Ghosts of Spain (50 page)

Catalans were, of course, not all church-burners. Antoni Gaudí, the architect of the Sagrada Familia cathedral which is still rising – its colourful, ceramic-encrusted spires already a symbol of the city – eighty years after he was run over by a tram, was a deeply conservative, religious man. One of his first projects was
the restoration of Poblet, which had become a crumbling, vandalised wreck. In later life Gaudí became a pious, ascetic eccentric. He lived on the Sagrada Familia building site, sleeping on a small four-poster bed in the middle of a workshop piled high with plaster models of his ongoing designs. He became a strict vegetarian and turned into a seedy-looking, emaciated, white-bearded old man. ‘We must beg God to punish and then console us,’ he once said. ‘Everyone has to suffer.’ When he wandered in front of the number 30 tram on Barcelona’s Gran Vía, it took a while for someone to recognise him. He died a few days later. Legend has it he died in poverty. His will, however, turned up recently – showing that he still had a pretty pile in the bank.

Modernisme
had emerged from the mid-nineteenth-century
Renaixença
, the Romantic Catalan renaissance that found its local hero in the exorcist poet Verdaguer. Literature in Catalan has had an irregular history. In the Middle Ages it produced three great writers – though none were, by today’s definition – Catalans. The Majorcan priest Ramon Llull wrote more than 250 texts of philosophy, poetry and theology – in Catalan, Latin and Arabic. He was eventually lynched to death while trying to convert Tunisia’s Muslims in the thirteenth century. A Valencian called Ausías March, wrote, amongst other things, impassioned verses to a mysterious mid-fifteenth-century married woman, his ‘
llir entre cards
’, or ‘lily amongst thistles’. Another Valencian, Joanot Martorell, produced a raunchy fifteenth-century novel about knights in shining armour which tossed old values of unconsummated courtly love into the literary dustbin. In his
Tirant lo Blanc
, considered a precursor to Cervantes’s
Don Quixote
, the eponymous hero’s manservant rejects a would-be lover’s offer of a few strands of hair: ‘No, my lady, no. That time is past. I know quite well what Tirant desires: to see you in bed, either naked or in your
nightdress
.’ It seems that Catalans, still more French than Spanish in their amorous arrangements, always were more sophisticated in sexual matters.

Catalan literature slackened until Verdaguer’s time in the
mid-nineteenth
century. Today’s Catalan writers can choose between
two languages. One offers them a larger market. The other offers, via the Generalitat, to buy the first 300 copies of their book.

The
Renaixença
broke the emotional ground for the emergence of political Catalanism. Gaudí, when presented to King Alfonso XIII, addressed him in Catalan. His example could be an inspiration to the Generalitat’s latest language campaign which encourages people to start their conversations with strangers in Catalan. ‘
Parla sense vergonya
’, ‘Speak [Catalan] without shame’, it urges them.

Gaudí‘s most fervent admirers believe, however, he is more than just a model of virtuous Catalanism. He is, they say, also a model of saintliness. The Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes seems to agree. It is studying a petition for his beatification, which looks set to go ahead. He is already known as ‘God’s architect’. God and Catalonia – the cornerstones of traditional nationalism – meet in Gaudí.

Catalans, generally, are good at celebrating their own culture. They eagerly sign up to belong to groups and do things together. They form clubs to go rambling, to dance their peculiar
sardana
or to form those scary (seven-or eight-storey) human towers, the
castells
, that balance small children precariously on their top.

Catalan politicians, however, have sponsored some quite absurd attempts to create a distinctive Catalan culture. Pujol made this – along with language and history – one of the main battlegrounds of Catalan nationalism. The rules set for his functionaries in the Palau Moja were simple. There was money for things in Catalan. There was relatively little, or no, money for things that were not. Half the population, which naturally did things in Castilian, was out of the loop. Catalonia has some interesting theatre, but quality, critics complained, was not always a criterion when handing out funding. The policy reached its most absurd when El Tricicle, a group of comic mime artists, presented a short film for the National Film Awards of the Generalitat. They were told, however, that their wordless film did not qualify. The reason was simple. The silent movie’s title,
Quien mal anda, mal acaba
, was in
castellano
.

