­a­bly be bet­ter and more pros­per­ous in an in­de­pen­dent Cat­alo­nia. Yet I’ve al­ways kept a dis­tance from the issue and in this case it’s worked to my ad­van­tage be­cause I’ve been able to wit­ness the process more ob­jec­tively than if I were fully in on it.
What’s a mis­con­cep­tion about Cat­alo­nia and the Cata­lans that you hope your book might cor­rect?
I hope these columns show Cata­lans as a na­tion with their own cul­ture and dis­tinct­ness. What­ever side of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide you are on and what­ever your opin­ion of Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence, I don’t think any­one can hon­estly deny that this place has its own dis­tinct cul­tural and na­tional iden­tity. The fact that this has re­mained un­changed all the years I’ve been here is ev­i­dence that it’s for real and not just a fash­ion or po­lit­i­cal pos­tur­ing. From the day I ar­rived, it was made clear to me that this is not Spain and even today with the pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment run­ning out of steam a lit­tle, I see that the peo­ple around me are still very strongly com­mit­ted to their na­tional iden­tity, lan­guage, cus­toms, tra­di­tions, his­tory, and so on. I hope the book makes that clear, es­pe­cially to peo­ple who aren’t Cata­lan or who don’t un­der­stand how a lot of peo­ple here feel.
The sub­ti­tle, 20 Years Liv­ing Among the Cata­lans, hints at a per­sonal con­nec­tion. Is there a mo­ment from your life that’s had a pro­found im­pact on you?
One thing that made a big im­pres­sion on me was the first time I ever dreamt in Cata­lan. The Cata­lan lan­guage is very im­por­tant in Cat­alo­nia as a linch­pin of na­tional iden­tity in a way that’s not the same in other coun­tries. For ex­am­ple, in Scot­land they have a strong na­tional iden­tity but very few peo­ple speak their tra­di­tional Gaelic lan­guage. In Cat­alo­nia, na­tional iden­tity is strongly linked with the lan­guage. I don’t re­mem­ber now what the dream was about but I re­mem­ber wak­ing up sur­prised, think­ing: “Oh my god, I just had a dream en­tirely in Cata­lan.” After that I felt that I’d ar­rived.
How did writ­ing opin­ion pieces for a mixed au­di­ence of both ex­pats and lo­cals shape your ap­proach?
Cat­alo­nia Today has al­ways tar­geted two au­di­ences: for­eign­ers who live here and have a strong con­nec­tion with the place and who want to know about what’s going on in a lan­guage that per­haps they are more com­fort­able with than Span­ish or Cata­lan, but also Cata­lan peo­ple with good Eng­lish who are in­ter­ested in read­ing about their coun­try, their cul­ture, their tra­di­tions, and so on, but in Eng­lish. So I tried to do what this pub­li­ca­tion has al­ways done, which is ap­peal to both sides. My sit­u­a­tion as an expat who’s well in­te­grated puts me in a good po­si­tion to be able to achieve that I think.
What might Eng­lish-speak­ing read­ers abroad take away from the book?
I don’t know what ap­peal it might have for Eng­lish speak­ers who don’t know Cat­alo­nia well, who don’t have a strong con­nec­tion with the place. I’ve made no at­tempt to ex­plain what a calçotada is or the dif­fer­ence be­tween Es­querra Re­pub­li­cana and Junts per Catalunya. I’ve as­sumed that the peo­ple read­ing it al­ready know those things be­cause they live here, whether they are for­eign­ers or na­tives. Hav­ing said that, it could ap­peal to an Eng­lish-speak­ing au­di­ence abroad in the sense that if they have any in­ter­est in Cat­alo­nia or have vis­ited Barcelona and are cu­ri­ous about know­ing more, it might en­cour­age them to learn more. And they’ve al­ways got Google if they want to look up calçotada.
How did it feel to re­visit 20 years of your writ­ing? Are there any ar­ti­cles that sur­prised you when you looked back?
It was ter­ri­fy­ing to go back over 20 years be­cause, of course, it makes you feel old, but it was also in­ter­est­ing. The process of se­lect­ing the ar­ti­cles in many cases made me see how much my opin­ions have changed, but also how many of them haven’t changed. I didn’t or­gan­ise the book chrono­log­i­cally; I mixed it up. I thought that read­ing seven ar­ti­cles about the in­de­pen­dence process one after an­other would get bor­ing. I wouldn’t pick out any par­tic­u­lar ar­ti­cle, but I do think there’s some in­ter­est in see­ing how the same is­sues keep on com­ing up, which might make you think that no progress has been made in cer­tain areas, but at the same time re­in­forces how im­por­tant these is­sues are to Cata­lans in gen­eral.
This is your first book, and you said that you have many more opin­ion ar­ti­cles. Can we ex­pect an­other vol­ume in the fu­ture?
This book con­tains 70 opin­ion ar­ti­cles but I have many opin­ion ar­ti­cles that I’ve writ­ten for Cat­alo­nia Today over 20 years. This se­lec­tion is about Cat­alo­nia and Cata­lan life, but I have a bunch of ar­ti­cles I’ve writ­ten that have noth­ing to do with Cat­alo­nia, which are just about things in gen­eral. So I’ve cer­tainly got enough pieces in the archive to do an­other book, but whether I do that will of course de­pend on how well this one does. If there’s some in­ter­est in the idea of trac­ing how other is­sues have de­vel­oped over a pe­riod of 20 years from this par­tic­u­lar per­spec­tive, I could cer­tainly do a sec­ond vol­ume. But for me, the most im­por­tant thing was to get this book out, as my trib­ute to Cat­alo­nia. What­ever comes next is in the hands of the gods.

in­ter­view Books

A dual perspective

The book’s foreword is written by former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, who took Neil on as a budding journalist soon after he launched Catalonia Today 20 years ago. In the foreword, Puigdemont points out that the publication and Neil have “grown together” and that “in this collection, the reader can follow the steps that the author has taken in this personal and professional process”. The founder of Catalonia Today also points to the “dual perspective” the book offers, “that of a Catalan who knows and loves the country, and that of an Englishman who is able, without too much effort, to put himself in the shoes of someone who is looking at us from the outside”.

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