IN THE PEN

The Cata­lan writer and broad­caster Àngel Casas has just brought out a col­lec­tion of anti-Christ­mas poems, which I haven’t yet read but which I imag­ine echo the com­plaints about this an­nual fes­ti­val that have been around for decades; namely, that it’s too com­mer­cial (I’ve been hear­ing that one since I was about six); or that it’s bad for us to eat so much turkey and drink so much wine, and so on and so forth. Well, I for one — and I can’t be the only one — still love Christ­mas, and es­pe­cially the way it’s cel­e­brated in Cat­alo­nia, what with the feed­ing of a log which is later beaten to make it defe­cate small toys; the tra­di­tional lunchtime fare of es­cud­ella i carn d’olla (a meat-heavy dish — pig’s ear and lash­ings of an­i­mal fat in­cluded — which can give the most stoic veg­e­tar­ian, and even a few ca­sual car­ni­vores, a bad case of the willies); the giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing of pre­sents (you would have to have the heart­less­ness of a dingo not to enjoy such giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing); and the fact that the fes­tiv­i­ties con­tinue un­abated the day after (un­like in the UK, whose Box­ing Day never fails to be un­event­ful). I should add that I cel­e­brate Christ­mas de­spite being con­vinced that Christ (if he ex­isted at all) was a peri­patetic preacher as human as my chil­dren and that God is noth­ing but an ab­stract noun. This year, how­ever, I shall be cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas with nine un­com­fort­able thoughts in the back of my mind: one for each of the Cata­lan pris­on­ers who will be spend­ing Yule­tide be­hind bars. Among the ones I have had the plea­sure of know­ing per­son­ally are Raül Romeva, the for­mer Cata­lan min­is­ter for for­eign af­fairs, and Oriol Jun­queras, the for­mer Cata­lan vice-pres­i­dent, who are being ac­cused of vi­o­lent re­bel­lion for hav­ing held their posts be­fore and dur­ing the in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum; Carme For­cadell, the for­mer speaker of the Cata­lan par­lia­ment, ac­cused of the same for the hor­ren­dous crime of hav­ing al­lowed a de­bate on the ref­er­en­dum in the Cata­lan par­lia­ment; and Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart, re­spec­tively the for­mer head of the grass-roots Cata­lan Na­tional As­sem­bly and the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the cul­tural as­so­ci­a­tion Òmnium Cul­tural, both also ac­cused of armed in­sur­gence for hav­ing climbed on to a pa­trol car (hav­ing ob­tained per­mis­sion from the po­lice) to make a short speech to a gath­er­ing of thou­sands of peace­ful pro­test­ers be­fore ask­ing them to dis­perse. As they haven’t yet been con­victed of any­thing, these peo­ple and their fel­low po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers could have been freed months and months ago and been obliged to ei­ther hand in their pass­ports or wear mon­i­tor­ing bracelets to en­sure they stood trial. But no. There is a Cata­lan say­ing: Per Nadal, cada ovella al seu cor­ral. ’At Christ­mas­time, every lamb should be back in its pen’. ’Pen’, in this con­text, usu­ally means ’home’. Not, of course, for the Cat­alo­nia Nine, which is why mil­lions of Cata­lans will be rais­ing a sup­port­ive toast to them this Christ­mas. At home.