This curious thing called Catalonia...

There's not only one Catalan

2011-10-05T20:19:00.013+02:00

If you are learning Catalan don't panic with the title! It only means that, as any other language in the world, Catalan has different accents and dialects. I particularly find this subject amazing; I already found it interesting when I was at high school and I barely had heard any other dialect or accent other than the one in my area. However, on my arrival to Barcelona at 18, my ears filled up with different Catalan varieties and I was listening very carefully to all the new people I met to catch up all the details that, up to that moment, I had only read in school books. I was an avid listener. Now, at 27, I still do it. I can't help it, I love it. And I think it is wonderful to have such richness and explore it. And here is what I will do today: setting the basics of Catalan dialectology!

Catalan-speaking areas Catalan is not only spoken in Catalonia. In fact it is spoken in other regions of Spain, namely: La Franja de Ponent ("The Western Strip", Aragon), the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community and in one place in Murcia called El Carxe). And, furthermore, it is also spoken in "Catalunya del Nord" (Southern France); Alghero, in the Italian island of Sardinia; and Andorra. Together, this make a rough total of 9 million of speakers and 2 more million more who do not speak Catalan but understand it. And there also a few learners around the globe :).

Catalan-speaking areas

Western and Eastern
Mainly, there are two dialects in Catalan: Western and Eastern. This division is based on a very tangible difference: lack -Western- or presence -Eastern- of the schwa vowel (the schwa is also found in English, for example, the way the "e" is pronounced in "computer"). In other words: if "a" and open and closed "e" are turned -Eastern- or not turned -Western- to schwa in weak syllables.

There are other differences of course, but the most obvious and easily heard is this one.

More useful: the main 6 dialect distinction
Using the Western and Eastern dialect distinction only would be really simplistic and poor to describe all Catalan varieties. The official rules for oral Catalan are based on 6 Catalan dialects: Northern Catalan, Central Catalan, Balearic, Northwestern Catalan, Valencian and Algherese.

The official 6 dialect distinction

Let's make it more real: the 12 dialects distinction
Drilling down we even find that the 6 dialects distinction can't fit all purposes. This was what drove some professors of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) to publish a book with the specificities of 12 subdialects to help language assessment in the media. This distinction is more real, but still, in my opinion, it is too general in some cases and a bit misleading in the terminology.

The 12 accents map

I like to include myself somewhere in-between "olotí" (or transitional northern Catalan) and "the Catalan of Girona (not in the maps, part of Central Catalan). And my boyfriend is from Andorra, thus, his is a Northwestern dialect (he says "Andorran" :P). Schwa and not schwa in the same flat. He's one of my objects of study haha!

And with this variety... isn't it difficult to understand each other?
Not at all. Though some varieties might be hard to pick phonetically at the beginning (especially Balearic), after you get used to it, no one really needs to change their pronunciation much. Maybe some words are changed from a local to a standard form... but not big deal.

Accent and dialect
The concept of "dialect" in Catalan is not really the same as in the case of German or Italian, where their dialects are much more different among each other and a standard is really needed to make people from different dialects understand each other. In Catalan, there is one standard variety (and substandards in the Valencian Community and the Balearic islands), but there is not really needed in casual speech in a conversation with people who speak different dialects.

Accent is only restricted to phonetics, whereas dialect includes lexical and morphosyntactical characteristics. Thus, you could argue that Western and Eastern are accents and dialects at the same time, that there are 6 main dialects, 12 subdialects and many local accents.

I leave you with a test. Could you guess if these singers are Western or Eastern? (Catalan readers... don't tell :P)

Number one:

Number two:

Number three:

Number four:

Hope you enjoyed it! Next posts real examples with Catalan people. Any Catalan-speaker wants to help me make an accent map? Drop me a line :)

Crisis! - The sharp view of Aleix Saló

2011-06-29T19:59:00.012+02:00

As you all know, Spain (and thus Catalonia) is one of the EU countries which is most affected by the crisis, together with Portugal, Ireland and Greece. We have not got to the point of needing economical rescue, but we have the highest unemployment rate in Europe and the end of the tunnel is still far away. But why Spain has reached this dramatical situation?

Whilst countries like Germany is overcoming crisis with efficient policies, in Spain problems keep growing. The two main political parties are devoted to criticise each other without even venture proper measures to leave the crisis behind.

Spain is different, they say. After years of basing economy on land and real state speculation, the bubble exploded. So simple yet so complex. To understand what led Spain to this severe crisis, you can't miss a brilliant video in Spanish called Españistán, created by who I think is one of the greatest Catalan cartoonists, Aleix Saló. I think he deserves a whole post for himself, so I'll keep you with the mystery of who this person is...By now, just get a taste of his sharp humour by watching the video (English subtitles). Enjoy and learn!

Note: There are quite a few cultural references in the video (marked with a number after some words which appear in the subtitles). Please refer to Youtube for a full explanation. And if you know a bit of Catalan or Spanish, don't miss him!

Please do not doubt to write your thoughts about it! And if you have ideas to change what was the disastrous basis of the Spanish economy and save the country, prepare a campaign and become a presidential canditate ;-) (just kidding).

And to end this post, I could not resist to post one of Aleix Saló's cartoons (in Catalan), appropiate for the occasion :P.

Young man: "Oh, here comes my shit salary."
Shit: "No. Your shit salary is there. I am your future pension."

Code switching

2011-03-24T19:42:00.010+01:00

In linguistics, code switching means changing the language (or code) in the same discourse. That is, when a bilingual o multilingual person is speaking they may switch the language in which they are talking. Everyone who knows more than one language can do that, but it may not be a usual thing for them. But what happens in a society, like Catalan society, who is bilingual by default and two languages are part of common life? What happens is that code switching is the meal of every day, a daily constant, and most people living in Catalonia do it all the time without even noticing or caring.

And what is more interesting, we can have a conversation when people speak in Catalan and other people speak in Spanish all the time and no one is amazed. It was not until an English asked me how we could do that and not finding it strange, that I did not realise how shocking this could be for a foreigner.

We are switching the code all the time! If I had to think how many times I changed from Catalan to Spanish and back to Catalan today, I could not be able to tell. I don't know...maybe like five times an hour depending to whom I spoke. Or even more. Haven't got a clue. However, if I have to say which is the language I speak most, I would say Catalan. A few years ago it was the only language I used, but since I came to live in Barcelona, I began to use Spanish and now I use about Spanish about 20% of the time.

But how code switching works? I have tried to think why do I switch code and about the different scenarios. Basically, in my everyday life I find myself doing this:

1- My colleague Judit is Catalan and we always talk in Catalan to each other. So that is one situation in which there is no code switching.

2- My colleague Marta is from Bilbao and Spanish is her mother tongue. She's been living in Catalonia for a few years and she understands Catalan, but we spoke in Spanish since we met and we always speak in Spanish to each other now. In this situation, as a Catalan native, I switch the code to Spanish, but there is no code switching in the conversation.

3- My colleague José is from Galicia and he came to live in Barcelona last year. He speaks Spanish at home and Galician with some of his friends. He learnt Catalan at university, he understands it perfectly and asks me to talk in Catalan to him so he keeps on learning it, but he feels a bit insecure still and replies in Spanish. In this situation, there is no verbal code switching, but our brains are processing the messages in two languages at the same time!

4- My colleague José sometimes tries to talk in Catalan as he wants to gain confidence. On my side, I sometimes forget that he wants me to talk in Catalan to him and we are moving from Catalan to Spanish all the time. This means that we are switching the code all the time!

5- In a conversation possibilities multiply, but the most usual thing in my everyday life is that some people always talk in Catalan, some others always do so in Spanish and some other switch the code depending on the person they talk to, even in the same group conversation.

I usually do not mind to change the code and, as I pointed out I don't even realise I do so. On the other hand I also think that code switching can be a trap. Does it really means language command? What are the negative effects? It is always positive?

For me, code switching, its pros and cons. It is indeed enriching to have this phenomenon, but it can show lack of language command. Typical code switching means occasionally introducing words and syntactic structures from Catalan into Spanish and the other way round. If the speaker is aware that they may do so and is able to know what belongs to what language, then it is ok, nothing happens! It is very difficult to speak perfectly all the time, managing two language in the same casual conversation! On the other hand, it is indeed a problem if the person does not know it, because they will reproduce these errors in writing and in speaking all the time. And this can be very annoying, because it is no longer code switching but lack of linguistic competence and it can be very annoying both for native speakers of Catalan and of Spanish.

I am not really feeling to go deeper into this today as my aim waysjust explaining what happens with code switching in Catalonia and how I, as a Catalan, experience it as a real fact. Pondering about it will be a topic for another post.

Back again

2011-03-16T21:18:00.011+01:00

Welcome back!

How are you?

First of all, I'd like to apologise for not having written since April. Believe me, it was not because I was uninspired. Neither because I had lost interest. Nothing could be further from the truth as these things. There have been several things that have forced me to put off the moment to sit down and write a post.

Last year was not the happiest of years. Personally, I had to face problems with friends and health problems in the family, which, fortunately, ended well. This would be the negative side, but there is a good one too! During the summer I worked as an English teacher on a camp for kids for a couple of weeks, I had to work a lot in the office and I went to India with a very good friend. By the beginning of autumn, I made up my mind and applied for a postgraduate course which I am currently finishing. This course, on Catalan language assessment on the Media, has been, for the last five months, the reason which has been holding me from writing. Juggling with a 40 h per week translation job, 8 h per week university lessons, a 1 h per week guitar lesson, guitar playing practice, doing homework and studying, as well as fulfilling home tasks results in complete chaos sometimes!

But I must confess I chose this myself. I love the postgraduate course, it's one of the best decisions I have ever taken and I'm really enjoying it, even though it is a very demanding. It covers a wide range of language-related areas: the use of references for proper language assessment, writing style, terminology, syntax, orthotypography, punctuation, dubbing, subtitling, foreign anthroponomy and toponimy in the Catalan language, and oral language assessment. I have learned and am learning a lot of new and useful things, sometimes through a bit of pain (but which at the end of the day has made me some good).

I have changed completely my view on language, and I find the oral-related aspects of language amazing and complex: a challenge I'm willing to take some day. I have already tried the written language challenge, so it's time for oral language now! The day is coming: when lessons finish in May, I will have a 100 h internship on the Catalan public TV station, I can't believe my luck! I'm eager to begin!

I could speak for hours about everything related to the postgraduate course, but I would end up being annoying...So time for focusing on the blog now.

As you see I have changed the layout, I thought it would be a way to say I had resumed the blog. Besides, I wanted to try the new hundreds of templates available now! I hope you like it and that colours do not make reading difficult. If so, please let me know.

Now that I have more free time, I will try to set myself to writing regularly at least once a week; that will be my aim now. I will start by a brief summary of relevant things that went on last year in Catalonia, because diverse things such as the biggest snowfall on the coastline since 1986 or a change in the autonomic government occurred and these cannot be left unexplained.

This said, I only have to say that I am very glad to be back here :).

Sant Jordi 2010

2010-04-23T23:30:00.003+02:00

After my birthday on April 18th a very special day comes: Sant Jordi on April 23rd. For me one of the most beautiful celebrations we have in Catalonia. This Sant Jordi was half rainy, but this did not stop people going out and lingering on the streets, buying books and roses for friends, family and lovers.

Last year's St. Jordi I talked about the legend behind the day and how the day is celebrated (with some pictures). This year I will add some more pictures of roses, books which filled up the stalls and people crowding the streets of Barcelona, enjoying the day.

Roses

Llibres (books)

Gent (people)

Well-known personalities sign their book
(eg, second row left, Quim Monzó, and third row right, the famous cook Carme Ruscalleda)

If you ever happen to be in Catalonia for Sant Jordi, don't miss it, enjoy it! :)

Xavi and I with the traditional St. Jordi's gifts, a book and a rose

The great football classic

2010-04-10T20:43:00.008+02:00

As I became a fan of football last year, missing the great classic Madrid-Barça today would be sacrilege.

So just before the match begins at 22:00 h, here I leave you Barça's hymn (karaoke version for you to sing).

Go Barça!

Tot el camp, és un clam
som la gent blaugrana
Tan se val d'on venim
si del sud o del nord
Ara estem d'acord, estem d'acord
Una bandera ens agermana

Blaugrana al vent
Un crit valent
Tenim un nom, el sap tothom
Barça, Barça, Barça

Jugadors, seguidors,
tots units fem força
Són molt anys plens d'afanys
Són molts gols que hem cridat
I s'ha demostrat, s'ha demostrat
que mai ningúno ens podrà tòrcer.

Blaugrana al vent
un crit valent
Tenim un nom, el sap tothom
Barça, Barça, Barça!

The whole stadium, loud cheers
We’re the blue and maroon supporters
It matters not where we hail from
Whether it's the south or the north
Now we all agree, we all agree,
One flag unites us in brotherhood.

Blue and maroon blowing in the wind
One valiant cry
We’ve got a name everyone knows:
Barça, Barça, Barça!

Players, supporters
United we are strong.
We’ve achieved much over the years,
We’ve shouted many goals
And we have shown, we have shown,
That no one can ever break us.

Blue and maroon blowing in the wind
One valiant cry
We’ve got a name everyone knows:
Barça, Barça, Barça!

Ten o'clock...FOOTBALL TIME!!!

Barça, Estrella Damm, Catalonia or everything? - Explanation

2010-03-28T14:24:00.005+02:00

A few weeks ago I left some pending questions and explanation about a current beer ad which I posted precisely because it is, for me, much more than a mere beer ad. Let's look at the questions more deeply.

- What do you think of the ad?
Like MaryMoon and Isabel, I like the ad. I think that it is the job of good publicists and really creative. And the more I watch the ad, the more I see that it has multiple techniques that I could not appreciate at first sight and that make me think that it is not such a simple and ordinary ad.

Pretty interesting I found the comparison Derek makes. As he says, American beer ads seem to have a very particular structure and particular targets is a format we rarely see. Of course, there have been ads in this mood, like Budweiser ads during late nineties or early two thousand. But still, Budweiser is not an Spanish/Catalan beer and most time they had no spoken words or they were subtitled (the videos Derek linked on the comments made me think of them).

With this, I am not saying that Spanish/Catalan beer ads do not have an structure or a target. Indeed they have, but it is not the same as American beer ads. When I watch a Spanish beer ad, I do not feel it is targeted at 21-30, I rather feel anyone in the age of doing so can enjoy it. And more that being funny, I think they try to be original and ever-lasting, giving beer moderate consumption a high status. I wouldn't say something reserved to intellectuals though, I am more inclined to think that they try to appeal everyone. And this is the case of this particular ad.

I think it is targeted as everyone on legal age, using Barça to do so. The link appears so simple to me: lots of people like Barça, lots of people will like this beer. Barça is something great (the best team in the world!), this beer sponsors Barça, this beer MUST be great. I could go even further to give the nationalist sense I find in the ad, but this is answered in other questions and the link then can be easily established ;).

- Do you think it is a good beer ad?
Here I find divided opinions.

Well, I think it is a good ad and very original in its construction. It does mention the brand "Estrella Damm" but it gives more weight to Barça images and the poem, which I think is a good technique. You get the idea of the ad uniqueness (nothing of the kind before) and you can establish a connection with the brand it announces. Strictly, the product appears in the end, but the imprint of the ad is so deep that it makes you remember which brand did it and what it announced. This is, mostly, what Isabel pointed out.

I do not know if it is a good beer ad, though. Because...what is a good beer ad?

Other campaigns by "Estrella Damm" have been equally good and successful, like last summer ad with the song "Summercat" by the Swedish group Billie Vision & The Dancers, filmed in the Balearic Island of Formentera. The ad is the videoclip by this group and it incorporates images of Estrella Damm bottles. I recommend you watch it.

This summer ad used a complete new ad formula and it was successful. The ad I posted follows the same style and has been equally successful. So then...it must be a good beer ad...I think...

- Do you think it tells something to the (Catalan) audience?
Indeed. The poem tells people (Catalans) can achieve their goals, that nothing is impossible. I do not remember the Generalitat's campaign MaryMoon mentions, but I do see the positive turn the ad gives it.

- Does it tell something more to you, rather than just advertising beer?
It does tell something more if you can give it a context which allows interpretation.

- Do you like the ad text?
I agree to all of you. It is a nice lyric poem, craftily built. And combining it with music gives it a nice rhythm.
Isabel said that she liked he different accent it showcases. Well, she's come to my favourite subject :D and I feel the need to comment something about it.