As culture in Catalan frequently depended on financing from the Catalan state, those on the receiving end were careful not to bite the hand that fed them. Catalan nationalism, as a subject, was, therefore, taboo. In the theatre world, there was one shining exception – Albert Boadella’s
Els Joglars.
Boadella was quick to turn his attention to the new holy cows of Catalonia. Nationalism had built him a whole new set. They were waiting to be knocked down like fairground coconuts. The chief holy cow was Pujol himself.

Pujol embodies the view many Catalans had fashioned of themselves after Franco’s death. He was a proven anti-Francoist – having been jailed for two years for his involvement with a group of people who stood up and sang
Els Segadors
at Barcelona’s magnificent modernist concert hall, El Palau de la Música Catalana. He was a Catholic conservative. He was also a banker. A man who understands money is admired in Catalonia. ‘
La pela és la pela
’, ‘Money is money’, is one common local saying. A Catalan-language poet, the Majorcan Anselm Turmeda, wrote an eloquent ode to cash in his fifteenth-century ‘Elogi de Diners’ (‘In Praise of Money’) which ends: ‘
Diners, doncs, vulles aplegar./Si els pots haver no els lleixs anar:/si molts n’hauràs poràs tornar/ papa de Rom
’, ‘So you must get money!/If you get it, don’t let it go!/If you have lots, you can become/the Pope in Rome.’ The Borgias had almost certainly read that one.

Pujol was a formidable politician. He was, in fact, too good. Over his quarter-century in charge he became Catalonia, and Catalonia became him. He was referred to simply as ‘
el President
’. He added a few Napoleonic touches of his own. He insisted, for example, that journalists stood for him when he arrived – usually late – for his press conferences. He sent self-interviews to Barcelona newspapers – questions and answers by Jordi Pujol. Worse still, these would be printed.

There was a rationale behind this self-grandeur. Pujol was building, or rebuilding, a nation. The nation needed national symbols. One of those symbols was
el President.
By this logic, Pujol turned himself into a symbol of Catalonia. ‘When seeing
him in action it is impossible not to recall De Gaulle’s ‘
La France, c’est moi
’, the Irish–Spanish writer Ian Gibson said.

An Els Joglars show inspired by Alfred Jarry’s
Ubú Roi
, called
President Ubú
, saw Pujol and his wife pilloried mercilessly. The Pujol offered up by Boadella was, according to one critic, not just maniacally ambitious and money-grabbing but also showed ‘homicidal tendencies, a double personality and delusions of grandeur’. Boadella did not bite his tongue when explaining his vision: ‘Ubú Excels [Pujol’s alter ego] invades our privacy daily, recriminating, advising, threatening, moralising and laying down the law … explaining even how we Catalans have to urinate,’ he said. His punishment included a long-running, if undeclared, veto on Els Joglars by Catalonia’s television and its national theatre house. Culture, once more, was wielded as a political weapon. It still is, even without Pujol in power. When Catalonia was invited to exhibit at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2005, the Generalitat said it would concentrate on those who wrote in Catalan – though many of Catalonia’s best writers do not. The new regional government that made that decision is headed by a Socialist, Pasqual Maragall, who has also shown some strong
catalanista
tendencies – and is allied with a separatist party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.

There is a terrible ambiguity to Pujol and his nationalists. They proclaim Catalonia to be a nation. They want to ‘
desenvolupar la plena sobirania nacional
’, ‘develop full national sovereignty’. They deny, however, having separatist ambitions. But, they add, who knows what the future will bring? In practice, Pujol’s nationalists have turned to an age-old Catalan tradition –
pactisme
, dealmaking. Catalonia’s
burgesía
has been striking deals for centuries. Barcelona, after all, was a major Mediterranean trading city when Madrid was little more than a large village.

Catalan nationalism is still the strongest political force, even though a coalition of other parties currently keeps it out of power. It has always been determined to maintain its
seny
, to be moderate and sensible. On several occasions Pujol’s party has held the balance of power in the Madrid parliament, Las Cortes.
It has never used it to destabilise or drive extravagant bargains. It has propped up both left and right. It has, however, always made sure it walked away with a bit more power. The result, as he himself admits, is that ‘not once over the past three hundred years have we, continuously, enjoyed such a degree of political power’.

