The Balanguera of the Chinese by Pere Garau

The Chinese New Year celebration took place last Sunday, December 22nd, in Pere Garau Square, the Palma neighborhood where 43% of the city's Chinese immigrants live, representing 10% of the non-EU population in the city. Among the many events of this grand celebration, which the Chinese have contributed to the city's popular culture, one moment stood out: two girls took to the stage and sang. The BalangueraThe song, "Els Moréos," has been the anthem of Mallorca since 1996. The musical version of the poem was composed by Amadeu Vives in 1926, the same year Joan Alcover died. Its performance during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Palma thus coincided with the centenary of the poem's creation. It is moving to imagine how Joan Alcover would have felt seeing his poem about the cultural tradition and vitality of the Mallorcan people transformed into a song of understanding, coexistence, and respect between native Mallorcans and newcomers who have literally arrived from the other side of the world. This isn't about 'integration,' as is often repeated, half out of intellectual laziness and half out of prejudice, when immigrants are discussed. It's not about integrating, but about dialogue, about showing affection and respect for the place where you live, whether you have lived here for fifteen generations, have just arrived, or are the child of those who came a few years ago. The first signs of this respect, this esteem, and this willingness to engage in dialogue obviously involve language and culture. And (it goes without saying) care for the environment, primarily the natural environment, but also the urban one. The Chinese community of Pere Garau and the Chinese Cultural Association of the Balearic Islands understood all of this well, filling the Chinese New Year celebration with Mallorcan references and elements: there were castellers (human tower builders), the dragon—one of the day's main protagonists—was named Pep, and so on.

These gestures from the Chinese community of Palma become even more valuable when we consider the Mallorcans who subscribe to the racist rhetoric of "there are too many people," "jobs for locals," and other racist and/or supremacist slogans. Yet, they not only fail to love or respect Palma or Mallorca, but they also intend to pave it over, cement it, and sell it off to vulture funds, speculators, or mass tourism and its derivatives. They pay lip service to Mallorcan identity, wear loose-fitting clothes, and boast of their many Mallorcan lineages (eight, eighteen, or twenty-eight, it doesn't come from just one), but in the end, they are the ones who deny the existence of orderly prosperity that would allow for adequate and reasonable living conditions for the citizens of these islands. They are even capable of acting politically against their own language, culture, and natural environment.

The first thing that should be demanded of a leader is that they not embarrass the citizens: when we hear Marga Prohens acting like a third-rate Trump supporter, claiming that "there isn't room for everyone here," or when we see the deputy mayor, Javier Bonet, mimicking Xavier García Albiol and defending the disorderly expulsion of the Palma family, we feel profound shame at being represented by people who lack the necessary stature. They should take a lesson from the Chinese community of Pere Garau and the values ​​of coexistence, respect, and social cohesion they successfully instilled. A round of applause and a long life to the Chinese New Year in Palma.