The Singing Saw

I have been thinking for a while now why it feels so wrong what Spain* is doing to Catalonia. After all, all they want for themselves is to live in a normal, cookie-cutter kind of country, with well defined borders and a happy homogeneous family inside, all speaking the same language and eating the same ideological food. Frankly, this sounds to me too much like the proverbial house with a white picket fence. A utopia that exists only in their fascist, absolutist, genocidal dreams.

However much I can understand this ideal, and even agree with it, there is this little detail that makes it simply impossible. See, Catalonia is not Spain. Let me rephrase that. Catalans are not Spaniards. Catalans are Catalan, not Spanish. We will always be Catalan, not Spanish. Simple as that. Therefore, no matter how hard Spain tries, they will always be doomed in their efforts to turn their country into some kind of artificial happy place. We Catalans will always be Catalan, even if we lose our language, our lands, our dignity, our lives. The same way that Jews will always be Jews, for example (they were kicked from their homeland a long time ago too, by the way).

I have a feeling Spain knows this. They know they cannot convert us and turn us into what we are not. So, you could ask, why do they force us to stay with them? Do they really like us, love us, adore us? I don’t think so. Catalans have been stripped of every form of power by Spain for 300 years. I am talking here about economic, political, law-making, executive, tax-related, social-policy related, educational, linguistic power. We are simply powerless within Spain. This is a really funny way of showing they care for us, I think. However, it all makes sense once you realize what they want. What they want is not us, is not our wellbeing. What they want is our land, our resources, our money, our taxes, the fruits of our labor. Not us. That is what they want. Simple as that.

*Yes, Spain—I refuse to go politically correct here and use Spanish government instead.