The poem showcases differents accents but not dialectal accents. The general dialect is spoken standard Catalan. Most of the actors in the ad are professional actors or TV presenters and they speak in a quite neutral accent. Well, with the exception of the two cookers, which have the characteristic accent of Barcelona.

Probably, what Isabel noticed is the accents of non-Catalan people speaking Catalan, namely the young man working with wood and the boy in the skateboard. The young man is probably from Northern Europe (his way of pronouncing "r", his blue eyes and fair hair make me think it) and the boy is South-American (I would even venture Argentinian...)

- Do you think it is a nationalist ad?
There is a very good point that Anna made. She mentions that these ad might use football to convey national feelings. Indeed Catalans, may easily interpret it as such, but it is not the typical "we're good and the others aren't"; to use Isabel words, it tries to raise the spirits of Catalans. It is very easy to understand the poem as somehow nationalist and it make sense in a nationalistic frame.

On the other side, it could also make sense in a non-nationalist context (and hence, the "could be" in MaryMoon's comment. However, I am inclined to think the ad is indeed nationalist, and what is more, it represents, for me, an "inclusive" nationalism: some of the speakers are Catalan well-known actors or TV presenters and an also some non-Catalan people appear. Besides, there are all those images of Pep Guardiola and Barça players. The ad uses all this to convery that Catalans not only accept plurality, but also integrates it in the culture. And there is the music, which integrates more instruments every time and become more joyful. The feeling you have when you finish the ad is: Wow, WE are great! But you do NOT feel that others are not great as well.

Maybe I wouldn't agree with Isabel when she mentions that it can imply that independence can be reached, as I think the ad does not go so far and deep, as I said before I think it is not a separatist ad (note that I make a difference here between nationalism and separatism/independentism). But her interpretation makes perfect sense.

- Do you think it seems to mix things up?
No discussion on that ;). It mixes things up: football, beer, Catalan pride in its people and nation. And it does so in a positive way. And what is more: it has been craftily manipulated to seem "natural". Here I have a negative criticism on the ad: it can seem to build on the tendency to mix everything up. In Catalonia, as I said many other times, everything can have a sociopolitical turn. Look for example, at the insight MaryMoon does about Joan Laporta, current Barça president, who, taking advantage of Barça's achievements and position, has launched an independentist political campaign. I might agree to some ideas Laporta may have, but I do not approve his way of speaking them by mixing football and politics. Talking about it requires another post!

Well, I think this is it. I probably skipped some of the appreciations in the comments (hope you can forgive me :)...). Thanks for your collaboration!

Barça, Estrella Damm, Catalonia or everything?

2010-03-03T19:25:00.002+01:00

Today I'd like to share this ad with you:

Here is the translation:

Un equip de futbol
va ser el centre del món.
I quin és el secret?
Es preguntava tothom.

La velocitat, el control?
Anar sempre a l'atac?
Buscar sempre el gol?

És el joc en equip?
no serà la humilitat?
Sense protagonistes,
ni cap divinitat.

Un equip de futbol
va ser el centre del món.
I quin és el secret?
Es preguntava tothom.

La feina ben feta,
qui no ho recorda
una cosa molt nostra
en els moments de més glòria

Estimar el teu ofici,
vigilar cada detall,
va cantar en un poema
Joan Maragall.

Tot està per fer,
podem aixecar el vol.
Tot és possible,
escrivia Martí i Pol

Salvador Dalí,
Pau Casals,
Antoni Gaudí,
Des d'aquí universals.

La Ruscalleda amb la cullera,
amb la ploma el Monzó,
tu amb el teu martell
i jo, amb el meu ordinador.

Metges, periodistes,
mecànics, pintors,
fusters, lampistes,
músics i escriptors.

Un equip de futbol
va ser el centre del món.
I quin és el secret?
Es preguntava tothom.

La passió, la dedicació,
l'atreviment, la curiositat,
i estimar la feina
és la nostra creativitat.

Són les ganes, treballar fort,
Desperta company,
és millor que anar sol.

No ens hem de reinventar
Hem de seguir essent qui som,
fer les coses com sempre,
que no ens venci la son

Un equip de futbol
va ser el centre del món
I quin és el secret?
Es preguntava tothom

Si fem les coses
com nosaltres sabem
Hi ha res impossible
ho aconseguirem

I el que facin els altres
tant se val.
La feina ben feta no té fronteres,
No té rival.

A football team
was the centre of the world.
And which is the secret?
Asked everyone

Speed, control?
Be always striking?
Always aiming at the goal?

Is it team game?
can't it be humbleness?
No protagonists,
no master gods.

A football team
was the centre of the world.
And which is the secret?
Asked everyone.

A job well done,
who can forget,
a thing of our own
in the most glorious moments

Love your trade,
Care for every detail,
sang once in a poem
Joan Maragall.

Everything's to be done,
we can fly up.
Everything's possible,
wrote Martí i Pol

Salvador Dalí,
Pau Casals,
Antoni Gaudí,
From here, universal.

Ruscalleda with her spoon,
with his fountain pen, Monzó,
you with your hammer,
and I with my computer.

Doctors, journalists,
mechanics, painters,
carpenters, plumbers,
musicians and writers.

A football team
was the centre of the world.
And which is the secret?
Asked everyone.

Passion, dedication,
Audacity, curiosity,
and loving our job
is our creativity.

Being eager, working hard,
Wake up fellow,
it's better than being alone.

We mustn't reinvent ourselves
We must still be what we are,
do things as we always do,
do not let sleep defeat us.

A football team
was the centre of the world.
And which is the secret?
asked everyone

If we do things
as we know
Is there anything impossible?
We can do it.

And what other may do
it is not essential.
A good job has no borders,
It is unrivalled.

Now I'd like to ask you some things:
- What do you think of the ad?
- Do you think it is a good beer ad?
- Do you think it tells something to the (Catalan) audience?
- Does it tell something more to you, rather than just advertising beer?
- Do you like the ad text?
- Do you think it is a nationalist ad?
- Do you think it seems to mix things up?

I am interested on how you see the ad, especially if you are not Catalan (but Catalans are welcome too!). If you wish to do so, just comment on the post. Then, I will explain it and give my opinion on the next post. I hope you participate :)!

La gralla

2010-01-23T12:53:00.011+01:00

It was lying there, on the table. It was years since I last played it, and as I was not using it anymore, my father had lent it to a friend of his, and she had given it back to him. And yesterday I saw it lying on the table.

When was it that I last played it? Regularly, more than seven years. Occasionally, perhaps four or five. So, this morning, I picked it up again. I took it out from its hippy leather case and I saw it again. My gralla. It was a present for my (16th?, 17th?) birthday. My father had bought it for me because he had liked what it was made of: olive tree wood. I can remember that when I first took it out of the case it smelled like olive oil and wood mixed together.

My gralla and its case

My memory went back to 1997, when I first set my fingers on a gralla. In the village, there were other people that had been playing it for one or two years and they patiently taught me the basics. Later on, I took private lessons until I did not feel like playing it anymore (as a teenager, sometimes it felt like an obligation).

We rehearsed in what had been the old nursery school of Vilafant once a week, Saturday from 3 pm to 4 pm, just after lunch. We were not professionals and did not aim at it, but we liked to play. Without the company of the timbal and the caixa, the gralla felt lonely. So, these two percussion instruments were also essential in the music played. So, there was always a timbal and a caixa playing with us.

We rehearsed to prepare street parades that took place mainly in the spring and the summer. We were part of a bigger group of people called COLLA GEGANTERA (literally, "The giants group"). A colla gegantera is a group of people that carry and accompany the two gegants (giants): two big papier-mâché figures up that usually represent the traditional life of a specific village. But this is a whole post in itself... so for now, let's focus on the gralla.

The gralla is a traditional and typical Catalan music instrument. It doesn't have a translation other languages, not in Spanish either. It has been speculated that its origin has a connection with snake enchanters who play that special flute that seem to cast a spell on snakes. But I do not know if this is possible or not. What is certain is that it is often confused with a very similar instrument called dolçaina (in fact my first step into the gralla world was playing a dolçaina).

The gralla was named after a bird (in English, the name for the gralla bird is "jackdaw"), as its strident sound reminds the song of this bird. Indeed, the instrument has a very peculiar loud sound and it should be this way, as it is a street instrument.

Different gralles

Technically, it is a wind instrument and the playing mechanism is that of a flute: it has 6 holes on the front and one hole at the back, plus two extra holes at the bottom sides that only used to let more air out. Playing music with it consists in opening and closing holes using the fingers. To blow it, you need to use an "inxa" (a reed). To prevent the reed from breaking lips are pushed slightly to cover the teeth (how many reeds did I tore learning how to blow it properly!).

After playing the instrument is usually humid and it needs to be cleaned, which is easily made with a special feather duster (like the ones that come with a flute) and the inxa and the reed holder, called "tija" (a kind of holding-tube) can be separated from the main body to dry.

One of the first difficulties for beginners is that the gralla is tremendously difficult to blow and it is easy to run out of breath. The lips also hurt after a while and begin to tremble, making a funny sound which sounds like a fart. But if you insist a little bit and don't get discouraged, you can easily play for 1h-1h 30 without having much trouble.

Playing the traditional song "El ball de la civada"
(after not having played the gralla for a long long time)

Bonus videos: the gralla is not that easy to blow :P

I can't believe there was a time when I could play this for 1h 30...

Keep on trying and maybe you'll get the note...

The eternal discussion

2010-01-19T22:43:00.008+01:00

So far I have avoided politics as much as I could, mainly because a) I do not want to create trouble and conflict, b) I do not want to bore you, and c) I do not want to write a political blog. But I think I need to write lines on the sociopolitical discussions between Catalonia and Spain. Not saying a word without it would be like lying, denying a truth that exists and is very present -even in daily life. On the other hand it is a very delicate issue in which I have my own opinions, as everybody has in this country. Therefore, carefulness is needed to avoid offence.

The "battle" between Spain and Catalonia began long ago and will be still here for long. But why so? What happens exactly? Why these discussions exist?

For me the whole Spanish-Catalan question boils down to

1- Identity and feelings
2- Language
3- History
4- Miscomprehension

It seems easy when put into 4 points, but it is really complex!

I do not want to go further into detail today, but if you agree and you wish to learn some more things about it, I will give some insights from time to time, as objectively as I can.

Frankfurter Buchmesse, October 2007

2010-01-17T21:19:00.012+01:00

Two years and a half ago Catalan culture and literature was the centre of one of the most important Book fairs in the World: the Frankfurter Buchmesse. This fair was an excellent platform for Catalan writers to expand to the European -and world- market. It also was a good opportunity to show the world our culture, our language, our traditions.

The poster that was used for promoting Catalonia in Frankfurt's book fair.

The text reads: "Catalan culture, singular and universal".

Within Catalonia this was conceived as a great event and cultural organisations became really involved in it. Since it was publicly known that Catalan culture would be the guest of honour in Frankfurt's fair, great broadcasting of the event began. And also debate and discussion. Which writers would go to the fair? Only Catalan writers who wrote in Catalan? Catalan writers who wrote in Spanish? Both? As always, the never-ending sociopolitical discussions on language exploded. These are so recurring that I do not even remember how they ended.

Time passed by and the day arrived. The square outside the fair's facilities were the scene for parallel cultural activities, as for example, human towers exhibition, traditional music, theatre, etc. The things that were culturally and linguistically origianl were highlighted, like for example, in writing, characters like ny (read like Spanish ñ, Portuguese nh or Italian gn), ç (which also exists in French and is read as s) and l·l (two l pronounced together).

Inside the building, Quim Monzó, a great contemporary Catalan writer was the chosen one to perform the inaugural speech. He build a sublime ironical text about Catalonia and Catalan.s It is so brilliant and well-structured that the best thing one can do is reading it to get an idea of how modern Catalan society thinks. And to have a great great laugh (it is something Catalan usually do: laugh at themselves...yes strange sense of humour, but really funny). It is absolutely hilarious. The text was translated into four languages: Catalan, Spanish, German and English. I strongly recommend you read it. And they say the translations are really good, specially, they praised the German translation of a very typical Catalan tongue twister. Click here to read it. At the end of the pdf you will find information about Quim Monzó in German and in English.

Here you have the video of the inaugural speech (so you will know how it sounded like):

And finally, you can find all sorts of information related to the event here (in Catalan, Spanish, German and English).

"Garbo, the man who saved the world"

2010-01-17T18:33:00.012+01:00

This is the title of a documentary film I saw yesterday. A film that I definetely recommend if it happen to be in cinemas of your area. It tells the story of a double agent spy whose strategy was crucial in the result of World War 2. He, together with the British espionnage system saved the world from fascism. The weapon: deception. He fooled Hitler and the nazi regime. Who was then this man who embarked in such a dangerous mission?

It was him:

He was known as Garbo to the British and Alaric or Arabel to the German. But his real name was Joan Pujol Garcia. Joan was born in Barcelona on February 14th, 1912 within a burgeois, liberal family. His father was apolitical and believed in individual freedom so that is what Joan grew up it. As a young men in his early twenties he was a dandy (I guess he could afford to) and used to walk around Barcelona all the time. The Spanish Civil War was a blow for him. He, as many other, was called to fight on the Republican side (Barcelona was one of the last cities to fall under Franco's troops, so it was Republican most of the war). He actually responded the call but he deserted, with the risk of being shot. He hid during some time, but unable to stay closed in the house any longer, he finally went to war with one objective: passing on to the the fascist side. He did so not because he was a fascist but because he wanted to be left alone and Franco was winning the war by then.

After the war he married and moved to Madrid. There he felt he should help somehow in WW2, he wanted to help in fighting fascism, something which he had not done in the Civil War. But he did not want to get hurt. He went to the British embassy in Madrid asking for a job. He was disregarded. He then moved to Lisbon and there he contacted the German Abwehr and began providing information to them. Germans trusted him and his alledged agents: they did not know this information was false and fake. After some time he went to the British embassy again and this time he was given a chance. So he became a double agent. He was a virtuous actor and, as I said gained full trust from the Führer himself. They trusted him so much that he even was award with the Iron Cross and of course, given funds to continue his spy job. Money which, ultimately, was used by the British MI5 (the British secret service) to spy on the nazis. So Hitler was, in fact, paying to be spied on.

The crucial event was Normandy disembarking on 6 June 1944, the D-Day. Joan, well, Garbo, totally fooled Germans by telling them Normandy was a diversion manoeuvre and that the attack would be somewhere else. And he was believed, and thus, D-Day was a success. This was the definite blow to change the course of the war. When asked for an explanation on why the supposed attack did not take place, he simply said it had been cancelled as Normandy had been a success for them. And they, again believed him and even after nazis lost the war thanked him for his "valuable service".

After D-Day, he lost his power position and he mysteriously disappeared and reported death.Until they found him. He had faked his death and he really moved to Venezuela, where he began a new life. Once knowing he was alive he was awarded, on D-Day 40th anniversary, with an MBE, a British condecoration which grants membership in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Joan Pujol Garcia died in Venezuela on October 10th, 1988. He has been the only man who has been in the two sides of two crucial wars in contemporary Europe. And, without shooting one shot, he was a hero.

The documentary film talks about all his life. I gave you the main lines of his life, but the film tells with detail the whole story. Simply amazing. The film is mostly in English, but also there are some German, Catalan and Spanish, so the best option is subtitling. The following trailer is in English subtitled in Spanish (though in the cinema I saw it subtitled in Catalan...except for the Catalan and Spanish bit of course :P).

Note: more info on Garbo found in:
- Wikipedia
-Youtube: simply write "Garbo the spy"
-Film's website (in English and Spanish)

Smell of Christmas (XI)... - Reis

2010-01-06T12:00:00.006+01:00

This is the day that children wake their parents up at the cry "Han vingut els reis! Han vingut els reis" (The Three Wise Men have been here tonight!). They just can't wait to see which presents the Three Wise Men left for them during the night and unwrap them.

If they have been good, they will get nice presents, though not always everything they had asked for. They might get angry, but then their parents tell them that every boy and every girl must have toys and that they shouldn't be so selfish.

If they have been bad, they will get a... coal!!! This wasn't such a punishment for me, in fact I remember asking for coal, as I always knew it would be delicious sugar coal...

Naughty or nice?

