"We are black, we are Mallorcan, and I speak Catalan."
The words of the headline are the same as those already quoted Jaume Cladera in his report on the ARA Baleares, and are spoken by a student at the IES Josep Sureda i Blanes in Palma, in a video in which she and a group of other students from the same school highlight Catalan as a language of learning and coexistence. The video has gone viral, a rare word that for once has an exceptionally positive value here: the video is important, we would say very important, and deserves all the publicity it can get. And of course, applause for the students who speak it and the teachers who have helped, or encouraged, them to make this excellent contribution to the defense of the Balearic Islands' own language and to the social cohesion of these islands. Two things that go hand in hand.
The young people who appear to speak in the video begin by lamenting that many people in their circle abandon Catalan the first time someone in a group or meeting speaks in Spanish, a behavior that is absolutely widespread, as we know, in our society. But they don't dwell on their lament; instead, they propose, and demand, that we always live our lives (and our teaching, of course) in Catalan. Many repeat the same phrase: "Don't exclude me, speak to me in Catalan!" The phrase makes perfect sense because they are all immigrants, or children of immigrants. They are all dark-skinned and come from Latin American, North African, and sub-Saharan backgrounds. Some are Muslim, others are not. They all have in common that they all speak Catalan and that they are, as the headline says, Mallorcan. As Mallorcan as any of those who can have as many generations and as many surnames as they want with a very Mallorcan pedigree.
The message of these young people is not only in their words, but in themselves. Among the multitude of serious mistakes it makes regarding immigrants, Spanish nationalism makes a particularly foolish one: assuming that immigrants should only want to learn Spanish because Catalan should be of no use to them. It's a prejudice as absurd as any other, and immigrants are very often the first to realize it, as the students from Sureda and Blanes make clear. Hence, the polls promoted by the PP and Vox continue to show an absolutely majority preference for teaching in Catalan, and that is why citizen mobilizations in favor of Catalan are successful: because the majority of immigrants also want Catalan as the language for their children's education and life. Because they understand that without Catalan, their integration in this land will not occur. That's why, in the video, they say "don't exclude me."
And that's why another fear—another prejudice—shared by some (and many fear it) defenders of Catalan in the Balearic Islands is absurd. It's the idea that immigrants are part of, or instruments of, a supposed process of cultural and linguistic substitution. That's not the case, and even less so. On the contrary: for a minority language like Catalan, the arrival of new speakers is a source of renewed hope. Therefore, there can hardly be anything more counterproductive than welcoming them with suspicion or misgivings, or outright rejection. Not to mention hostility or supremacist attitudes, as the racist far-right of the Catalan Alliance does, and some around it are already beginning to advocate. It's better for some people to start understanding that Mallorcans, Menorcans, Ibizans, and Formentera residents can also have dark skin, profess religions other than Catholicism, cook foods we've never known before, and have families not on the Peninsula, but a little farther away. They're black, they're Mallorcan, and they speak Catalan: don't exclude them, and don't exclude yourself from a future that's already here.
