Clean up Catalonia TODAY

We weaved down the moun­tain roads to the sea today, on a mis­sion, four adults and one nine-year-old girl. I can barely type this be­cause my hands are still so cold; al­most as cold as my spir­its. But I need to write this now, not later. We need to act now, not later.

Our des­ti­na­tion was the near­est beach, half an hour from the farm - the one that the artist Miro would run to from his masia at Mont-roig and which he im­mor­talised with his brush.

We go oc­ca­sion­ally in the qui­eter, cooler sea­sons to wan­der and breathe, but this time, mo­ti­vated by our daugh­ter Ella to do what we can to stem a dread­ful tide, our sin­gu­lar thought was to dis­cover and gather what plas­tic and other waste lit­tered the sand.

I was going to ask you to guess how much we re­moved in two hours, from just a 400-metre frag­ment of the pre­cious Cata­lan coast­line, but I can’t. You need to see it for your­selves.

Yes, that’s right. Ei­ther lying on or buried in the sand, or caught be­tween the rocks of a pier, we re­moved the fol­low­ing…

- FOUR fire ex­tin­guish­ers, one of which still con­tained blue mono am­mo­nium phos­phate ABC pow­der.

- 20KG+ of black plas­tic in a knot­ted ball. It took two of us to lift it. At least the same amount again re­mains wedged in the rocks.

- The inner tube of a trac­tor tyre.

- A bun­dle of nylon fish­ing net and line.

- A bro­ken plas­tic chair.

- Three buck­ets full of gen­eral plas­tic and metal de­bris, in­clud­ing straws, bot­tle tops, a san­dal, fenc­ing, food con­tain­ers and bro­ken scis­sors.

All this and more from just 300 me­tres of Cat­alo­nia’s 580 km shore­line. And that was only the waste par­ti­cles vis­i­ble to the eye.

I have been bang­ing the table about how ap­palling the lit­ter prob­lem is, how blind we have be­come, and I won’t stop. We as a species need to wake up NOW. Our rivers, oceans and planet are in cri­sis be­cause of us. And here, at home, in Cat­alo­nia, we as a peo­ple need to act in­de­pen­dently, to show Iberia, Eu­rope and the world, lead the world. We must take ac­tion now, both to clear the waste and also against any­one who is ir­re­spon­si­ble. If you harm the en­vi­ron­ment you should be pros­e­cuted and, more, be ashamed.

But it should a pos­i­tive move­ment, first and fore­most, a cel­e­bra­tion of what we cher­ish, and with an iron will to live sus­tain­able lives, with a col­lec­tive, so­cial move­ment to im­prove our en­vi­ron­ment, our streets, towns, beaches and coun­try­side, to cleanse them and cher­ish them. Our chil­dren will learn by a very dif­fer­ent ex­am­ple.

Let there be, at the very least, an an­nual CLEAN UP CAT­ALO­NIA DAY, of­fi­cial or un­of­fi­cial, with com­mu­ni­ties work­ing to­gether, shar­ing the load, reap­ing the good­ness.

Please look again at the pho­to­graph. Un­be­liev­able? No. The truth.

Think how you can make a dif­fer­ence. Join us in tak­ing di­rect ac­tion.

Visca Catalunya.

P.S. And if any­one dares to admit los­ing a pair of Real Madrid shorts, we have found them too.