Usually, on January 6th a last family meal is held. More, more food, as if we had not had enough! But delicious anyway! Traditionally, for dessert, we eat the Tortell de Reis (or Roscón de Reyes in Spanish). Though being eaten in the whole of Spain, there are local differences in the traditions related to it. In Catalonia, a broad bean and a little king china figure are hidden inside the tortell. The tortell is cut into pieces and one piece is given to each member of the family. If you get the piece with the broad bean inside, you have to pay for the tortell, and if you get the piece of the figure, you are crowned king with the paper crown that is usually placed in the centre of the tortell.

This is the Tortell de Reis

I do not like tortell very much, I think it is because of the cabell d'àngel (a kind of jam made of pumpkin) and the fruita confitada (glazed fruit), and when I was a child I didn't want to eat it also because I was afraid I might find the broad bean and I would cry at the thought of spending my savings on a tortell. But then I also ran the risk of not being crowded queen...

One funny thing I remember about the 6th January family lunch is that usually the tortell box included a small cardboard with the same poem in Spanish and Catalan and my father would have us children read in aloud in both languages, but making special emphasis in correcting our Spanish reading. That's how I learned, my Catalan accent would always be with me when speaking Spanish, but I also learnt that it was very important that I should read Spanish without my tongue twisting at every word :P.

The Reis day, or Epiphany (if we talk in religious terms), are the end of Christmas festivities. So that is the last of the Christmas series of posts. I have liked writing them a lot, as I discovered and learnt new things. Now you might say...no more Christmas series next year? Yes of course! While writing the posts I realized I could not talk about everything, so I had to leave some things for next year! So more on this from December 2010. Thanks for sharing Christmas with me by reading the posts ;).

Smell of Christmas (X)... - Nit de reis

2010-01-05T18:00:00.018+01:00

Wrap yourself up and go out on the street. See the illuminated, happy wondering faces of little children as they pass by throwing sweets at the crowd. Do not forget your paper lamp while you are waiting for them. Why?

Because...ARRIBEN ELS TRES REIS D'ORIENT!, The Three Wise Men are here!. Melcior, Gaspar and Baltasar are here to bring presents to all children!

Prior to Wise Men arrival, children write letters saying they have been very good children, done well at school and helped their parents so they would be really pleased if the Wise Men brought them some presents. And they list the presents they would like to have. This letters have to be ideally given to a royal page that comes to the place some days before. If not, last minute letters are also taken in.

January 5th is the D-day for children. After seeing the Three Wise Men parade, they will have to face the Wise Men: they will sit on one of Wise Men lap and he will ask them if they have been good children. Obviously they will say yes, I've been good and they will get a little gift. Occasionally, a little toddler will cry because he will be scared but his/her parents will smile and tell him, the Three Wise Men are very good people and that he should trust them.

Poster announcing the royal page coming to get the letters
and the Three Wise Men 2010 parade in my village, Vilafant.
I love this poster! :)

Images of the Wise Men parade in my village, January 2009.
In order: the Three Wise Men, a royal page and one moment in the parade.

After the parade and the talk with one of the Wise Men, children must have supper, prepare their shoes (so the Wise Men knows where they have the presents for him), leave some food and drink for their camels, and go to bed early. During the night, the Wise Mean will come to the house (they are magic, so they will be able to come in) and leave the presents.

Núria, my sister, is almost ready (year 1993)

The three of us are almost ready (1993)

Food, drink and shoes...all ready for the magic night! (1993)

I hope you have been good or else... (you will learn what on the next post) ;)!

Smell of Christmas (IX)...Feliç any nou!

2010-01-01T15:00:00.004+01:00

Well...I guess New Year is pretty much the same for those who use Gregorian calendar: either you sleep the whole morning after a long party night or you do not party and get up early to do some kind of activity without the annoying crowd. Since January 1st I take the second option and go skiing in Andorra...there is almost no one going down the slopes! Magic!!! And after a whole morning of ski...delicious shower, delicious lunch, delicious chilling out in the sofa.

And you? How do you spend your New Year? Is there any special tradition on that date in your country?

I can not finish without wishing you...

I hope that this new year brings you health, happiness and achievements! :)

Smell of Christmas (VIII)...L'home dels nassos

2009-12-31T08:00:00.011+01:00

- Desperta't, desperta't, o no veuràs l'home dels nassos! (Wake up, wake up or you won't see "l'home dels nassos"!)

- Com que t'has aixecat tard, ja no has vist l'home dels nassos! (As you have got up late, you haven't seen "l'home dels nassos")

When I was a child every 31st December my mother would give us her good morning with one of these two sentences -in other words, she would urge us to get up early or she would reprimand us for having got up late. She always said she had seen l'home dels nassos when she had gone out to buy bread and she wanted us to see him too. Literally, l'home dels nassos is "the man of the noses" and he has as many noses as days the year has.

I desperately wanted to see a man with 365 (or 366) noses on the face but the truth is that I never saw him. I thought my mother was lucky and every year I said the following year I would get up earlier so I could see him, but was never successful.

Then I learnt the trick: "l'home dels nassos té tants nassos com dies té l'any" (the man of the noses has as many noses as days the year has). How many days does the year have? On December 31st, the year has only one day, as there is only one day left! Everyone is l'home dels nassos the last day of the year!

In some cities, l'home dels nassos is represented as a capgròs (a papier-maché figure which has a big charictaturesque head with a big nose).

Different representations of l'home dels nassos, from creativity to tradition
(the third from the left is a capgròs)

Note: this tradition is also found in other regions of Spain
like La Rioja, Teruel, Navarra, Burgos and Álava.

Smell of Christmas (VII)...Sants Innocents

2009-12-28T23:58:00.007+01:00

Who believed the news about the change of the National Day? Well, I have something to tell you...: INNOCENT!. You were "victims" of an innocentada and, of course, the piece of news is not true.

An innocentada is a joke or hoax one makes on December 28th. This day is called "Sants Innocents". Does it ring a bell to something you might know? April Fools' maybe? Yes, our "April Fools'" is in December!!! It is strange that in Catalonia, Spain and some Hispanoamerican countries this day is celebrated on December 28th when in many other countries in Europe it is done on April 1st. I must confess that when I learnt about that, it made no sense to me. "Why on earth do they have to celebrate on April 1st?" I thought. Then I realised that the different ones on this were us.

The origin of Sants Innocents is religious and it comes from an episode in Saint Matthew's gospel. This episode narrates how Herod ordered his soldiers to behead all children younger than two years of age (not guilty, innocent human beings -from here the name "Sants Innocents") so he could also kill the newly born Jesus, and thus the child could not dethrone him as the king of Jews. Many children were killed but Mary and Joseph could save their baby, as they were warned by an angel in a dream and they fled for Egypt to hide.

You probably might be thinking that there is nothing to joke about this. Sure, there is not. But the relationship with jokes and hoaxes with this infanticide lies in that while Herod's soldiers were executing their cruel order, parents would try to mislead them, so their little children would not be killed.

Nowadays, the tradition of making innocentades is very common. On 28th December there are always hoaxes about recent news (usually very obvious to avoid panic) on national newspapers, local radio stations and, within the family and groups of friends, all kinds of jokes are made. My mother is very keen on doing innocentades. How many 28th Decembers she suddenly awaked me very early to tell me there was someone asking for me on the phone...! She always caught me. I am really really naïve :P. But this year I was in Barcelona as I had to work and I escaped the threat :D!!!

And, finally, as Catalans (I think that this is not done elsewhere) are not satisfied with joking we hang llufes on people's back. Llufes (or llufa in singular) are simple paper dolls usually made out of newspapers' paper. As I have just mentioned, they need to be hung on people's back. The only rule in doing this is that the hanging has to be unnoticed by the target. As a child I used to cut llufes and try to hang them on my mother's back as revenge, but as being like the invisible man is not one of my skills, I usually had to content myself by sticking them on the walls. All this explains why, after clicking the link on my last post, you found one virtual llufa. A picture of it stands for "Innocent, t'ho has cregut!" (You fool, I have mislead you!). Nowadays the tradition of llufes is losing a bit of track. I do not really know why, as it is a funny way to call you: "innocent!".

With nothing more to say today, I leave you this "happy" man and his llufa. Watch your back out!

Urgent piece of news

2009-12-28T22:21:00.008+01:00

It is everywhere today. Next year, Catalonia's National Day won't be September 11th any longer. It has been unanimously approved in the Catalan Parliament that it is high time for change: from now on our National Day will be on December 19th, the day Barça achieved perfection by winning the sixth of the six trophies in play for the team.

Click here to learn more about this. It will surprise you.

My personal thoughts on this tomorrow. I am still too shocked to think.

Smell of Christmas (VI)... - Sant Esteve

2009-12-26T11:36:00.007+01:00

Empty a corner in your stomach, because there will be another familiar lunch today. That is what is done on 26th December in Catalonia, Valencian community and Balearic islands. In Catalonia we called it Sant Esteve, as it is St. Stephen's Day today. In Valencia, it is also "Sant Esteve" or " Segon dia de Nadal" (2nd Xmas day) and in Mallorca, it called "Segona festa de Nadal" or "Sa mitjana festa" (The middle feast). Browsing on the Internet, I learned that in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, St. Esteve is also celebrated and known as Boxing Day. However, as far as I have read, the festivity's celebrations are different from those of St. Esteve in Catalan-speaking areas.

Canelloni, the traditional dish for St. Esteve

By tradition, St. Esteve's lunch is celebrated with the family whom you haven't spend Christmas day with. In this way, all members will have eaten with everyone in the family of both the mother and the father's side.

The food usually eaten in this lunch are canelons de carn (meat canelloni) as main dish and pollastre farcit (stuffed chicken) or tallrodó (a kind of veal stew). Like on Christmas day, dessert is torrons (a kind of candy) and neules (rolled wafers).

Neules and torrons

Happy Sant Esteve!

Smell of Christmas (V)... - Bon Nadal!

2009-12-25T19:49:00.011+01:00

It is Christmas Day. Bon Nadal a tothom! I guess today Catalan tradition is not really special: it is a family day. There is a big family lunch where everybody eats until their stomach is so full that the only idea of eating supper is difficult to digest. What is special in Catalonia on Christmas day is the food eaten, a dish called Escudella i carn d'olla (sorry, there is no translation for that). Well, at home, traditional as this dish might be, we do not eat it because it takes a long time to elaborate and my mother is not so keen on cooking and eating it -as far as I can remember I've eaten it only once.

But what's Escudella i carn d'olla exactly?

Escudella is a kind of broth made out of carn d'olla, potato, cabbage and chikpea. Onion, leek, celery, carrot and garlic can also be added. Carn d'olla is a stew made of black sausage, white sausage, pilota (meatball), veal, lamb, hen or chicken and bacon. Pilota, an important part of the carn d'olla is a mixture of meat, egg, parsley, garlic and bread crumbs. Escudella i carn d'olla can be served all together or also in three parts: the broth, the carn d'olla and the ingredients used in the broth, as you can see in this picture:

Light dish, isn't it? hehe :D. And that is not all! Escudella broth is also characteristic for the pasta added: a special soup pasta called galets. There are small and big galets, the special galets for the escudella are the biggest one (they need to be cut to be eaten).

Big delicious galets

If you are brave enough to cook it, I found the recipe and some more interesting info in English here. Good luck :)!

Another typical thing to do on Christmas day is reciting a Christmas poem. Well, this is usually left for little children who have to stand on a chair while reciting and making gestures in consonance with them poem, and finalise it by saying: BON NADAL A TOTHOM (I wish you all a Merry Xmas). As an exception, I did that on my family lunch today but I won't show you a picture :P. What I will do is to write down a poem (in the short version) that has survived time and is still inside my memory.

Cançó de Nadal

L'escola és tancada,
hi ha llum al carrer,
la senyora Pepa
saluda el carter.
"Que tingui bon dia,
avui és Nadal,
estigui contenta,
Jesús ha nascut;
per dur-nos la joia,
al món ha vingut"
Bon nadal a tothom!

A Christmas carol

The school is closed,

there's light on the street,

Mrs. Pepa
greets the postman.
"Have a nice day,
it's Christmas today,
be happy,
Jesus is born;
to bring us joy,
he's come to the world"
I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

And the most important thing:

Smell of Christmas (IV)... - El tió

2009-12-24T21:03:00.019+01:00

Let me be angry for one second: TAKE OUT YOUR SANTA CLAUSES OUT OF THE BALCONY! That does not mean I am against Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, called it as you like), but I am against him overtaking something genuinely Catalan. You might call me endogamic, but when it comes to our tió tradition I become very intransigent. I love this tradition because it is very curious. For me Santa Claus is a tradition elsewhere, I like it in its context and I enjoyed my visit to Santa's home in the Polar Arctic Circle some years ago. But once in Catalonia...I love the tradition of tió every Christmas eve with the family.

You might be wondering what on earth the TIÓ tradition is. The tió is a log which...poops presents. So the TIÓ is...A POOPING LOG!!! Traditionally, they are consuming goods like food or drinks (usually related to Christmas time), but I dare say that this is no longer the case.

"Per fer cagar el tió" (To make the tió poop) the first thing to do is to have a good thick log and carve a mouth and a couple of eyes into the timber to turn it into a proper tió (if you cannot do so, just buy one with a painted face and a barretina). If possible, have the same tió every year. At home we had the same for years and I came to like the tió that my father had carved...it was something special for me, this piece of wood with carved eyes, neck and mouth. I really believed it actually pooped presents until I was old enough to know the truth. So, strange as it may be, I was quite disappointed and sad when my father decided to chop it into pieces and use our beloved tió as fire wood :(.

By the beginning of December, the tió is placed inside the house (it is very bucolic to place it near the fireside) and covered with a blanket, so it doesn't get cold. Then, it needs to be feed everyday to make it grow father with presents. As a kid, my father use to tell me that he had seen it eating and he would touch the tió's stomach and say it was fattening. I never wondered why I didn't see him eating...but I really believed it had and that it actually was getting bigger as the pooping day was approaching...:P

Finally, when Christmas eve arrives... the tió is hit with sticks and a song is sung along the hitting. Many versions of the song exist: long versions, short versions, mixed versions... Mainly they all ask the tió to poop well and good stuff. I post one version from Xesco Boix, which my father use to put us for Christmas:

To illustrate the tradition, I looked out for pictures in family albums. My father took some pictures of our first popping logs, but then he stopped. Thus the pictures I will show you are from Christmas 86, 87, and 88, i.e., when I was 2, 3 and 4 and my brother two years younger (my sister wasn't even born then).

Xmas 1986: Mum is teaching me how to make the tió poop.

Xmas 1987: my brother Jordi and I hitting the tió.
I am now master of the art of tió hitting and Jordi is my eager little disciple.

Xmas 87: Mama, que ha cagat el tió? (Mummy, has the tió pooped?)

Xmas '87: Me organizing tió's gifts

Xmas '87: Jordi and I can't wait to see what's inside the wrapping paper!!

Xmas 1988: Look how my brother looks after the tió!

Xmas '88: "Tió, tió, caga turró..."

Note:
This is my explanation of the tió. Of course, it is subjective and nostalgic. I had a good time remembering when writing. If you wish to read more things about the tió, see:
- http://euskocat.blogspot.com/2009/12/olentzero-and-tio-de-nadal.html
- Tió songs (in Catalan)
- Wikipedia

Smell of Christmas (III)... - La Grossa

2009-12-22T09:27:00.015+01:00

I can become really really rich today. But the possibility is so small (1/85,000) that, as every 22nd December, I will say: "Bé, el que és important és tenir salut" (The most important thing it to be healthy) or "Bé, almenys tinc salut" (Weeeeeell, at least I am healthy). Therefore, rather than National Big Lottery or "La Grossa" -Catalan- or "El Gordo" -Spanish- (literally "The fat one") it is the day of "Health" in Spain today. La Grossa is the most popular lottery in the whole of Spain.

The first prize, el Gordo or la Grossa, is 3 million € per series of tenth share tickets (i.e.: 300,000 € per ticket). There is also a second prize, a third prize, two fourth prizes, eight fifth prizes and "la pedrea", worth 100 euro per ticket. There also other minor prizes.

Considering that prizes are given per series, which are divided into ten dècims (CA)/décimos (ES) (tenth share tickets) -which can be further divided into "participacions"- and that there are 195 series of each number imagine: a) the quantity of existing tickets in every draw and b) how much money the state gives away for the draw (2,142 million €) -in any case benefits are always higher for the State :P.