Pujol’s wife, Marta Ferrusola, represents the more visceral, unpleasant side of Catalan nationalism. The former first lady of Catalonia stirred up a major controversy when she declared that immigration might lead to Catalonia’s Romanesque churches being empty within a decade. Catalonia would, instead, be full of mosques. Her husband, she insisted, was fed up with giving council housing to ‘Moroccans and people like that’. Family aid was going to people ‘who do not even know what Catalonia is’. These were people who only knew how to say ‘
¡Hola!
’ and ‘Give me something to eat!’ she said. ‘Whoever stays in Catalonia should speak Catalan,’ she added. Her comments coincided with the public support offered to Austria’s chief xenophobe, Jörg Haider, by Heribert Barrera. Barrera was a head of the separatist, and supposedly leftwing, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. He had also been a president, or speaker, of the Catalan parliament. ‘If the current flow of immigrants continues, Catalonia will disappear,’ he claimed. ‘When Haider says there are too many foreigners in Austria he is not being racist.’

These outbursts were worrying. As a young man Pujol had been damning about
xarnegos
, describing the typical immigrant from Andalucía or Murcia as ‘a destroyed and anarchic man’ who ‘if their numbers come to dominate, will destroy Catalonia’. He long ago repented of that attitude, however, saying Catalonia should be ‘just, respectful, non-discriminatory and in favour of all that can help the immigrants’. That was his public stance anyway. He must have told his wife something different. In any case, the feeling persists amongst non-Catalan speakers that they are looked down upon. The message they perceive is this: Good Catalans speak Catalan. Bad ones do not.

Catalanism is a car with no reverse gear. It may go slow, it may go fast, but it only goes in one direction. At what stage, I
wondered, would nationalists say: ‘That’s enough. We have achieved our aims. We don’t want any more power here. You can keep what is left in Madrid’? The answer to that question is almost certainly ‘never’. A nationalist needs, by definition, to keep demanding more – and to claim always that they are the victim of injustice.

I can understand separatism. It is a straightforward and honest credo. The ambiguity of Catalan nationalists, however, makes it impossible to guess where they want to go. It also ensures that the tension between Madrid and Catalonia can never be resolved. It might vary in degree, but it will be eternal. The nationalist definition of Catalonia seems to require it.

Jordi Pujol finally retired as president in 2003, though he still looms large, presiding over the
Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya
party. His successor, Artur Mas, won most seats in the elections that year. But he did not win an absolute majority. Mas was outflanked by Pasqual Maragall, the same Socialist who, as mayor, had seen Barcelona so brilliantly through the Olympics. He stitched together what, on the surface, was an unlikely coalition of left-wing parties. It included Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya – the separatist party which had doubled its support to take one in six Catalan votes.

The best explanation of the growth in separatism has been provided by Ricardo, a cartoonist at
El Mundo
newspaper. He drew a cartoon of Aznar, the belligerently centralist Conservative prime minister at the time, rubbing a lamp. A genie came out and offered him a wish. ‘I want you to make all those who radicalise the nationalists disappear,’ he said. The genie responded by turning Aznar to dust.

Maragall, however, not only needs the support of separatists to run the Generalitat but also has some nationalist tendencies of his own. His grandfather, Joan Maragall, was a major Catalan poet and admirer of Verdaguer. He penned a famous ode to Spain, which chided it for ignoring Catalonia after the disastrous losses of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898.

Joan Maragall’s poem reflected, amongst other things, Catalonia’s pain at losing its valuable markets in Cuba. The relationship with Cuba had been strong. Catalans still sing
havaneres
– Cuban songs brought back by its sailors. Bacardi – the world’s most famous rum – owes its name to its Catalan founders. The disaster of 1898 marked a moment when Catalonia’s upper middle class lost faith in Spain and turned towards regional nationalism as an alternative. If Madrid could not run their affairs properly – or guarantee their markets – they would run them themselves.