As an American residing and working in Catalonia over the past several decades, I have enjoyed the privilege of witnessing the Catalan people’s courage, determination and love of peace and democracy on countless occasions.
(carta a l’editor publicada en el San Francisco Chronicle el dia 4 d’octubre)
As an American residing and working in Catalonia over the past several decades, I have enjoyed the privilege of witnessing the Catalan people’s courage, determination and love of peace and democracy on countless occasions. Far from being divisive, Catalan society embraces inclusiveness and exhibits genuine conviviality in social interaction with newcomers from other parts of Spain, Europe and farther abroad.
The shameless brutality with which armed riot police attacked peaceful voters on Sunday gives pause for reflection on Catalonia’s people and place in Spain. Did these police, shipped in from Spain’s demographic patchwork, suddenly forget whose bodies those were that they were beating?
Did they not stop to think that these electoral criminals may very well have been the daughters, sons, mothers and fathers of their own brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles who decades ago resettled in Catalonia from the sister lands of Andalusia, Asturias, Castile, Extremadura or Galicia? The Spanish government has given irrefutable proof of their failure to recognize their own brothers and sisters. If this is how Spain puts people in their place, then it is easy to see why Catalonia feels it has no place in Spain.
Ronald Puppo , nascut l’any 1954 a San Francisco, Califòrnia, treballa des de 1994 a la Universitat de Vic, on dóna classes de traducció i estudis anglesos. La seva traducció de Canigó de Verdaguer, Mount Canigó: A tale of Catalonia (Tamesis/Barcino, 2015) va ser guardonada amb el Premi Crítica “Serra d’Or” 2016 de Catalanística; volum precedit pel seu Selected Poems of Jacint Verdaguer. A Bilingual Edition (University of Chicago, 2007), la primera antologia que recull, en anglès, la poesia de l’insigne poeta català.