The draw's origin goes back to 1812, and it originally was a way for the state to increase its budget. Soon this became a tradition. In 1892 got its official Spanish name "Sorteo extraordinario de Navidad" (Extraordinary Christmas Draw) and from 1893 onwards it is celebrated every 22nd December. The most curious thing about this draw is the way it is done. Students of the San Ildelfonso boarding school in Madrid aged 8 to 14 literally sing the numbers and the prizes. It is a very typical and characteristic melody and if you listen to it for the whole morning (like I did today) you can become crazy: the draw lasts 3h 30 min. Here you have a small sample from a previous year:

How was it like? (hehe) And this ONLY two minutes...

After the draw...

This year, as every year, I did not win a single euro and I lost 20 € in buying a dècim. 62,307 is not a lucky number...neither it was last year :P. Anyway...I am lucky because I am healthy :D. The only time I ever won anything was with some "participacions" my aunt gave me. I won 5,000 pesetas...so imagine how back in time that was...we still had pesetas, not yet euro. By the way 5,000 pesetas is the mega quantity of....30 euro!!! (I think I prefer to say it in pesetas...there are more zeros and it seems to be more money than 30 euro :P)

Not a lucky number this year

I think next year I might buy the number in "La bruixa d'or" (The golden witch) lottery ticket shop in Sort, a small village in the Catalan Pyrenees. The reason? For two years they were the sellers of la Grossa and the village name, Sort, is also the Catalan word for luck. Curious, isn't it?

Smell of Christmas (II)... - La Marató de TV3

2009-12-13T10:00:00.008+01:00

Today is a day of solidarity. Since 1992, the Catalan TV station TV3 collects funds for research on different diseases.

First of all I'd like you to think about what is a TV solidarity programme for you. And then, read about "La Marató de TV3".

What is La Marató:

For me, it is a great fund-collecting programme (I am amazed at the funds raised!). A special TV show is broadcasted, there are information campaigns on the chosen disease for the yearly edition, testimonials are recorded and invited to the programme, several activities all over Catalonia (and other Catalan-speaking areas) are organized, people in the Catalan public sphere get involved in it, and a book of short stories and an album with Catalan versions of English songs are published. So as you see, despite the fact that La Marató is an idea born in a TV station, nowadays it has gone far beyond the mere TV show and it has really engaged people.

It is possible to make donations by participating in the activities, buying the book or the CD, by making a bank transfer or by telephone. All the funds are given to research foundations.

2009 Edition

This 2009 edition is about minority diseases. As my boyfriend Xavi explains in his blog about science (in Catalan, so here you have the translation):

I'll only tell you that minority diseases affect very few people (one out of 2,000, even less in some cases), but globally there are 400,000 people who suffer minority diseases in Catalonia. This might explain the poor private investment dedicated to these diseases, and therefore public investment to study them is necessary. Usually, minority diseases have a genetic origin; that is why they have such a low incidence: natural selection prevents transmission of the causing genes. You can find more information on the show and the many minority diseases that will be addressed (including personal stories) in La Marató's web [English version] and their blog [only Catalan]. You can also become a fan in Facebook.

Although La Marató is held today, since the beginning of December, there have been sensitivisation campaigns mainly in the form of ads. I would like to share this year's ad, which clearly explains the goals of the show, although it does not have much relationship with minority diseases. The spot's slogan is "Hi ha persones que neixen per ajudar els altres" (There are people who are born to help other people).

I would also like to share two ads of the 2005 and 2006 editions, which I specially like:

2005 edition focused on Alzheimer and other brain diseases. The ad is just brilliant, with background music of the Catalan version of "All my life" by the Beatles. Two kids are recording daily life common sounds for their grandma who suffers Alzheimer to help her remember.

2006 edition addressed chronic pain. No need for translation.

To watch all editions' ads, click here and look at the section "Els espots de les anteriors edicions".

Finally, if you fancy a taste of how Catalan versions of English songs sound like, follow this link.

What about your area? Are there things like La Marató organised?

Smell of Christmas (I)... - Aim

2009-12-12T20:00:00.002+01:00

Again, December. Again, time for perfume, chocolate, watches, Nespresso (¬¬) and cava (the Catalan version of champagne), ultrafrozen seafood and toys ads. Again, decorated fir trees. Again, those typical street lights. Again, everybody seems to be happy. Again, tradition is the rule. Again, Christmas is approaching.

Catalonia shares many Christmas traditions with the rest of Spain, but it also have traditions of its own. My aim during these special dates is to write about all these traditions (both the shared and the unique ones). This will be my particular way to share my Christmas with you.

I hope you like it :).

A casa (At home)

2009-12-08T20:16:00.024+01:00

Let's do a little bit of basic vocabulary! Our vocabulary lesson today will be about the house, or "La casa" in Catalan. First of all, I'd like to make you note that "casa" is feminine in gender (therefore LA casa and not *EL casa) and that it can mean both "house" and "home". We have a word that means "home", which is "llar", also feminine, but we usually use "casa" instead of "llar" to mean home -except for the expression home sweet home, in which we use llar, dolça llar.

PARTS DE LA CASA

El rebedor

El passadís

El lavabo

La cuina

L'habitació

El menjador

El balcó

I have recorded all words but I cannot upload them on the blog unless I upload them first to the web. As I do not wish to do so, please, if you like to have the recordings so you know how the words sound like, just email me and I'll be glad to send them to you.

Per molts anys! - Thoughts after first birthday

2009-12-04T20:33:00.010+01:00

One year ago I wrote a welcome letter and my blogging adventure began.

I had been thinking about creating a blog for months before last year but did not find a suitable thing to write about. And finally, one day the idea came up: what did I like that people could be curious about? My own land, my language, my culture: Catalan, Catalonia! I was astonished it did not occur to me before. And I loved the idea.

How did it come up? I was enraged about all the negative things about Catalonia coming from Spain, stereotypes, misunderstandings, intolerance, little respect for our culture and language, biased information. And I was also angry with the vision they give here in Catalonia about Spain. They fed me up and little by little I conceived how the blog would look like. I would talk about Catalonia, but I would not be political, I would not criticize and if I was or did, I would do it in a position of respect and always specifying that it was only my opinion and not something objective. I decided to talk about Catalonia and Catalan with the aim that people who would read the blog would become interested in it, telling them about art, language, food, history; everything I could imagine that would be related to it.

And so I wrote my welcome letter on December 4th 2008. As I am writing new insights, thoughts and impressions arise. I have realised that:

- I am not the prolific blogger I intended to be. However, I decided not to force myself. I am happy because I still have the will to write and write regularly.

- Writing about Catalonia and Catalan language and culture is not as easy as I had thought! Many cultural aspects that are obvious and logical to me because they are my baggage are not so for other people outside Catalonia and Spain. Thus, I often find that my posts are very long and that I have to explain everything from the beginning, so everyone can follow it and build their own opinion and share it. The balance between explaining and staying relevant is sometimes difficult though, as things are always intertwined!

- There are some posts that take me a long time to write, as anger and uneasiness arises. Then, what I have to do is leave the post aside for a while and the re-read it, check it is respectful and continue writing calmly. This is the case, for example, of the promised post about bilingualism, I have retaken it twice and still have not finished it yet.

- When translating songs or poetry, I have to decide if I should stay faithful or be creative to maintain the musicality. As a translator I am pushed to find a balance between the two, but it is not always easy!

- I am happy because my initial aim continues alive.

- I always have things to write about: new, old, future. It is a never-ending source! ;)

- I have more readers and followers than I thought I would have. I am glad to find people who have an interest in what I write and collaborate in the blog by commenting and giving ideas. Many many thanks. You really encourage me to continue writing. :)

And the surprise...

A song called "Anys i anys" (Years and years), that I used to listen to when I was a little kid. It was created by writers working for the child programme in TV3 called "Club Súper 3".

Anys i anys, per molts anys
a la una per molts anys
Anys i anys, per molts anys
a les dues per molts anys
Anys i anys, per molts anys
a les tres per molts anys.

Volem que súper t'ho passis
bufis fort i les apagui!

Anys i anys, per molts anys
A la una, per molts anys
A les dues, per molts anys
A les tres, per molts anys
A la una, a les dues, a les tres,
Súper 3, PER MOLTS ANYS!

SÚPER TRES...FIU!

Years and years, happy birthday
one, happy birthday
Years and years, happy birthday
two, happy birthday
Years and years, happy birthday
three, happy birthday.

We want you to have loads of fun
blow hard and blow them out!

Years and years, happy birthday
One, happy birthday
Two, happy birthday
Three, happy birthday
One, two, three,
Súper 3, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

SÚPER TRES...FIU!

(Aside: Do you see? I am getting old...I'm always remembering good old times...I am nostalgic ¬¬)

I hope I can write many many more posts. Per molts anys, blog! (Happy birthday, blog!)

Voluntaris per la llengua

2009-11-25T19:39:00.010+01:00

My post today is dedicated to my mother, a "voluntària per la llengua"; a language volunteer in the capital city of my area, Figueres.

What is a language volunteer?
A language volunteer is someone who helps newcomers in Catalonia improving Catalan by giving them the opportunity to speak in this language in a natural context. Learners must have some knowledge of Catalan and volunteers have to be people who usually speak Catalan. Both should have a minimum of 1 free hour a week during 10 weeks. No BA, no MA, no certifications are needed: just the will to learn and to help learning.

Volunteers and learners or, simply "parelles lingüístiques" (language couples) meet, as I have pointed out, once a week at a place of their convenience. Some places (bars, restaurants, museums, etc) are volunteer-friendly and language couple might get discounts or special offers if they go there. A volunteer-friendly place will usually show this sticker near its door:

Besides meeting once a week to talk in Catalan, language couples are encouraged to take part in the cultural local activities promoted by the Consorci per la Normalització, Lingüística (Consortium for Linguistic Normalisation) which is the organisation in charge of coordinating the whole initiative.

Language volunteering is an initiative by La Generalitat (the Catalan government) to promote the use of Catalan. Though direct government implication in the programme began in 2003, the idea comes from university language volunteering, which began at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1996 and rapidly extended to other Catalan universities.

This is indeed a great way to promote Catalan, as opposed to boring, imposing language policies. Besides, volunteers and learners enrich themselves culturally and help the former see "the other" as an equal and the later can fully integrate in Catalonia, as the language will no longer be a barrier.

My mother became a language volunteer in March-April this year. She first was a volunteer for a very smart Moroccan girl until June and, since last week, she is a volunteer for a Colombian and a Polish girl. She is so happy people are eager to learn Catalan and she takes it very seriously. I believe she passed on this will to me too, as I am thinking to become a volunteer too! I just hope I find some free time ;).

By the way...my mother and "her" learners have become locally "famous" (just joking) because of this picture in one of the local newspapers in my area:

This is the main page of the local newspaper "Hora nova" (New hour).
My mother -in the centre- with the learners.

Notes:
Hora Nova's main page taken from the paper's website
Voluntaris per la llengua official webpage: http://www.vxl.cat (only Catalan)

Joan Salvat-Papasseit: simple is beautiful

2009-11-21T15:09:00.016+01:00

There was a time, around the tenths of the 20th century, when Modernism gasped its last breath. Europe was shaking and art needed to reflect that: the time of the Avant-gardes busted out. They were a new form of art which was expressed in many different ways: Pablo Picasso chose Cubism; Edvard Munch, Expressionism; Salvador Dalí delighted the world with Surrealism, Joan Brossa tried new ways of linking sculpture and poetry, etc. And finally, Joan Salvat-Papasseit experimented in a new way of writing poetry called "cal·ligrames" or pattern poetry.

Joan Salvat-Papasseit was born in Barcelona in 1894. He came from a humble background and soon sympathized with socialism and anarquism. He wrote, besides social critique in Spanish and Catalan, beautiful and simple poetry. Unfortunately he was easily ill and died, aged only 30, of tuberculosis.

Although he didn't have a long life he left an imprint. His poetry is, as I have pointed out, usually simple and easy to understand; its plainness makes it survive across time. This is what makes it, in my opinion, wonderful and amazing: through easy words it is capable of creating very powerful images and awakening strong feelings in those who read it.

It is precisely for this fact that in the sixties Papasseit's words were recovered by Catalan songwriters of la Nova Cançó (the New Song) to raise their voice against Franco's dictatorship. What these songwriters did was putting music to Papasseit's poetry. One of his poems, "La casa que vull" was given music by the well-known musician Lluís Llach and, though I may not be able to fully appreciate it as I was born too late for that, I am sure its lyrics had enormous political power sang in front of an audience who claimed desperately for freedom.

Here you have the song and the lyrics:

LA CASA QUE VULL

La casa que vull,
que la mar la vegi
i uns arbres amb fruit
que me la festegin.

Que hi dugui un camí,
lluent de rosada,
no molt llunys dels pins
que la pluja amainen.

Per si em cal repòs
que la lluna hi vingui;
i quan surti el sol
el bon dia em digui.

Que al temps de l'estiu
niï l'oreneta
al blanc de calç ric
del porxo amb abelles.

Oint la cançó
del pagès que cava;
amb la salabror
de la marinada.

Que es guaiti ciutat
des de la finestra
que es sentin els clams
de guerra o de festa
per ser-hi tot prest
si arriba una gesta.

THE HOUSE I'D LIKE

The house that I'd like,
the sea must see it
and surrounded
with trees and its fruit.

You'd get there through a path,
shining with fine dew,
not far from the pines
by the raindrops smoothed.

If I need some sleep
the moon will be shining;
and when the sun comes
he'll say me good morning.

And in summertime
the nest from the swallow
will be at the whitewashed porch
accompanying the bees.

I'd listen to the song
of the peasant digging;
I'd feel the salty air
from the deep blue sea .

I'd see town
from the window
I'd hear the buzz
of war and of feast
so I can get there
when something occurs.

As I have pointed out, Salvat-Papasseit is well-known and present in school nowadays. In fact, one of his book, "El poema de la rosa als llavis" (The poem with a rose on the lips) is a mandatory reading for students. Also, he is known for his "cal·ligrames" or pattern poetry: he made poems with shapes. He was pure genius -for me-, above all, with this poem:

LES FORMIGUES. Camí de sol, per les rutes amigues - unes formigues. --> THE ANTS. On the sunny path, through friendly routes - some ants. (It is a pity the rhyme is lost in English!)

Yes, it is so simple, but I would never have thought about creating it!

La senyera

2009-11-18T21:00:00.015+01:00

Four red stripes on a yellow background: this is the "Senyera" or Catalonia's flag, a symbol of identity with too many socio-political implications. But today I am only going to talk about its origin.

Legend says that the flag comes from the 9th century. At the time Catalonia did not exist as we know it today: the northern half was composed of different counties and the southern half was part of the Muslim Caliphate of Córdoba.

The story tells that Guifré el Pilós ("Wilfred the Hairy"), count of many Catalan counties, was helping the Frank king Carles el Calb ("Charles the Bald") to fight the Normans and was mortally injured. The king approached the count's deathbed, and Guifré asked him for a coat of arms. The king then soaked all his fingers but the thumb into the count's open wound, and pressed and moved them down on the surface of a golden shield, thus creating the emblem of the four stripes on a golden/yellow background.

This could be a typical picture to illustrate the legend of the Senyera

Real history is far from that. Only by knowing that Carles el Calb died some twenty years before Guifré el Pilós, one knows that the story cannot be true. Besides, sources say that it appeared for the first time in a XV century book. The true history however, is not still clear. One thing is for sure: some bear a relationship with Guifré el Pilós (the legend had some truth in it after all!). One of the theories says that it has its origin in 878, when Guifré was invested count of Barcelona, whose symbol included the red stripes and the golden background. A second theory argues that it is a primitive coat of arms from the counts of Carcassone in France, who were descendants of Guifré el Pilós. And even a third theory exists, in which the origin of the Senyera is attributed to the Pope: red and yellow are papal colours and Aragon and Catalonia were his champions. Hypothesis left aside, what we now for certain is that the earliest proof of the Catalan coat of arms is a minting from count Ramon Berenguer IV in 1150.

As I have pointed out, Catalonia as such was not an entity in medieval times. First it was little counties in the north and part of Córdoba's caliphate in the south, then the counties united, afterwards, Aragon and the counties did so too and formed the crown of Aragon, later Muslims were expelled from the South of Catalonia and the conquest of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and the south of Italy began. It is for this reason that other flags in the areas I have just mentioned have the same basis as the Senyera. The four stripes on the golden background, representing the old crown of Aragon, also appears in the coat of arms which forms part of the Spanish flag, together with symbol of other old reigns in the Iberian Peninsula.

