MYTHS IN THE MAKING

Every coun­try comes up with myths about it­self. It is an un­avoid­able el­e­ment of forg­ing a na­tional iden­tity, even if the ac­tual truth may be quite dif­fer­ent. In fact, as every­one knows, it is the blend of re­al­ity and fic­tion that makes for a good myth. And we should not un­der­es­ti­mate the im­por­tance of myths: in coun­tries all over the world many peo­ple have been will­ing to lay down their lives to de­fend a na­tion whose iden­tity and cul­ture may have been built on the half truths en­shrined in its na­tional myths.

Take my coun­try, Eng­land, for ex­am­ple. When the Ro­mans left, myth has it that a local chief­tain pulled a magic sword from a stone, ral­lied his peo­ple and held back the waves of Saxon in­vaders bent on pil­lage and con­quest. Over the fol­low­ing cen­turies, the leg­end of King Arthur de­vel­oped into what it has be­come today: the round table, the search for the Holy Grail, Ex­cal­ibur, Lancelot, and so on.

How much of that story is true is any­one’s guess, but for it to be a func­tion­ing myth there has to be a ker­nel of truth to it. Per­haps there was one, or even a few, local war­lords who did re­sist the in­vaders fill­ing the vac­uum left in Eng­land when the le­gions re­turned to Rome. That is all it might have taken for this shad­owy semi-his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter to be­come a sym­bol of na­tional re­sis­tance, an ex­am­ple for pa­tri­ots to fol­low, a means of mo­ti­vat­ing a de­fence of the home­land.

Cat­alo­nia, of course, is no dif­fer­ent. The na­tional an­them, Els segadors, con­jures up a de­ter­mined peas­ant army de­feat­ing their en­e­mies with their stout scythes, for ex­am­ple. Or take the fall of Barcelona to Bour­bon troops in 1714 and how the ac­tual his­tor­i­cal de­tails of that story prob­a­bly mat­ter less to most peo­ple than the idea of re­cov­er­ing their lost na­tional rights.

In this issue we also dip into that grey area be­tween leg­end and his­tory with the story of Arnau Mir de Tost, in the re­port on pages 26-31. This 11th-cen­tury no­ble­man, who be­came a great war­lord due to his con­quests over the Mus­lims in the area now known as Po­nent, has gone on to earn him­self the moniker of Lleida’s El Cid, and the re­mains of his ex­ploits can still be seen, and vis­ited, today in the 30 bor­der cas­tles and for­ti­fi­ca­tions he left be­hind.

Arnau was a real man, but one who lived so long ago it is hard to say what his mo­ti­va­tions re­ally were. The war­lord may just have been in­ter­ested in mak­ing him­self rich and pow­er­ful, and yet today we credit him with help­ing to forge the ori­gins of mod­ern-day Cat­alo­nia. This coun­try and so­ci­ety has been rocked by po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­ity in re­cent times, and it is hav­ing to deal with the re­ver­ber­a­tions of that un­cer­tainty and con­flict. It is at times like this that our na­tional myths come into their own. The real Arnau ob­vi­ously had no un­der­stand­ing of Cat­alo­nia be­cause such a place did not yet exist. How­ever, as a sym­bol of strength and de­ter­mined re­sis­tance, myth­i­cal fig­ures like that of Arnau can help to pro­vide us with the strength to carry on.