Carles Rebassa: “Since I was 13, I’ve been attacked for not switching to Spanish.”

PalmSome remember him as the counselor who, during the 1996 summer camp organized by the Association of Young Writers in the Catalan Language (AJELC) at the Sant Pere Colony, ran down the hallway shouting, "I have a mission to save the Catalan language." Thirty years later, Carles Rebassa (Palma, 1977), from Mallorca, said more or less the same thing in a very different context. It was when he received the Sant Jordi Prize for his novel Prometheus of a thousand ways, which will go on sale on March 24th. "We must have legislation that makes Catalan essential for living in the Catalan Countries," he said.

Did you receive more congratulations for the award or for the speech?

— It's more or less the same, for both reasons. I had my speech well prepared, because when you have a microphone you have to take advantage of it to say certain things. I think it's more interesting than just saying whether I'm happy or not. It's out of a sense of responsibility, especially at a time like this, when it seems like everything is going well but it isn't.

Does it seem so? This Monday PP and VOX have agreed to eliminate the Catalan language requirement for teaching positions in hard-to-fill areas..

— Margalida Prohens always says this isn't a legislature of conflict. And when I see the meager response to the severe attacks we receive, I get the impression we're living in a time of complacency. As if you were being slowly killed and not defending yourself. The same thing is happening in Barcelona and Catalonia, with governments talking about pacification after the uprising, while news reports indicate that the use of Catalan is declining every day. The lack of policies to defend us is a violation of our rights. These are rights enshrined in the Statute of Autonomy and the Constitution, which are not ideological.

There was a time when important steps were taken in this direction, but it seems that they have come to nothing.

— In recent years, nothing has been done. And I'm not just talking about the PP and Vox; Armengol's government was characterized by its inaction in preventing the disaster we have now. There's a perverse obsession with linking language to certain political ideologies. Catalan is associated with separatists, separatists, racists… In Barcelona, ​​it's linked to wealthy people, as if the working class didn't speak Catalan, or as if it were something outdated.

His speech on Saturday was widely applauded. I don't even know if it was extraordinary or necessary.

— It's all well and good to celebrate the publication of books and to give awards, but the central issue must be that the main cause of discrimination in Barcelona is speaking Catalan. People who don't understand you, people who are insulted… Outrageous cases that are racism: social racism, xenophobia, and ultimately, a legacy of Francoism. Catalan literature is a minority literature, lacking the advantages of other literatures that have the support of the state and favorable language policies. It is crucial that all sectors involved with the language—and I'm talking about writers, but also teachers and journalists—call for action to reverse this situation.

Thirty years ago he was already preaching that his mission was to save the Catalan language to some AJELC colonies in the Sant Pere Colony, I don't know if you remember.

— The truth is, I don't remember much from those colonies, because I must have been shouting when I was drunk [Rio]. But I've always had that thought. I became linguistically determined at 13, and from the very beginning, I was attacked for not switching to Castilian Spanish.

What happened when I was 13 years old?

— I noticed that in my class there were either kids who only spoke Spanish or kids who switched languages, and I decided I wasn't going to change anymore. It was a way of finding myself, of giving myself an identity as an individual. I've always loved to read, and I felt this connection to Catalan culture as part of me, as a way of being in the world. I decided to stop speaking in Spanish, which was how I'd been taught to do things.

And then you received attacks?

— Yes, I remember going to a flower shop to buy a bouquet for my godmother and being rebuffed by a woman. The florist, who had initially spoken to me in Spanish, even defended me. Because that woman couldn't allow some nobody from Tenerife to do that. It was a way of standing up for me, which I think all Catalan speakers should do. To stand up for ourselves, to say "enough is enough."

It has been more than forty years since you made this decision, and continue with the same conviction, even though there have been so many setbacks.

— I believe in these things. I don't want to be swayed by this general pessimism, because I believe things can be reversed. Everything can be reversed, but for that, as for creating anything, you need will. If there's will, anything can be done, and that's what politics is: the realization of will. People like Margalida Prohens and her fascist friends have the will to destroy us, to turn Mallorca into a tourist theme park and leave us as a mere footnote. They have the will to do it, and if we let them, they will.

This change that Mallorca, and Palma in particular, has experienced and continues to experience is present in Prometheus of a Thousand WaysThe novel connects with his experience as a waiter at the now-defunct Mundo de Ciudad café.

— It was precisely when I was working there that I started thinking about writing this book, in 2000.

When El Mundo closed, we were still surprised by the closure of defining sites in the city.

— Franchises hadn't arrived yet. I don't think Café Món was one of Palma's most traditional cafés, but it was a good place. Back then, if a place closed, it meant something was ending. The current trend is that another place opens, which is usually a lie. These aren't places with personality; they're just repetitive settings that lead to a homogenization of life, as well as the precariousness of the workers, who work in poor conditions with bleak prospects.

What was the seed of the book, those first ideas from 26 years ago?

— I wanted to bring a few things together. First, Prometheus as a myth. This son of Zeus who tricked him by getting close to men and who stole fire to give it to them, and who, because of this, was severely punished. I wanted to connect him with the life of a young man from Palma who does this job but who, as they say, 'has a head injury and isn't a crosier'. I also wanted to add theAuca Bartomeu Rosselló Pòrcel's poem is a description that is sometimes ironic, sometimes enthusiastic, and at times critical of Palma. I wanted to talk about this city, my city, with which I have a relationship of attraction and repulsion. I see it so changed, so sold out, so busy, and so Castilianized that, at times, it's as if it were no longer Palma.

Are there any corners that still are?

— Look, there's one that appears quite a bit in the book, Can Tagamanent Square. It seems like time hasn't passed at all, with that hail and the tranquility of Sant Bartomeu Street. On the other hand, where I lived as a child, near Paris Square, is a completely different place. I learned to ride a bike there, on the vacant lots behind the slaughterhouse. My father taught me there, and back then, going to the old prison was like going to the other side of the world. Nothing remains of all that.