Notes:
- The Senyera at the beginning taken from http://www.kukuxumusu.com
(take a look at their webcards section!)
- To view images of the flags with the same basis as the Senyera,
visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senyera
- To view an image of the Spanish coat of arms,
visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Spain

Just for laughs (I)

2009-11-05T20:43:00.005+01:00

I remember when I was learning English (many many years ago now) that I enjoyed lessons about idioms a lot. Not only because remembering them was a challenge that I like to take but also because at first and if taken literally they made no sense to me.

Later on, as I was developing my passion for translation, I discovered the playfulness of language and I began to find making literal translations of idioms (from Catalan into English and Spanish, or from Spanish into English) extremely hilarious.

As today I had a very busy day and worked a lot, I want to have a good laugh, so I would like to do some literal translation here. I hope you have a good laugh to!

Ser un somiatruites > To be an omelette dreamer
(To be a daydreamer)

N'hi ha per llogar-hi cadires! > You could even rent chairs with this!
(I can't believe it / this is incredible -in a negative context)

No sabeu el pa que s'hi dóna > You do not know the bread that is given
(You do not really know what is this about)

El més calent és a l'aigüera > The hottest things are still on the sink
(The most important things haven't been done yet)

Cada dos per tres > Every two per three
(Very often)

Fugir cames ajudeu-me > To run away legs help me
(To run away very fast from something -implies fear)

Ser més llarg que un dia sense pa > To be longer than a day without bread
(Something which is really long)

Estar tocat del bolet > To be touched by the mushroom
(To be nuts)

Ser un tap de bassa > To be a pool's lid
(To be very short)

Allà on Jesús va perdre l'espardenya > Where Jesus lost his shoe -or "espadrille" following the online terminolgoy centre Termcat
(In a place which is difficult to reach)

A la quinta forca > In the fifth gallows/hayfork
(Far far away)

Remenar les cireres / Tallar el bacallà > To mix the cherries / To cut the cod
(To be in a position of power)

These are just a few examples. If you find this funny, let me know and from time to time I might be posting funny or curious language things like this!

PS: By the way, in Catalan, the word idiomes, which is very similar to idioms in English means...languages! Idioms is translated as frases fetes ("done sentences").

Per Tots Sants, PANELLETS i CASTANYES!

2009-11-01T16:08:00.027+01:00

When I was a child I did not know what Halloween was about. In fact, I never heard that word until I began studying English at 10 and even then I did not understand clearly what exactly was. Things now have changed and Halloween is pretty common. However, what we celebrate in Catalonia on the 31st October and 1st November is La Castanyada and we eat panellets, which both fall under the celebration of "Tots Sants" or "All Saints Day".

La Castanyada
La Castanyada, consists in cooking and eating chestnuts. In Catalan, castanya is a chestnut, and "castanyada", means "eating chestnuts" (yes, we weren't very original in the naming...) Traditionally, the official date of this tradition is on the night of the 31st October, but you can do "Castanyades" all autumn long, until chestnuts' season finishes. You can cook chestnut in several ways -in the oven, on a pan in the cooker, etc-, but in my opinion, the best way to cook them in a special pan with holes in it on a fireplace (or barbecue) using a herb called "palla de vesc" which you gather on paths' borders. To properly cook them this way, you have to make a deep cut on the chestnut's peel so they do not explode and place them in a bowl of water for a while. This while is usually the duration of a proper meal. Then, you put the chestnuts on the special pan on the fire with some of the herbs. As the herbs burn, you add more. All the time you have to keep an eye on the chestnut to make sure they "sweat" properly (ie, they look wet) and keep moving them. After about 30-45 min they will be all black outside and cooked. Finally, you place them on a piece of cloth for a while and eat them, opening them by the cut. Be careful, they burn! They are simply delicious. Chestnuts can be accompanied by a sweet wine called Moscatell, typical from Catalonia and Spain or Garnatxa, also a sweet wine, from my area, the Empordà.

Els Panellets
On Tots Sants, 1st of November (today!), we eat a sweet thing called panellets (no translation available, in literal English "little breadies"). The word might come from "pa" (bread) but panellets are sweet and do not bear any relationship with bread: they are in fact marzipan balls coated with pine kernels or smashed almonds. At home, my father is the "panellet maker". He uses a traditional recipe, which does not use current or sweet potato, which is an ingredient most people use to do them. I love these panellets, and yesterday I had a panellets-cooking session with him.

I made pictures and videos so you might try to do them :). Here are the basic ingredients for the dough, according to the traditional recipe (my father adapted the quantities, so please if you want to make them, ignore the 3 eggs on the video and stick to the following quantities):

300 g of almond flour (or if you know how to do almond flour, 300 g of raw almonds)
2 eggs
250 g of sugar

(Text in Catalan: Per Tots Sants, Panellets. Per fer la massa dels panellets necessitem aquests ingredients: farina d'ametlla, sucre i ous // Text in English: All saints day, the day of panellets. To make panellets' dough we need the following ingredients: almond flour, sugar and eggs).

Elaborating the dough:
- Separate the eggs' yolk from the white.

- Whisk the eggs' white until they look like foam.

- With the sugar and a little bit of water, prepare some sugar syrup.

- Keep a little bit of syrup and mix it with the yolks.
- Mix the rest of syrup with the almond flour.

- Add the eggs' whisk to the mixture and mix again.

- Take the yolk-syrup and add it to the mixture, keeping a little bit for later on.

- Mix until the dough is homogenous and leave it rest 60-90 min.

(Text in Catalan: Ja tenim la massa feta. Hem reservat una mica de rovell amb almívar per "pintar" els panellets un cop estiguin fets // Text in English: We've already prepared the dough. We've kept a little bit of yolk with syrup to "paint" the panellets once they're ready to cook)

Coating the panellets:

- After the dough has rested, we can proceed with coating the dough.
- On different dishes, spread pine kernels, almonds and smashed almonds.
- Take small chunks of dough and make little balls with them.

- Coat the balls with the nuts.

- Creativity is allowed and panellets can be coated with coconut, or filled with quince jelly or mixed with hot chocolate to create chocolate panellets. You can do panellets of whatever you like (or think you will like)

Cooking the panellets:
- The oven must be heated some minutes before placing the panellets.
- Panellets must be placed on an oven plate, in which we need to spread some butter to avoid panellets from sticking on the plate.

- Once all panellets are placed on the plate(s), and just before cooking them, take the rest of syrup-yolk you left aside and, with a spoon, put some of the mixture on top of every panellet ("paint" them, as my father says).

- Place the plate full of panellets into the oven. Cook them for about 10 min at a temperature of 180ºC. IMPORTANT NOTE: as you may have realised, some measurements are vague (a little bit of this, a little bit of that)...sorry, this is how we Catalan/Spaniards work :P. And the cooking time of panellets is vague too: I wrote 10 min, but the best thing you can do is keep an eye to them and take them out of the oven when the yolk on top is a bit brown).

There is only one thing left to do now: ENJOY EATING THEM! Bon profit ;)

PS: If you try to make them, let me know or send me pictures :)

Special thanks to my father, the great panellet cook!

My life was saved...seventy-one years ago!

2009-10-26T22:40:00.027+01:00

Girona, 1938. A nineteen-year-old boy has been summoned to fight in the Ebro's battle, one of the fiercest battles in the Spanish Civil War. His name has been called out loud among those of many other young boys. They stand in Girona's train station, waiting for the train to come, some with fear in their eyes, some with republican conviction to go and kill the fascist enemy. He does not want to fight. I bet he is not really fully aware of war: he is a boy from a countryside house in the Baix Empordà, a place with relative tranquillity. Suddenly, he decides to escape. He does not want to fight. And he becomes a deserter, which is another major danger: if he is caught he is going to be shooted. Anyhow, he takes the risk. He leaves the station. Amazingly, no one notices and he manages to get back home.

Soldiers running in the rail tracks during Ebro's battle

He was lucky. That same night the train was bombed as it whistled its way down towards the south of Catalonia. No bodies could be identified at first sight --the train bombing must have been dreadful--, and no DNA test nor any other test was done to check the identity of corpses and, as everyone assumed he actually was on the train, the republican army thought he was one of the casualties. This, the fact that he was officially dead, saved him. No one ever came after him.

He survived war hiding in a barn. I am not sure he knew that he was "dead" at that moment. He surely knew about it afterwards. His "lifeness" must have been restored somehow, as he married, worked and had children, and this of course represents having one's name written in official documents.

The village of Miravet, with soldiers fighting in the Ebro river

This really touches me, as this is the story of my grandfather. I remember him as a quiet man and, unlike his wife (my grandma with amazing beautiful pure white hair), he rarely showed he was fond of grandchildren. But he certainly loved us all, as proven by the fact that he always talked about us with my father -his son- and actually gave sweets and money to him so that he will give them to me, my brother and my sister. I remember him sitting by the fireside, eating milk and bread soup, always with his beret on and sometimes with a toothpick in his mouth. I also remember his old motorbike, which he used to drive from his home to Banyoles, and he was the one who repaired the old 19th century clock of his house. Now I wonder: was he so quiet as an effect of the war he never fought? Did he see he had been lucky? I wish he was alive so I could ask. I realise now I know so little about him.

I learned about all this about eleven months ago, when I went for a short trip with my family to places where the Ebro battle took place. My father told us about the story and I could not help thinking that with running away, grandpa must have saved my life, 46 years before I was born. I know, history-fiction has no sense, but when one is told this, one cannot stop wondering: what if... What if he had actually got on the train that day? Could I say, thanks grandpa? I think so, in a way.

Injured in battle

Why do I tell you this? Has it any relationship to Catalonia? It has, if we think that little personal personal stories is what really builds History in capital letters, in this case the history of Catalonia. The Spanish Civil War was fought by people, current people, our grandparents in fact. Some are still alive to tell and we should record them before they die (which unfortunately they soon will, as they are very old now). We should not repeat this past.

The red point locates Girona on the map. Blue areas hightlight some "comarques"
(areas) where the Ebro battle was fought. In yellow, the Baix Empordà, the "comarca" of my
grandfather. The green point is Martís, where he lived since he married
until he died in 2002.

PS: I haven't got any pictures of grandpa at the moment. But I will certainly look for one in family albums :)

A hit on the Internet

2009-10-15T20:26:00.009+02:00

Before anything else I would like to warn you: in this post the proud girl inside me is writing. Why? I read something it made me feel proud of my mother tongue.

Catalan has roughly 9 million speakers, which means that it is the 88th most spoken language in the world -out of the more or less 6000 that have been identified nowadays. (One could say, looking at this figure, that Catalan enjoys good health. It is not really the case, however. Anyway, this is would fit much better in another post.)

What catched my attention some days ago was that a minorised language as Catalan is, has an extraordinary presence on the Internet:

- It is the 15th most used language on Wikipedia -or Viquipèdia in Catalan (200,000 entries).
- It is the 17th most used language on web pages.
- It is the 8th most used language on blogs.

I could not believe my ears when I heard and then read this. Especially the figure related to blogs. Even bearing in mind that 90% languages in the world have no presence on the Internet, that makes an impressive number! This is really good for the language, as it indicates that people see it as a normal vehicle of communication. Besides, the Internet, is a powerful tool for less spoken or minorised -made minoritarian- languages: on the net these language can have a voice which reaches the whole world.

There even has been a congress, which discussed this case success and what could be done to take advantage of the Internet in similar cases. The congress was held by the "Casa de les Llengües" (The House of Languages), which is financed by the Catalan government and aims at studying and taking advantage of multilingualism, exploring the richness of languages. By the way, I strongly reccomend you to visit their webpage: it is really complete with all kinds of activities and...it is truly multilingual! (I think I would really love to work there).

Why was I so happy then? I'm sick of hearing offence against Catalan, and Catalans (most of times by politicians and conservative people), I am sick of how little by little our language is blurred by monolingual strategies which disregard it (why some people in Spain see bilingualism as bad?). This piece of new was a new breath of fresh air, something positive among all this.

So this is all: proud girl mode Off :D.

References:
"El català, un exemple a Interne t" (Catalan , an example over the Internet)
-Ethnologue, Languages of the world: http://www.ethnologue.com/
-Casa de les Llengües: http://www.linguamon.cat/
- Viquipèdia: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Chords and lyrics that make beautiful songs (I). Manel.

2009-09-27T23:55:00.007+02:00

The music of one of the concerts I enjoyed yesterday is still swimming in my head and sometimes I find myself singing bits and pieces of the song aloud as I am preparing lunch, as I am waiting for the metro to come, as I am walking towards the theatre to see a play, as I... It was such a lovely concert and it was for free. Good music, good weather at zero cost. What else could one ask for?

The stars of the concerts were Manel, a band from Barcelona which became famous last year when they won Sona 9, a music contest to promote new musicians in Catalonia. I think they deserved winning. Their lyrics talk about daily life, current things and some of them have a critical insight as well. And their music is just wonderful. They combine the sound of the guitar with the ukelele, the harmonica, the bass, the drums and the clarinet to play pop-folk tunes. Besides their songs, they also made completely new original versions of older Catalan bands.

Manel, band members

Manel have recorded one album, called "Els millors professors europeus" (The best European Teachers). I do not know exactly why they have called the album so, I can only tell the phrase is the title of one song and part of the lyrics of another.

"Els millors professors europeus", album cover

Following is a a little taste of some of their songs. I promise to translate the lyrics soon, it's a bit late today and the alarm clock won't forgive me tomorrow. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the music :)!

Manel - Al mar (To the sea)

Manel - En la que el Bernat se't troba (When Bernat meets you)

Manel - Ai Dolors

More on Manel at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/gatmanel

Hang out your flags!

2009-09-11T10:49:00.014+02:00

This morning, I woke up by 9:15. Usually, by this time, I should be already in the office working. But today is a bank holiday. It's Catalonia's National Day.

History:
The curious thing about this date is that we remember the biggest defeat Catalonia had. Yes, we celebrate that we were on the losing side in the Spanish Succession War at the beginning of the 18th century, which supposed the end of many Catalan liberties in favour of a centralised government model.

But what was exactly the Spanish Succession War? It might seem that it was only an internal Spanish matter. But it wasn't: it also involved other European countries. Since the beginning of the 16th century, Spain had been reigned by the Habsburgs -or "Àustries", in Catalan- dinasty. They were a dinasty which came from Austria, or to be honest with history, from the Austria-hungary empire. However, in 1700 the then king Charles II died without offspring (he was always ill and he was mentally-retarded due to too close consanguity and royal endogamy). Then, succession matters started. Charles II was replaced by Joseph Ferdinand of Bavary, but he soon died too and the issue appeared again. Two kings claimed, for differents reasons, the throne to be legitimatily theirs: Philip of Bourbon and Charles of Austria.

Charles of Austria

Philip V of Bourbon

Catalonia took its position for Charles of Austria, probably because the Borbonic model was a centralised one, which would sure suppose the end of many priviledges it had (as it happened). Besides, Catalans had already had fought a war from 1640 to 1659. This war is known as "La Guerra dels Segadors" (The reapers' war), as it broke out in Corpus day (7 June 1640) when a group of Catalan peasants, armed with their sickles, entered the city of Barcelona and revolted against the count-duke of Olivares who represented the Spanish kingdom in Catalonia. Olivares had been abusing Catalans war resources for the war Castilla (Spain) was fighting against Borbonic France. There were too many troops on rural Catalonia, and the fields were devastated because of that. The peasants were indeed loyal to the then king Philip IV, but they were certainly annoyed to see their crops devastated, as this meant hunger. The war ended in 1659 with the Treaty of the Pyrenees, where Catalonia lost the now French area of the Roussillon, an up-to-then Aragonese-Catalan territory. What remains of this war in popular knowledge is the hymn of Catalonia, Els Segadors (The reapers)

La Guerra de Segadors breaks out (painting of 1907)

Well, after explaining why Catalonia took its sides with Charles of Austria, let's go back to what matters in this post. The Succession Wars broke out in 1701: Habsburgs against Bourbons. The war had also repercussions in Europe, therefore we can say it was an international war -well, to be honest, at the time Europe was in the hands of a few royal families who held power...so things were easily international matters.

War advanced and finally Borbonic troops won. Catalonia was severly punished. It was one of the last places to fall under Borbonic hands. But still, you might be wondering what the Catalan National Day has to do with that. Now that I covered the basis, let's come to the point (sorry, it is difficult to get to the point if you are not given the context first).

Towards the end of the Succession wars, by 1713 the Bourbons knew they had won (and they had the support of Borbonic France) and "invited" the city of Barcelona to surrender. Catalan institutions saw that surrendering would mean the end of their system, so they decided to resist. Troops were gathered and about one year later, Barcelona was placed under siege. It was a hard siege and resources soon finished. On 11th September 1714, Rafael de Casanova, the then head of Barcelona, had to surrender to Philip V's troops.

