SPRING 2014 ISSUE 48
THE DROUTH
‘Why did they join the Tupamaros?’ I asked as the smell of burning rushes gave the warm evening air a sharp taste. ‘It was my mother,’ Jemina said, stopping and grabbing my arm. ‘Her conscience.’ She puffed out her chest. ‘She was like, “I can carry the world on my shoulders”.’ Around us there was fire and solemn chants of ‘In, inde, independencia.’ It felt like semana santa, Spain’s holy week, minus the KKK hoods and the religious iconography.
Then group of awkward looking teenagers took to the stage and played the Catalan nationalist anthem. After that the crowd thinned out. Tomorrow was another day.
The procession came to a halt in an open square ringed by public housing about a mile from Sants. It was after 9pm but children played on an adjacent playground. The square quickly filled as a contingent from nearby Poble Sec arrived. Everyone started to clap and chant. I lost Jemina and her family in the throng. I pushed my way to the front, where a short woman was burning a piece of paper. It was a copy of Felipe V’s notorious anti-Catalan Neuva Planta decrees. When the parchment had been reduced to ashes the crowd applauded wildly.
17
The climax of the Diada, the following evening, was an open-air concert at the Arc De Triomf, the triumphal arch that presides over Passeig de Lluís Companys. Crowds of young Catalans milled about as rock bands played accompanied by fire works and over-excited light shows. Immigrants in groups of twos and threes sold ready mixed cocktails. Towards the back of the large crowd, I met a man in his late 30s with a clipped English accent. He wore a ‘People’s Republic of Cork’ t-shirt and had the slightly haggard look of someone who had spent a decade teaching English in Barcelona. ‘Which part of England are you from?’ I asked, making conversation. He looked wounded. ‘I’m not from England, I’m from Cornwall,’ he said, pausing to take a sip from his mojito. ‘But I was brought up over the border, in Devon, it was terrible’.