Phile or phobe?

I speak Cata­lan, my wife was Cata­lan and my son is Cata­lan. I have made Cat­alo­nia my home. I have lived well here, and I am grate­ful for that, al­though I feel that the re­la­tion­ship is a bal­anced one, as I have con­tributed to the cul­ture in which I have lived these past 26 years, not just in the work I have done to in­ter­na­tion­alise the coun­try in the aca­d­e­mic sphere and through this mag­a­zine, but also through my at­tempts to ed­u­cate those non-Cata­lans around me with re­gard to Cata­lan is­sues. The ques­tion of in­de­pen­dence and the lan­guage issue are just two of these, even if they are the most promi­nent. But the fact of the mat­ter is that there are far more Sean Scullys than Bar­ney Grif­fiths in Cat­alo­nia. So I ask my­self why that is.

Should you have missed it, the men­tion of Sean Scully is a ref­er­ence to that artist’s com­ments in the Fi­nan­cial Times upon leav­ing Cat­alo­nia to go and live in France. “You went to meet­ings and they al­ways spoke in Cata­lan, as if to say you’re screwed” was one of the com­ments at­trib­uted to him. The truth is, I come into con­tact with many for­eign­ers who have elected to make their home in Cat­alo­nia, whether tem­porar­ily or per­ma­nently, and the com­ments I hear are often sim­i­lar to those voiced by Mr Scully. In­ter­est­ingly, this is a man who has re­ceived out­stand­ing recog­ni­tion for his work here in Cat­alo­nia, and yet still de­cided to leave. Now some may see this as un­grate­ful­ness, es­pe­cially given the dis­parag­ing com­ments he made upon leav­ing, but one might also view it from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and say that if a per­son who has ex­pe­ri­enced suc­cess in his ca­reer be­cause he lives here has de­cided to leave, that would sug­gest there is in­deed an issue to be ad­dressed.

So here it is: I have lived in Barcelona for six­teen years and lived in Girona for ten. I have made great friends of lo­cals here, and feel a mu­tual re­spect with many of them. I be­lieve much of that to be due to my own ef­forts to in­te­grate, which in­clude learn­ing the local lan­guage. How­ever, the level of in­tro­spec­tion, pro­tec­tion­ism and de­fen­sive­ness here far sur­pass those I have en­coun­tered in other coun­tries. They may be nat­ural traits given the his­tor­i­cal con­text of Cat­alo­nia, but they are not at­trac­tive ones and do not help when it comes to in­te­grat­ing for­eign­ers, which is what any in­clu­sive so­ci­ety strives for.

I be­lieve the best way to turn non-Cata­lans, whether res­i­dents or vis­i­tors, into Cata­lanophiles rather than Cata­lanophobes, and there­fore gain re­spect for the Cata­lan lan­guage and cul­ture, is to open up more to other cul­tures. The over­rid­ing sense of pro­tec­tion­ism ex­pe­ri­enced by for­eign­ers, vis­i­tors, and even those who have lived and ben­e­fit­ted from liv­ing here, if we ac­cept Mr Scully’s point of view, gen­er­ates an­tag­o­nism rather than good­will. De­spite all the good in­ten­tions of many to cre­ate an in­clu­sive Cat­alo­nia, in­clud­ing the vast ma­jor­ity in the pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment and those in­di­vid­u­als who con­tribute to this very mag­a­zine, for ex­am­ple, the truth is that it can some­times feel like there is an ex­clu­sive Cat­alo­nia for those who speak Cata­lan – or are able and pre­pared to pay for the very best Cat­alo­nia has to offer – that is not avail­able to non-Cata­lan speak­ers. In other words, the Cata­lan lan­guage and cul­ture will re­ceive greater ac­cep­tance the more out­ward-look­ing and less in­tro­spec­tive Cata­lans show them­selves to be with oth­ers.