The siege of Barcelona

This defeat supposed, as I already pointed out, the end of Catalan institutions who were replaced by a heavy centralised system based in Madrid. The "Decretos de Nueva Planta" (The Nueva Planta decrees) were issued and Catalonia, as a losing side, was severely affected by them: not only Catalan institutions disappeared, but Catalan was not longer used in writing and of course , Catalans could not trade nor have a share in the wealth coming from Spanish Empire (or the "Americas") -note that this was the golden age of the Spanish Empire (in Spanish, "el imperio donde nunca se pone el sol" or in English"the Empire where the sun never sets").

Celebrations:
Luckily, things have improved (well, after other hardships like Franco's dictatorship). We have been granted back some rights than we had on that time. But still, there is a long way to walk.

So what do we do every 11th September?

-We hang out a Senyera (the Catalan flag) over the balcony or the window.

-There are institutional acts, the main one being the flower offering to the Rafael de Casanova monument in Barcelona by the Generalitat president, the mayor of Barcelona and other Catalan political figures.

-Go to el Fossar de les Moreres in Barcelona, where many of the fallen of the 1714 siege were buried.

-If you are a very revolutionary Catalan fighter, organize reivindicative acts or attend them.

-Dance sardanes, the typical dance of Catalonia.

-Go to the official acts held in the Plaça de la Ciutadella in Barcelona.

-On 10th September listen or pretend to listen the speech by the Catalan president on TV3.

This is the president of la Generalitat of the TV3 comic show "Polònia".
Right after the official speech yesterday, the fake president appeared
making its own particular discourse. I cracked with laughter :D.

-Sing or listen the Catalan hymn "Els segadors" (right hand in the heart). When you listen to the lyrics it a very violent song related to the reapers who rebelled and related to rural life.

-Simply chill at home or take advantage of the day, or if it falls near the weekend, just take a mini-holidays. Like many people does and I am going to do: I'm leaving for the weekend with the 15.00 h train to Valencia. I feel Catalan, but I do not think doing all the above will make more Catalan, at the end all these acts are political and I must confess I am quite disappointed with Catalan politicians.

A spot for Andorra

2009-09-10T20:41:00.006+02:00

A couple of days ago I was asked to translate a project from English into Catalan that required installing a new software programme.

After several hours fighting with the programme's version, I could successfully install it and I opened it to adjust the required settings for the project: language, filter, dictionaries, working file, etc. In a CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tool you usually have some place where you can set all this up. Most importantly, there must always be some place where to set the source -the language you will be translation from- and target-the language you will translate into.

So the first thing I did was setting working language and I was really amazed when I saw this:

It is really curious. Up to then, I never found Catalan related to Andorra in a translation programme. It made me think why that was the case, as I was used to see a Catalan flag whenever I set up a project to be translated into Catalan. And then I get the system: a language associated to a country where it is official. And Andorra is the only country of the world where Catalan is the only official language (the language you hear on the streets of Andorra is another matter...) and the programme's developers knew it. For other cooficial languages in Spain, namely Basque and Galician, there was a Spanish flag.

This case is really curious and also brings along some questions: it is correct to associate language and country? It is a good decision to use country flags in translation programmes? Well, that is not a really big deal for many people, that is true, but it kept me wondering for a while. For example, for the first question: there are lots of languages which are not only exclusive of one country. That is true, you can specify the region (as in EN_US (English, United States) but that does not solve the problem. To stay home, in Catalan, this region specification is not really necessary -variants are not so different among them (well, some would say Catalan and Valencian are different languages, but that is another thing to talk about in another post). Anyway, supposing no region is necessary for Catalan, what flag do we use? Andorran, Catalan, Valencian, Balearic, Aragonese, French, Sardinian? In all these places Catalan is spoken.

Anyhow, in this specific case I am showing you, software developers chose the language-country-flag association. I won't say it is good or bad, as everybody has its own opinion and can find good arguments for it. Above all, I was surprised and it made me smile. Andorra is a tiny country in the middle of the Pyrenees, and if, even Catalans in Catalonia do not usually remember that there Catalan has exclusive officiality...how are other less-related to Andorra countries are to thoroughly know about this fact? Well, in this CAT application, they had some recognition and their name and flag is used to represent Catalan.

My boyfriend is Andorran and when I told him this by mail he wrote in big bold letters: Graaaaan! (That's biiiiiig!). He says that, little by little, Andorra is invading Catalonia...of course, that only a joke between us...I hope :P. He added malevolous laughter after "Graaaan!".

An incredible growth

2009-09-05T11:19:00.016+02:00

Today I may sound a bit of a bore because I will tell you about facts and figures of Catalonia. I mainly do it because I think it will be somehow useful and will make you have a better statistical idea of Catalonia. I know statistics are only about numbers and generalisations but we always find in them a way to get a global idea of things. In the end, they are not so uninteresting...

Let's set for the trip to Facts and figures land then!

Population: growth and immigration
In 1900, Catalonia had a population of about two million people. After only 108 years, in 2008, the population has multiplied almost per 4. There are now about 7,365,000 people living in the area. How can we explain such an astronomical growth in such a short period? The answer is simple and logical: two waves of immigration, one in the sixties and the other one from the nineties till now (it seems to have stopped a little bit because of the current economical crisis).

Immigration in the 60s - INTRAnational immigration:
This first wave of immigration took place during Franco's time and immigrants were people inside Spain (mainly Andalusians, but also people for Extremadura, in western Spain) who set for Catalonia seeking for a job and a better life. They also set for Europe and went to work mainly in Germany. The difference with the Spaniards who went to Germany and the ones who came to Catalonia is that the first ones came back to Spain after some years, while the other usually settled in Catalonia, most of them in Barcelona and its surrounding areas.

The Spanish immigrants who came to Catalonia mainly came from rural areas, scaping from poverty. Catalonia, as one of the economic engine of Spain had a lot of industry and was far richer than other areas at the time. In only ten years, the population increased almost two million: from 3,888,485 in 1960 to 5,107,606 in 1970.

Some weeks ago, I watched a TV documentary about shacks in Barcelona during this wave of immigration. I knew that life for this people must have been hard, but I was struck of what some of them had to endure and how and where they had to live. There are no rest of these shacks in Barcelona now, as they were progressively swept away in the late seventies and the eighties, when the city was getting itself ready for its major event: the Olympic Games of 1992.

Immigration in the 90s and 2000s - INTERnational immigration:

After the first wave of immigration, the population kept growing in a less accelerated pace. But nineties arrived and new immigrants arrived. This time it is a more diversified immigration and not only a Catalan matter, it is a global phenomenon in the whole of Spain.

This time population also grew, but, although figures are also noticeable, they are not so high as the ones in the first wave of immigrants: from 1991 to 2008 the population in Catalonia increased from six million to the current figure of 7,365,000 million.

As I have pointed out, this time immigration is international. Mostly, immigrants come from:
- Latin and Southamerican (all countries, but a lot of them from Ecuador, Colombia, Perú, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil). All of them, except from Brazilians do not have the added problem of language.
- Africa (Morocco, Gambia and Senegal mainly)
- Asia (China, Pakistan and India mainly)
- Eastern Europeans (Rumanians)

If all these people come in search of a better life, there is another group that come for completely different reasons. This group people are mainly from the European Union, Italians being the star group, followed by France and Germany.

Conclusion:
Nowadays there are 974,743 foreigners living in Catalonia (legally), which represents a 13,2% of the total population. The figure includes not only the groups I've mentioned but people from other places as well.

This has indeed creating a "melting pot" in Catalonia. It is difficult to know if it is good or bad for Catalonia. It blurs "Catalan identity" but it also brings cultural richness. I think that the problem lies in that we haven't find the way to make our culture attractive. and the cultures of this people are so different that we don't really know how to handle them. We still need to learn a lot f rom each other. As a Catalan, I would ideally like them to integrate, to enjoy the culture here and to speak Catalan, but at the same time I understand why they don't.

On the other hand, immigrants have kept the population of Catalonia growing: the birthrate in Catalonia was of 0,8 children per woman in 2002 (by the way, I never understood why they put commas in birthrate...as if a woman could have half a child or a 75% child), and two years ago it had grown perceptilbly.

2009, however, has brought crisis and the number of newcomers is decreasing and some people are going back to their countries, to be nearer the ones who had been left behind when they parted. This tendency has been made evident with the decrease in the number of immigrant children registered to attend school (which will begin on September 15th, I think)

The funny ending note:
I still remember, that in my childhood and teenage years propaganda saying "Som sis milions", ie "We are six million" (I also heard a mockery, around year 2000-01, about that and related to the decrease in birth rate: "Per culpa dels condons som sis milions", which makes a funny rhyme and means "because of condoms we are six million"). This was a campaign launched by the then president Jordi Pujol in 1987, but it has survived time and it is still in the air, now with "Som 7 milions", just for the sake of making fun of it. Will we get to 8 million soon? Anyhow, the rhyme still works, but I guess that the campaign was thinking of "increasing the number of Catalans", as the party which launched them was catalanist...

Bibliography: Figures of population are taken from the Statistic Institute of Catalonia (Idescat),
at http://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=aec&n=245
For a detailed account of immigration figures and origin of immigrants,
see http://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=aec&n=272
Note: some information has been picked out from what I see living in Barcelona every day.

This is a bilingual place. Part 1

2009-09-04T21:00:00.009+02:00

The gift of bilingualism
There is no native Catalan in the world who only knows one language. All Catalans are bilingual de facto and live with two co-existing languages, Catalan and Spanish. This is not, as many want to see, a problem at all -or at least it shouldn't. It is a gift, a richness we should benefit from at take advantage of. Not only because we learn Spanish, the 3rd most spoken language (but the 2nd in terms of native speakers) in the world, since we are little kids but also because, according to linguists, it is then easier to learn new languages when you know more than one.

Code switching
One of the most striking things for people outside bilingual areas where both languages are alive, is the fact that one can have a conversation in two languages at the same time: one speaking Spanish and the other Catalan, according to which language they feel more comfortable with. This of course, happens, but it is not the general rule. Usually, one of the two languages -I must say a lot of times Spanish- becomes the language of the conversation. For most of us this is not a problem, and switching between languages is something we do constantly.

It's there really 100% bilingualism?
So yes, bilingualism exists, but it is not a balanced bilingualism. First of all, people in Catalunya can have Catalan, Spanish, or both languages as mother tongues. Excluding the case of those who have two mother tongues and speak both at home normally, people usually have more command over one language. This is not something wrong or bad, it is just a fact and it is the most normal thing in the world.

At school we learn both Spanish and Catalan since we are kids (besides English, of course). In public life, despite the fact that Catalan is the main language in education (as the Catalan Government has competency over Education and favours the use of Catalan) most of the linguistic input out of the academic context is in Spanish (cinema, magazines, most newspapers, ads, food packages, music for teenager).

Feeling uneasy: the need to say more about it
By now you might have the suspicion that this bilingualism is not free of problems, mainly political but also linguistical (like everything-sigh). In this post I tried to be as objective as possible, but I found it quite hard, as I have very strong feeling of support for Catalan. I really feel I should write something more personal about it. It is for this that I have decided to split the subject in two. Therefore, I will write another more subjective post on bilingualism.

The team that touched the sky

2009-08-21T19:08:00.015+02:00

There was a day, not so long ago, where the whole world was blue and red, or as we say here "blaugrana". That was on May 28, the day after Football Club Barcelona (Barça, from now on) beat Manchester United in the Champions League final in Rome. In the Eternal City, Barça proved to be currently the best football team on Earth. This already was in every supporter's mind, but the match in Rome was the best climax possible to a season that has amazed everybody, from the local fan to the distant African supporter.

SEASON 2008/09: A REPORT OF DAYS TO REMEMBER
The season did not begin very well, but the team never gave up working. By the end of the season, the time when I began to like football, the situation had completely changed. I enjoyed the classic match Real Madrid-Barça, with the impressive result of 2-6. What I do not like much is the too strong feeling against Real Madrid that some Barça supporters have.

I was also amazed at the in-extremis goal by Iniesta that shuttled Barça to the Champions League final in Rome. The serious faces of people turned into jumps of happiness at minute 92. We had almost done it. There is a very funny and original recording from RAC1 broadcasting of the match when Iniesta made the goal (click on first audio player to listen to it). Though you may not understand it, you will clearly feel the craziness and uniqueness of the moment. This was on May 7.

And, above all the matches, I keep a very special memory of the Copa del Rey final against Athletic de Bilbao. I had never seen such modelic supporters. I think the heroes of the match were Athletic de Bilbao's supporters, which gave us a lesson of how to encourage your team, no matter it lost the match. They were the winners of the night. I would not have been sad if they had won the cup. Next day after the match I read lots of comments of support coming from Barcelona in a Basque newspaper. One, which came from a father in Barcelona, was specially touching: 'Thanks to you (meaning the "Athleti" supporters), yesterday I could teach my son what football really is'. Also you could read "Athleti is my second team".

After some more days, Barça won the League. Firecracks began to illuminate the city. Canaletes, the fountain in the Rambla of Barcelona where Barça's victories are celebrated, was filled massively for the second time in the season, not without the complaints of the neighbours in the area.

Getting to Canaletes in les Rambles, May 16th

And finally, the 27th May final in Rome came and Barça did it! Veniamus, vidimus, vincimus! (We came, we saw, we won) And they played well! Canaletes was so full my friends and I didn't get to the fountain itself because it was crowded! Firecracks till crazyness. You couldn't escape Barça's fever. The city, the whole of Catalonia and even the wind was whispering the name of the team. It didn't matter you had school or had to work the next day.

This video was broadcasted by the TV3 show "Crackòvia", which makes fun of sport in Catalonia and Spain. The video shows Barça players who sing a song about winning the three titles. The song was broadcasted around St. Jordi,-and reference is made to the festivity in the video- , when it was still unknown if Barça would win the three trophies. This curious version of "We will Rock You" is a very well-known song now. The song starts at minute 1:50.

Celebrating the triplet with friends

After this extasis, on May 28, the most famous newspapers in the globe showed pictures of the team and waving blue and red flags. In the afternoon half of the population in Barcelona (750,000 people) went out on the street to see their idols parading on a roofless double-deck bus. It was something I had never seen before and it just left me speechless.

The team's parade in Plaça Catalunya, Barcelona

"MÉS QUE UN CLUB"
This may give you an idea about what Barça represents for its supporters, especially Catalan ones. In fact, Barça is more than a simple sports club, that is "més que un club".

To start with, it is not all about winning matches and titles (and a lot of money). It is about the spirit with which they were won. Barça is the team who touched the sky also because of its coach, Pep Guardiola, a man who at his young age (38), set the team to work enthusiastically. He made them believe nothing is possible without an effort, that you can win only thanks to team work, that every player has its own value for the team, that one should never give up and that fair-play is the rule. No one thought he could do that at the beggining of last season -not even himself- and now he's probably the most talked-about coach all over the world. He taught a lesson on how to play good football. Besides, his are values for kids to learn (some schools in Catalonia actually used him as an example).

The team and Guardiola (photo from El Periódico)

Guardiola is precisely a further example of what the team stands for. During the last years, Barça has made a difference in the way it gets its players. They eventually buy star players, but their usual modus operandi is taking young boys around the world who outstand in their street football games. These kids are brought to "La Masia" in Barcelona, where they are trained and ultimately become players in the team.

And now comes the tricky part. As most things in Catalonia, Barça does not escape politics. The sports club is usually associated with Catalanism (ie, Catalan nationalism), for better or worse. This idea comes directly from the times of Franco's dictatorship, when Catalan language and culture were banned from the public sphere. In those days Barça became a symbol for the Catalan democrats fighting against Franco. Nowadays, more than thirty year's after Franco's death, Barça and Catalonia are two concepts which are still tightly associated. Of course not all Barça supporters defend Catalanist ideas and not all Catalans are Barça supporters. For instance, some follow the other big club in Barcelona, RCD Espanyol, and others follow other local or national teams.

An example of how politics and sport are entangled: this boy is wering a Barça scarf,
an independentist Catalan flag and a T-shirt which reads
"A nation, a selection" (for the creation of a Catalan sports selection)

One thing for sure, the intertwinning between football and politics in Spain is a complicated mess to disentangle: Real Madrid and Athletic de Bilbao are mixed with politics too. Real Madrid stands for Spanish nationalism and Athletic de Bilbao only hires Basque players. Competivity, thus, for some is political too. It might be hard to understand why this happens and maybe, I don't know, it is difficult to imagine for you. After all, football is only a sport, one that moves an awful lot of money, but still a sport and as such it should be meant as something to have fun with.

