New sap

Next weekend, ‘Ferreries floreix’ returns, and it’s already the fifteenth edition. As every year, the streets of the old town will once again be covered with floral arrangements, and residents will adorn their facades with bouquets, handicrafts, and imaginative manual work. As every year, more than one will admire the great effort that has been made to prepare this ephemeral work of collective creation. For Bep, the best part of ‘Ferreries floreix’is precisely the preparations: “What I like most are the days before the inauguration, when we neighbors almost live on the street. They are the days of the year when we see and talk to each other the most. That makes a village!”. And he adds, still: “If necessary, I would tell you the same about Sant Bartomeu: more joy from the days we prepare the festival than from the festival itself. Perhaps it is age.”.It is possible that age makes you see and live the party in a different way, but Bep's comments have revived me following the experience of other people who are not old, and who were the protagonists of another civic festival just two weeks ago: the group of young people from Ferreries who organized the passage of the Correllengua Agermanat through the town. They got involved months ago, responding to the invitation from Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua. As preparations advanced and the goal came closer, their enthusiasm, confidence, commitment, energy, courage, and desire to do it well so that everything would turn out well grew. And they have achieved it. My goodness, have they achieved it.The first of May's event began early, with children's games prepared by the Agrupament Escolta Sant Bartomeu. Afterwards, there was a popular dance with the folk group Aires des Barranc d’Algendar. At twelve, the glosat, until the flame of the language arrived from Ciutadella, celebrated by the songs of the students from the School of Adults and the veterans of the Club of Retirees. At half past one, a good paella, cooked by the people of Cas Vesins, which was very tight indeed: the success was so great that if they had prepared fifty more, they would have sold out. After lunch, musical bingo and a truc championship, and at five, the concert by the group Res a dir, while the flame of the language continued its journey to Maó. Bravo for weaving multiple collaborations with other groups and entities. To rally together, to add for the language, to make a community. The success of the event, well-deserved, was the crowning of the work done long before. A lot of work, and very well done. To love the language is a craft, says Antoni Bassas in the manifesto he has written for this year's Correllengua Agermanat, dedicated to Josep Maria Espinàs. Like any craft, it requires learning, it takes hours in the workshop, it asks to learn how to pick up the tools and how to use them. In Ferreries, the youth have picked up the tools with a naturalness and drive that has left us admiring. In Ferreries, as throughout the fifteen hundred kilometers covered, the Correllengua Agermanat has been a festive and resounding demonstration of the vitality of the defense of the Catalan language, and of the generational change of those who champion the fight: like the torch with the flame of the language, which passed from hand to hand, the commitment to the language also passes from generation to generation and silences the siren songs of the prophets of doom. The most important thing is that this celebration has not been a flash in the pan. Correllengua has been the trigger for Ferreries to flourish all year round. I insist: the months of prior work have created a community, they have initiated a complicity among the involved youth that, now that Correllengua Agermanat is already history —and what a history—, the desire to continue is irrevocable. We can't leave it here, they say. One girl says she knew that other one from high school, but they had never exchanged more than two words, and that now it will be different. Another one says he works in Girona, but asks to be taken into account if they organize another party: they reply that they are already talking about doing something this summer. And another, who is now a trainee teacher at the town's high school, has become, probably unintentionally, an example and a benchmark for others to emulate. Let's say it loud and celebrate it: from Salses to Guardamar and from Fraga to Maó there is a new spirit that does not understand administrative borders, nor generational breaks, nor nostalgic discouragement. Young people who look each other in the eye and recognize themselves as part of a common project, for whom language, more than grammar, is a brotherhood.