There is only one thing left to say: now that the new season has just began, get ready and enjoy it!

Welcome back

2009-08-07T00:40:00.001+02:00

Hello again! It's a long time since I last wrote. I like writing this blog and have many ideas on what to write, but to be honest, I never get to establish writing it as regularly as I wished. Why I don't is a constant question I ask myself. I think that now is the time to gather some will and do it. Just because I enjoy it and I would like to share this with you.

My first post after my firm decision of writing often is to show you how Catalan greetings and presentations sound like and what do they mean. I had this post into my head since I came back from the summercamp where I worked for two weeks. These days have been full of greetings and "will miss yous" and "see you soons", and I thought maybe it would be a great idea to "restart" the blog. So here you are:

LESSON 1:

Words to remember:
Hola = Hello / Hi
Com va? = How are you? (literally "How is it going?")
Adéu = Bye
Bon dia = Good morning
Bona tarda = Good afternoon / Good evening
Bona nit = Good night / Good evening

A short note on grammar: both "bon" and "bona" stand for "good", the difference being gender ("bon" is masculine, while "bona" is feminine")

LESSON 1 BONUS TRACK:

WORDS TO REMEMBER:
Et trobaré a faltar = I will miss you
Fins aviat = See you soon

WARNING!: Most of these dialogues are spoken in informal contexts.

Special thanks to Xavi, the same guy who wrote
the boasting words for Sant Jordi's legend special effects.

Holidays

2009-07-07T21:29:00.004+02:00

It's a long time since I have not written anything. Time pressed and I had no spare one to devote to the blog.

Now I am out working as a monitor-teacher in the summercamps organized by la Generalitat de Catalunya (the Catalan government) in Deltebre, South of Catalonia. I'll be back on the 12th and promise to change my writing routine so you can learn new things about this land. ;)

A beautiful landscape

2009-05-26T16:18:00.004+02:00

Last Tuesday a new weekly TV programme began in TV3 -the public Catalan television channel. It is called "El paisatge favorit de Catalunya" (The favourite landscape of Catalonia).

It aims at letting users choose which is their favourite landscape by voting. In each programme, three famous public personalities who live in Catalonia talk about their favourite landscapes and encourage people to vote for it. Besides voting, people can also post their own pictures of Catalan landscapes in the programme's web.

I also see another aim as well: make people in Catalonia know their own land. And believe me, there is so much to see!

I was captivated, moved by the beauty of the images. We have a treasure: a land which offers us every kind of landscape: mountains up to 3140 metres, rocky coast, sandy coast, hills, rivers, pintoresque villages, medieval towns, a big city, volcanos (inactive...and hopefully extinct), plains... A bunch of possibilites and wonders!

I see one weak point in this programme: it is so hard to say which is my favourite landscape in Catalonia!

You can watch the programme in TV3's website. They will upload every week 's programme, so anyone can watch it after it is broadcasted. The only thing is that is narrated in Catalan, but landscapes speak no languages, so I invite you to enjoy it. I hope you like it.

http://www.tv3.cat/elpaisatge

Sant Jordi - The real day

2009-05-21T19:53:00.011+02:00

Legends are part of culture, as well as real life is. So, now that you know Sant Jordi's legend, let me talk about the real Sant Jordi's day every 23rd April.

It does not matter if it rains or not, for Sant Jordi, culture is on the streets. In every city, big or small, there are stalls full of books and stalls with buckets filled with roses. Boys (and fathers) buy their girls a rose and girls buy their boys a book. However, I should say I don't think this tradition is fair at all and I always ask for my book ;). And sure, I try to buy a rose (or make a paper rose myself) for my boy. Why not?

Kids at kindergarten are told about Sant Jordi and all school organise differentsactivities this day. We learn Sant Jordi is the patron saint of Catalonia and that he killed the dragon, saved the princess and gave her a rose which came out from the dragon's blood. We paint pictures and we read the legend over and over again. Until you realise it is a legend. But, still you think Sant Jordi is a very special day and up to now I've met no one who does not enjoy this day.

What might strike is, that despite the fact of being the day of the patron saint, Sant Jordi is not a bank holiday in Catalonia (but it is in Aragon, I think, where Jorge --Jordi in Spanish)--is also the patron saint). This, in my opinion makes this day even more peculiar and special: people try to go to the stalls anyway.

The stalls are usually located at the city centre, and if the city has what we call a "rambla" (which is nothing more than a sandy stream which has been paved), then the stalls are in the rambla. The most emblematic place with stalls in Catalonia is in Barcelona, where you have more than 1km of stalls on both sides in Rambla Catalunya and Les Rambles (by the way, now you know where the name of the famous "Rambles" comes from). Famous and media writers sign their books in the stalls. Catalan newspapers (and the edition for Catalonia of Spanish newspapers) edit a special supplement with book reviews and reccomendation which they give away in les Rambles for free. Political parties have their own stalls. Catalan radio stations make their programs near the stalls. The Catalan TV channel (TV3) makes some programmes from there (e.g. the news). And then some people try to attract other people's attention in different ways.

This year, as other years, there was a man wrapped in cardboard with a text in Catalan and Spanish (one language per side) "Regret your sins, the end is near" or something like this (the text was longer but I can't remember. And there was also a boy and a girl giving bookmarkers which advertised eggs produced in Catalonia. Actually, this couple was very funny. They were dressed with the typical Catalan costume and speaking like in the dialect of the countryside in my area, which attracted the "people from the city" attention. I kept looking at them and she said: "You know, maybe she doesn't know where we are from". I said: "well, yes, you speak like me, you are from the north, Girona". The boy said: "Even further in the north". I replied: "Yes, so am I". And they told us the story of the eggs. It was very funny indeed.

This Sant Jordi I did not buy any book. In fact, I rarely buy any book for Sant Jordi, despite you get a 10% discount --the stalls are very crowded! I just like to glance at books, stroll , linger in the stalls and enjoy the atmosphere.

As for the books, well, many stalls have similar books and there is always a list of best sellers. This year, the success has been for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (in Catalan: "Els homes que no estimaven les dones" -literally "The men who did not love women", which would call for a funny discussion on books' titles translation!) by Stieg Larsson, El silenci (The Silence) by Gaspar Hernández L'últim home que parlava català (The last man who spoke Catalan) by Carles Casajuana and then we have Stieg Larsson again with The Girl Who Played with Fire. There are some other Catalan authors and then there's Paolo Giordano with The Solitude of Prime Numbers and John Boyne with The boy in the striped Pyjamas.

As for roses, you find roses of any possible colour: rose, blue, yellow, black, multicoloured! (I don't know how do they grow them!), but I prefer the beautiful red rose which is always accompanied with a spike of wheat and usually wrapped in plastic with a Catalan flag (I don't mind the flag and the plastic, I like the rose).

Well, you can see that Sant Jordi is a very special day here. For me, it is the most beautiful day in Catalonia. And a good day for promoting the habit of reading, which we need so much in this country...

Here are some pictures I would like to share with you. They were taken in Barcelona so you will get the idea of how big this day is (maybe too many people in Barcelona!):

People crowding les Rambles

Me in les Rambles

Plaça Catalunya (in the right you can see TV3 stall -blue stall with number 3 on it at the background)

Books in a stall

Bookshop with people (you don't see this very often!)

Red rose. Have a guess: which one is the Catalan for "red rose"?

The dragon reader

Rosing (different reasons to buy a rose):
Jo sóc clàssic: per amor! --> I'm classic and do it for love!
Perquè després ja sé què passa --> Because I know what happens afterwards...
Perquè em preguntin qui me l'ha regalat! --> Because they will ask me who gave it to me!
Per amor propi! --> Self-love
Perquè és més barat que un llibre --> Because it's cheaper than a book!
Pot ser el primer pas per aconseguir el seu mòbil --> It might be the first step to get her mobile phone number!
Ho reconec! Sóc un pilota! --> I admit it! I'm a crawler!
Encara crec en la llegenda de Sant Jordi --> I still believe in Sant Jordi's legend!
Perquè són les més maques que he vist avui --> They are the most beautiful one I've seen today!

Roses

Rose & books

A rose for the Bicing bike too! (or Xavi, a bike and a rose)

Sant Jordi - The legend

2009-05-10T16:25:00.013+02:00

Once upon a time, the dwellers of a small village were terrified by the menace of a dragon that lived in the nearby caverns. They had been afraid of the huge beast for lots of years, since it had once come down to the village asking for food. First, they gave it their chicken, but these were far too small to soothe the dragon's hunger, so it soon asked for more. The villagers thus decided to give away their sheep and goats. Still, these were not enough to fill the stomach of the beast. Desperate, the people gave away their cows, but they soon finished too. The dragon was never fulfilled and it was greedy for food. Some time passed in which the villagers could offer it nothing, so it went down to the village and made this dreary request:

-You shall give me one of your children everyday. Should you not fulfil my desires, this village will be swept away forever by my fury.

And to demonstrate its power, he set one of the village's houses in flames with the fire blowing from its nostrils.

There was nothing to do but to obey. However, who was to be given away? Sure enough everyone was scared and unwilling to be eaten by such a beast. Therefore, something was to be done.

Someone proposed that fortune should choose who was to be given to the dragon. The king of the village approved this solution. The names of all the young people of the village were written down and put into a bag. The king himself took one of the pieces of paper and went suddenly blank. He was to give away his very own daughter, the most beautiful lovely girl the world had ever seen.

When she knew the sad news, the princess cried desperately, but she bravely accepted her destiny. So she said goodbye to everyone and set for the dragon's den.

Soon after the princess had left, a handsome knight clad in a white costume with a red cross on it and armed with a sword and a white shield with a red cross (Catalan version: the shield has a Catalan flag), reached the village. When he saw the gloomy looks in the villagers' eyes, he quickly asked the reason they were so sad. The king, who was clearly the one that looked more depressed, told him about the beast and the terrible fate that was about to fall upon his beloved daughter. The knight did not hesitate a second about what he should do. He promised the king he would bring his daughter back safe and sound and rid the village of the dragon’s menace. He then galloped to encounter the beast in its lair.

And no sooner could he have arrived. The scene he saw as he approached the cavern was terrifying: the beast was slowly moving towards the princess, its eyes fixed in the beautiful girl as he imagined what a tasty meal she would be. Jordi -for this was the knight’s name-pushed his horse forward, as he drew out the sword that had served him so well in the right hand. With the sound of metal and Jordi’s war cry, the dragon’s attention was distracted. It swayed its head towards the knight and with an angry look, it blew a ball of fire towards him. Jordi had expected this, and his shield was ready to stop the first attack. Fear had now left him, and courage was the only guide of his acts. He was a fast and experienced swordsman, so he gave a quick blow that the dragon could hardly avoid. However, the beast quickly reacted and threw his mighty long tail towards our hero. His horse was badly hurt, and he fell down from it, but he immediately regained his position. The dragon was now looking him right in the eyes.

Jordi then took a risky decision, which was in fact his only possibility. He threw himself towards the dragon's mouth, as it prepared the definite fire blow. However, Jordi “quickly” moved to the right side and down under the beast's body and-with all the strength he was able to gather-stabbed the dragon right into its heart. The dragon screamed with all its might and collapsed. Jordi was only inches away from being killed by the enormous falling body.

The princess ran to aid his saviour and embraced him. And then, magic happened: from the pool of red thick blood coming from the dragon’s heart, a rose tree sprouted. Little by little, the tree drank the dragon's blood and brilliant wonderful red roses appeared. Jordi approached the tree and, carefully avoiding its spines, took the biggest and more sweetly-perfumed rose to give it to the king's daughter.

This is the reason why, from that day, the 23rd of April of every year, when spring bursts, Catalan men give their beloved princesses a red (sometimes multicolour) rose. As to why girls offer books to their knights in return that same day, there is no legend as far as we have been able to discover.

(Special war effects and boasting wording by cowriter Xavi V.)

*Authors' note: this legend is also in other places where Sant Jordi is a patron, ie: England (Saint George) and Aragón (San Jorge).

Street markets-fairs

2009-04-13T12:02:00.011+02:00

5th April 2009. It was a perfect sunny Sunday in my hometown, Vilafant (north-east Catalonia, next to Figueres). It couldn't have been a better day for the activity that was being held: a street market fair. The main streets where filled with stalls selling cheese, cakes, sweets, earrings, rings, necklaces, hippy clothes, bags, handbags, color books and "brunyols" (fritters), among other things. However, the meeting point, the Plaça Major (Main Square), with its 105-old plantain, was the reason for all the other stalls. In the Square were the restaurant stalls, where rabbit-based dishes were served. This could not have been other way, since the market was dedicated to the rabbit.

Vilafant's main square with the stalls where you taste the rabbit. To taste
the rabbit you are given the piece of wood I'm holding.

In Vilafant, every first April Sunday a market-fair dedicated to the rabbit is held. And the Plaça Major is where a dozen of restaurants of the area cook rabbit in different ways: rice and rabbit, rabbit with chestnuts and moustard sauce, rabbit with squids, etc...(this year there was even rabbit ice-cream! -I didn't it like much, I confess).

In Catalonia, rabbit meat is a usual thing to eat. Other strange things we eat is snails (and they are not bad if you cook them with a good sauce). Also, in my area, it is quite normal to have meat and fish dishes (or as we call here "Mar i muntanya" -Sea and mountain), as we have mountains and we have see. Hence, the mixture rabbit-squid is a plausible thing to eat.

I like this kind of street markets. There are thousands of markets of the kind all around Catakab villages and they are all structured the same: there is a main theme, usually something related to the village (the Cherry fair in Llers, the Cheese fair in Lladó, the Garnatxa and brunyol fair in Garriguella). Sometimes, these fairs have a historic reason (medieval fairs in Castelló d'Empúries and Montblanc and Renaissance fair in Tortosa, for example), or they are exclusive for one thing, like the antiques, old toys, stamps and numismatic fairs. Most of times this markets are accompanied by parallel activities. In the case of medieval and Renaissance markets, for instances, street theatre and art goes on. In the specific case of my village, the rabbit fair is the end of a "cultural week" and in the afternoon we have the "Throwing bricks competition", organized by the theatre group "La totxana" (The brick).

A moment in the "Throwing bricks competition". The further
you throw the brick. the better (No worries, there are protection measures).

In my opinion, these fairs are one aspect of our cultural heritage. It is not only knowing villages, and eating good food, it is also knowing about our traditions and learning about popular culture.

Catalan phonetics

2009-03-20T16:31:00.008+01:00

I love phonetics. And I specially love the phonetics of Catalan dialects (as my friends know very well). I will, definetely, write about phonetics some day, but I am still think about how to make is sound easy and interesting.

Now I'd like to post the phonetics of the word "català" (Catalan). for the so-called standard phonetics (not all dialects pronounce it like this). If you know the International Phonetics Alphabet you will know what every symbol means. For the ones who do not know, I try to explain how to disentangle this mess ;).

CATALÀ

Explanation:
- "k" its easy :).
- The inverted "e" represents the "schwa" sound like the "e" in "water".
- The "t" you know, the thing is the little symbol below. That means this "t" is dental, which means that it is pronounce with the tongue between your teeths (the "t" in Catalan is always like this, in opposition to English, where to pronounce this letter you place the tongue in the alveolar ridge).
-The apostrophe marks the strong syllable which in the word is "là".
-The following that looks like a Polish letter, mean a "retracted l". What is this? A retracted "l" is an "l" which is pronounce by curling the back of the tongue toward the palate/roof of the motuh. I don't know how I do it because all Catalan "l" are pronounced like this, but for a Polish this is very important because they difference between the "normal l" (like the "l" in "lullaby") and the retracted "l". Not for Catalans, we only have the "retracted l".
It worth mentionin that this is what betrays a Catalan speaker speaking Spanish. I had a hard time learning not to force my "l" when speaking Spanish and, though, I've improved, this still betrays me.
As for you, just know this is a minor issue, interesting to phonetic-lovers, but just say the sound "l" and don't worry about retractions, we won't notice the difference. In fact, I didn't know about this issue until I took Catalan phonetics at university.
- The "a" is easy. The two points above it only mean that the breath falls in the a.

NOTE: all syllables have the same length (unlike English!), as well as all the vowels: CA-TA-LÀ. Don't make weak syllables shorter.
NOTE 2: some dialects (western Catalan dialects) don't have the "schwa" sound, they would pronounce all as a tonic "a". For example, I would say it like the phonetics above, ie, pronouncing the "schwa" because I have an Eastern dialect, but my boyfriend, who has a Western dialect, would pronounce all "a". But this is not a problem for communication, it's just a feature and sometimes something to laugh and have fun specially when trying to imitate each other's dialects.

Pau Casals, "El cant dels ocells" or a song full of meaning

2009-03-11T16:07:00.015+01:00

It's five year now since the terrorist attacks in Madrid and I'm feeling a little touchy today (what a contrast with yesterday!). Two years ago, in remembrance of these attacks a beautiful song, originally a traditional Christmas Carol but now internationally known as a song that symbolizes peace and freedom, was played. I saw some images of that day today and it deeply moved me, not only because the victims have fallen into oblivion by the government (which cares more about political battles than them) but also because I realised how well a song can represent a universal feeling.

As I pointed out, the song "El cant dels ocells" (The song of the birds) was originally a Christmas Carol but, when Pau Casals popularized it, the song got its current significations. But how was it exactly? Why this switch in meaning? To know the answer we must focus into this brilliant cello player that was Pau Casals.

Pau Casals was born in El Vendrell (halfway between Barcelona and Tarragona) in 1876. So, when the Spanish civil war broke out he was already 60 years old. He survived the war, but as he was anti-fascist (against Franco's regime) and very pro-Catalan (he was independentist), he had to exile from the country. He died of a heart attack in Puerto Rico in 1973, two years before dictator Franco's death. Sadly, he never saw his country free again.

He was passionate about music and since he saw a fake cello when he was a child, he became a passionate of the instrument. He took his musical studies in Barcelona and played all over the world: the USA (he was even invited to the White House during JF Kennedy presidency), Russia, England, Austria, South America, Hungary.

However, what he is most known for is as a peace activist (he won several Peace awards and, curiously enough, his name "Pau" means "peace" in Catalan) and as the composer of the Himne a les Nacions Unides (United Nations Hymn), as well as for the speech he delivered in the UN in 1971, aged 95. His words, though being immensely nationalist, show the wish of peace he had rooted inside.

(Source: wikipedia and http://www.paucasals.org/en/home, youtube)

This is the speech he delivered in the UN Day (and he of course, played El Cant dels Ocells after not having played for many years):

And here you can see himself playing the song. It is the image most Catalans have of Pau Casals: himself and his cello:

Let the bird of peace flight. In memory of all victims of war, and today, specially those in Madrid 11/03/2004. Don't let them fall into oblivion.

My blog on the radio! Moltes gràcies Xavi i Rac1! (Thank you very much Xavi and Rac1)

2009-03-10T15:49:00.012+01:00

Since half past two I'm overwhelmed with happiness.

That is the time when I got a call from my mother. This is strange because my mother never calls me at that time. So I asked her if there was something wrong. She said that not at all, that she wanted to tell me something that I might like a lot. She said that she believed she had heard my boyfriend's name in "El món" (The world), a radio programme in the Catalan station Rac1, about eight o'clock and something about a blog which in its last posts talked about "calçots being similar to long onions". As you can imagine it caught me totally unaware: nobody -ie, my boyfriend Xavi- told me and, because this is exactly what I wrote yesterday!! I had to go deeper into it. I downloaded the podcast from the programme and there it was! Now it all explained the new reader that commented on a post today!

Of course, before downloading the podcast, I called Xavi (a faithful listener of El Món) and asked if this was possible. "Yes", he told me, "I wrote them and reccomended your blog". As I did it last week, I thought they wouldn't say it on air. Go to "El món"'s blog and you'll see. "And there it is!! My blog in Snap preview! And the text they read in the radio.

The text they read (approximately) is:

Aquesta curiosa cosa anomenada Catalunya. Així és com es podria resumir el contingut del blog Tot sobre Catalunya. Una recomanació que ens ha fet el Xavi Vilana d’aquest blog, creat recentment, que vol donar visibilitat a Catalunya més enllà de les nostres fronteres. Les entrades que fa la seva autora, l’Anna, serveixen per explicar temes com la història, la llengua, la cultura, les tradicions o la política catalana. All about Catalonia està escrit en anglès per poder arribar, així, a un nombre més gran d’internautes. Fa pocs mesos que està obert i la darrera entrada parla, com no, de calçots.
Source: http://www.rac1.org/elmon/?p=15775 (10-03-2009)

(This curious thing called Catalonia. This is how this blog's content could be summarized. All about Catalonia. A reccomendation made by Xavi Vilana about this blog, created recently, which wants to gives visibility to Catalonia beyond our borders. Her author, Anna, uses her posts to explain things like Catalan history, language, culture, tradition and politics. All about Catalonia [orig. in English] is written in English to reach a wider range of Internet users. It has been open since some months ago and the last entry talks, couldn't it be another way, about "calçots".)

I'm so so so happy! Moltes molte moltes gràcies El Món (I definetely put a link to your blog), and specially you, Xavi :).

It gave me a further reason to go ahead and keep writing the blog!

It is definetely a great day today despite there is no electricity on my building (they are hanging electricity readers) and we have no sink because there was a leak which caused problems to the flat below. I don't know if we will have electricity this night and so I will miss Doctor House on TV or if my frozen meat has defrost. But it is a GREAT DAY.

La calçotada

2009-03-09T17:39:00.013+01:00

Let's talk a little bit about food and celebrations around a specific item of food today. Specifically, let's talks about "Calçots" (pronounced, approximately "kalsots") and "La Calçotada" (pronounced, approximately, "kalsutada"or "kalsotada", depending on the dialect).

By now maybe you have guessed that a calçotada is some kind of meeting with friends or family or both where you eat calçots. But what are calçots exactly (I tell you now that there is no translation for the word, not even in Spanish)? Well, simply a kind of onion, which is long, similar to a leek. So yes, we meet with some friends to eat A SPECIAL KIND OF ONION together.

Though originally from Valls or the Alt Camp region and neighbouring regions near Tarragona, calçots are eaten almost all over Catalonia (maybe not so much in the mountains...). The time for eating them is during the winter, February and March being the most favourites months to do it, as it is not as cold as December or January. Note that usually calçots are eaten outdoors.

By now you might think we are kind of crazy and you are wondering why on earth we eat onions in the middle of the winter and outdoors. Well, I can assure you there is much more I have not told you yet and you'll soon understand what makes a "calçotada" an attractive and nice thing to do.

First of all, we are in a Mediterranean climate and winter is not as cold as in other places in Europe. February, March is cold but if it is sunny you can even take out your jacket during the day.

Second, calçotades ("calçotada" in plural form) are a social thing and usually celebrated with people you get on well with. It's a very good reason to meet this people and enjoy a good meal with them while telling everyday battles and having lots of fun.

Third, we don't eat bare onions. That would be terrible. Furthermore, I once tasted a bare calçot and it was almost tasteless. Calçots would be nothing without one of these two kinds of sauce either "salvitxada" (pronounced "salbitshada") or "romesco" (pronounce "rumescu" or "romesco" depending on dialect). At home I simply call it "salsa de calçots" (calçots sauce) and I think that when I say that I mean "romesco", but I'm not sure. The recipe is quite elaborated to make, that's why a good calçots sauce makes a real difference. Well, nowadays you can find salsa romesco in the supermarkets but the traditional sauce is a thousand times better than that.

Fourth, the onions are grilled in the barbecue or the grill for better flavour. Traditionally they have to served in roof tiles. Well, last Saturday I was in a calçotada and we missed roof tiles...and well, hand-made sauce :P.

Fifth, the way of eating calçots is almost a ritual. You pick the calçots from the tile (or the plate). As they have been grilled they should be all black outside. Then you hold from the beginning of its leaves with one hand and with the other hand you grab the bottom end and pull. If the calçot is well-made the black layer should go out at once. After that you deeply dip/soak the white part of the calçot in the sauce, you lift the calçot with your hand up to the mouth and you eat it. To be rigourous in the process and to avoid staining your clothes, you use a bib. Here I show you three images of the process (I missed the bib!):

Grilled calçot

Peeled calçot in process of sauce-soaking

The end of the calçot-eating ritual: the eating

Believe or not, there are even competitions of who is the one to eat more calçots. I think it is regulated by time. Anyway, I do think this is crazy :D.

So there is even more food in it. After eating many calçots (and get black hands and face) and sauce you eat lots of grilled meat and of course dessert and bring coffee. And after that you do "sobretaula" a very typical thing here (Spain and Catalonia) in social/family meetings: you talk for hours after eating, even during more hours that the meal itself has taken. It's one of these meals where you cannot eat anything more till the next day but you feel very glad to have been part of it.

What is Catalan?

2009-03-02T17:52:00.010+01:00

There are a lot of misconceptions around the notion of Catalan as a language outside Spain. Inside Spain the question of language is a completely different story, intertwined with prejudice and politics.

Let's start with the conception of Catalan abroad. For travellers visiting us, Catalan might be either conceived as a pictoresque peculiarity, some remnant of a language which is almost death, or as a Spanish dialect.

As for the first consideration, I recall now that some years ago, when I worked in a campsite a tourist came, guidebook in hand, that he had read in the book that we had another language different than Spanish in the area (I don't know which area he meant exactly…). He thought it was something “typical” and that it was like a kind of old tradition –at least that was my impression. He then asked me if I knew and spoke the language. He obviously expected me to say “No”. Or if he expected me to say "Yes", I gave him the kind of "Yes" he did not imagine. When I said: “Yes of course, I usually, if not always, speak Catalan" (I would say that at that moment in time I was not as bilingual as I am now). “I speak at home, with my friends, when I go shopping". He was amazed, and all he could say was: "But the book says it as a curiosity...But you learn it at school?" I answered, for his further amazement: "Yes, since we are kids. We also learn Spanish, but all other subjects are taught in Catalan". I would have knocked him down if I had told him there are 9 million speakers of Catalan and that it is one of the most spoken minority languages of Europe and that it is a very active literary language and lots of foreign books are translated into Catalan. I do not know if he was very convinced but he was surprised. I am happy that he learnt about a new reality and I hope that he began seeing Spain as something plural with more than one language or culture. That is what I always try to explain: Spain is not a WHOLE UNIQUE ONE but MORE THAN ONE, and we should take advantage of it and promote it this way.

As for the second consideration: it is also very usual that foreigners consider Catalan a dialect of Spanish or ask if it really is. This is a logical deduction, as Catalan and Spanish come both from Latin, and also because the conception of "dialect" is different here than in other countries. For languages with very different dialects, like German and Italian, I would say this conclusion would be very easy to reach. For me, dialects are regional linguistic peculiarities which do not difficult communication and add richness and colour to a language. The case between Spanish and Catalan is not that. A monolingual Spaniard will not understand a conversation or a book in Catalan unless s/he learns the language first. S/he might understand some words, of course (some words are similar because of their common origin), but not the message. Catalan and Spanish have enough differences to be considered different languages.

Believe it or not, Catalan is more similar to French than it is to Spanish. Or at least it can be conceived as similar to French and Spanish. Catalan has some difficult tricks because there is a lot of contact with Spanish. As a colleague told me once to make fun: “Catalan takes the worse of Spanish and the worst of French and puts it together”. I don’t know if this is true, but I would say Catalan is as beautiful as any other language can be and it is as worth studying as any other language. And, like any other language it has its own peculiarities.

PD: Thanks to a special friend who asked me about this a few days ago and gave me the idea to write this post, making me realise this was needed to clarify some things about the issue of language first.

The new campaign in favour of Catalan

2009-02-17T17:39:00.006+01:00

All Catalans face this situations, almost no exception. When in the street or in a shop we met an immigrant we tend to speak to them in Spanish or switch if they address us in this language. This, I think, should change. I am one of those who switch -and I am very pro-Catalan-, but if I always switch, what is the use of it? Newcomers won't never ever feel the need to learn Catalan and it will lose public terrain and the us, Catalan native speakers, will have a responsability in this.

From the government, or the Departament de Política Lingüística (Language Policy Department) Efforts are made to change that with a campaign that started a few years ago called "DÓNA CORDA AL CATALÀ" (Give a way to Catalan - approx.), which tries to give the use of Catalan a positive sense, it tries to make Catalan an attractive thing and a perfectly suitable language to develop one's everyday life with. Now the campaign is called "ENCOMANA EL CATALÀ" (Pass Catalan on) has shifted its focus, and it addresses native speakers, encouragin them to speak Catalan to everybody. They use a very symbolic image: a Latin American person, which would probably have Spanish as its mother tongue.

They have also invented a pet, a wind-up mouth called "Queta" (pronounced "keta"), which relates to the campaign's name ("Donar corda" means to "make a wind-up thing work")

This is the new video, which so far, as usual, has given rise to many critics because they say the government has spent too much money in the campaign (and it is worse now that we are inmersed in a crisis). I think the ad's not bad! :)

In it you can see Queta jumping on the lyrics.

And this is the first ad of "Dóna corda al català", broadcasted some years ago (I do not remember exactly when):

And here I introduce you to Queta :

The basics: let's put things into place -geographically.

2008-12-13T12:46:00.018+01:00

Catalonia is a region of Spain, a country in Southern Europe. It borders with the Mediterranean sea in the east, with France and Andorra (a little country in the heart of the Pyrénees about which I will also talk about in this blog) in the North, with Aragón and the Valencian community (other regions of Spain) in the west and in the south, correspondingly .

To say that this description will suit everyone is lying. But why? Because of the first six words: "Catalonia is a region of Spain". It is indeed a region of Spain according to laws and international treaties and all the worlds, understands Spain as a unit, a solid country. But the truth is that Spain is not such a unit. Spain is a diverse country, not because of its different and beautiful landscapes but because inside it, there are what we call "historical regions". This regions, which are, according to common law (the Constitution), Galicia, the Basqueland and Catalonia. Each of them has a language of its own and in the past they had been independent from Spain (until the 15th century). Besides, 19th century Europe saw the rise of nationalism, which attracted Catalan intellectuals of the time. This, among with some other things, make some Catalans feel that they do not belong to Spain. But more of it in another post. Let's focus on geography now :).

Now that the geographical limits of Catalonia have been established, I would like to talk about how is Catalonia internally divided.

As any other part of Spain, Catalonia is divided into provinces. The four Catalan provinces are: Girona, Barcelona, Tarragona and Lleida. The capital city of these provinces bear the same name.

The provinces are further divided into what is called "comarques" (a kind of counties), which have, as in the case of provinces a capital city. Logically, the most populated of these capital cities becomes the province's capital.

Welcome letter / Carta de benvinguda

2008-12-04T12:22:00.010+01:00

Dear reader,

I welcome you from a place called Catalonia. What is this place? Where is it located in the world's map? Maybe if I tell you a key word you will easily spot it: Barcelona. So, here you have the relationship: Barcelona, the ‘cool’ city for Erasmus students and seat of the Olympic Games in 1992, is in Catalonia, a region in the north-east of Spain. But we will talk about geography later, because it is not free from its own geopolitical problems.

First of all I would like you to tell you who I am, what I do and why I decided to begin this blog. Well, my name is Anna (a pretty universal name) and I am 24. I was born in the Empordà area (in the north-east of Catalonia, bordering with France) but I live and work as a translator in Barcelona. I am passionate about languages and culture. That is the main reason why I write this blog. I like all languages, but I have a special feeling towards my own language and culture: Catalan. Besides, I feel there is a lot of miscomprehension and misunderstanding around them, or ideas which I deem as wrong or full of bad intentions. These ideas hurt me. My aim is to present my language and culture as something worth of interest (as any other subject) and, if possible, make you like, appreciate and understand them. I do no wish to be unrespectful or to give my opinion in a rude way about the polemic political battle there is in Spain because of that.

In this blog you will find all that is related to Catalonia:

- Geography and demography (where is Catalonia located, landmarks, facts and figures)
- History (a journey through time)
- Travelling (places of interest, ideas for little trips around the land)
- Literature (authors and books)
- Art (what are our most international artists, theatre, music, cinema)
- Traditions (monographic posts about one aspect of our traditions
- Gastronomy (what we eat and what we cook)
- Politics (a tricky subject)
- Language (all about the Catalan language)

Please, feel free to comment or ask what you like to know.

I hope that you enjoy it and that, one day or another, you will visit this curious land called Catalonia.

Thanks for your interest and best wishes, or as we say in Catalan, “Una abraçada”,

Anna