<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - Miquel Àngel Maria]]> 10 <![CDATA[The rights of others]]> We already know that, with very few exceptions, Spain has never understood its own plurinationality. But there is another more local incomprehension that we don't talk about as much, and in any case, we only do so from the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Country: that Catalonia, and especially Barcelona, with rare exceptions too, has not understood our common nationality. This lack, a mixture of disinterest, ignorance, and self-sufficiency, manifests itself in almost all areas of social, cultural, and political life, and is especially noticeable in the world of books. Balearic publishing houses make a great effort to publish excellent books that far exceed the interest they might have in the territory where they were published. I understand that a study on the profound and never sufficiently explored differences between the way of doing the heel-toe in the fandango dance between Ferreries and Ciutadella, should not be on the new releases table of the main bookstores in Barcelona. The problem is that on these tables we will find the nonsense of an author – not a writer – who had never published anything and whose only merit is a media (and ephemeral) fame achieved with anything that has nothing to do with writing or thinking, while essential books for the public cultural health of the entire country will be missing, but who have made the grave mistake of letting themselves be published by a label from any of its Islands instead of doing so by a good brand. From Barcelona, of course. We have a good dance. There are truly egregious cases. The book Political Trials under Spanish Militant Democracy. Analysis of Political Justice: Four Criminal Cases, by the Majorcan Doctor of Sociology Daniel Escribano, published by Documenta Balear, is a real gem. Of the four cases announced in the subtitle, only one refers to a Majorcan victim, the singer Valtònyc. Another chapter explains the case, in the eighties, of the Basque deputy Miguel Castells Artetxe, convicted for an opinion article. The other two cases analyzed are from Catalonia: the conviction of a group of activists from the 'Aturem el Parlament' encampment, carried out in Parc de la Ciutadella in June 2011 against austerity economic policies –Daniel Escribano dixit– and, finally, the main theme of the book, which occupies two-thirds of its total length: the general case against Catalan independence, otherwise known as the 'procés trial'. Daniel Escribano's text is dense, extensive, exhaustive. But what he explains is so poignant, so significant, and so well written, that it is read with the fascination of the best Anglo-Saxon judicial journalistic chronicles, so given to this genre.I attended the presentation of Daniel Escribano's book at Espai Mallorca in Barcelona, on September 27th of last year. Audience? Four cats and a dog, as we say in Menorca. A shame. The author was accompanied by the book's prologuist, lawyer Benet Salellas, who perfectly understands the subject as a very prominent member of Jordi Cuixart's defense team at the Supreme Court before the ineffable judge Marchena. After the presentation, I visited some of the largest bookstores in Barcelona. The book had been published and distributed just two months before. It was difficult to find. If by chance they had it, it was tucked away in a corner of a shelf. How is it possible that one of the best books explaining the epic of the most important political trial of the 21st century in Catalonia has gone so unnoticed? How can we aspire to be a normal country one day if the metropolitan capital is incapable of exercising its role as a unifier and promoter of the rich cultural diversity that is brewing throughout the national geography? How can we get out of this deadlock if, when you comment on this chronic, almost structural, imbalance, someone answers you with the name of a well-known island writer in Barcelona, as if the exception were the rule? Surely this perennial absurdity has explanations of a logistical, commercial, media, cosmetic, chemical, metaphysical, and quantum nature. Everything has an explanation, yes. But it is such a colossal, so pernicious anomaly and it has been going on for so long, that it should be an absolute priority for the highest institutional leaders and for the entire Catalan cultural ecosystem. But no. It is just a peripheral nuisance. A complaint from the nuts of the Gaulish village. A pain in the ass... of another. At the book's presentation, Benet Salellas maintained that, contrary to what is often said, today there is not a crisis of claiming rights, but a crisis of claiming the rights of others. There are many protests, he said, but each person complains about what affects them directly. I agree with this. The decline in the value of solidarity has given way to hyperventilation over my personal grievance. It must be that this surely explains more things than we are willing to recognize and admit. If it is true, the absence of important books published in the Balearic Islands would be the least important problem, but ultimately it would be an evident example. In Barcelona, we are the others.

]]> <![CDATA[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.

]]> <![CDATA[We are second-class patients: Catalan in IB-Salut]]>

I, who have already put a six in front of the figure that states my age, have so far come out cheap for the public health system. If you count all the care, tests, treatments, and interventions I've had throughout my life, since fortunately there haven't been many, the economic balance is favorable to IB-Salut. But I won't deny it: I've started to have little things. Unimportant trifles, parts that wear out from continuous use of the machinery. And since it's better to prevent than to cure, I've started to go for a few check-ups. Among the doctors who have visited me, there have been a couple of South Americans with whom I have had no problem when I addressed them in Catalan. They answer me in Spanish without any problem, nor do I. On the second visit, one of these doctors plucked up the courage to stammer in Catalan, and I encouraged him to continue because he was doing very well. The Charter of rights and duties of the healthcare user from the Government tells me that I have the right to obtain information, verbal and written, in understandable language and in the official language of the Balearic Islands that I choose. I have not asked the doctors who have attended me for anything more than what they have done: that they understand me when I address them in Catalan. Thank you very much. But to the public Health system, to the health administration, I do ask - I demand - that the documentation be delivered to me in Catalan: written appointment and referral letters, diagnostic reports, informed consents, analysis results, medication instructions, therapeutic advice. Well, no. Impossible. 

]]> <![CDATA[Other local products]]> Friday evening. I go into the corner fruit and vegetable shop. Every week we do a shop to complete the order that an organic farmer delivers to us (we order via WhatsApp and he brings the basket to our house. Yesterday he brought us a bunch of wild asparagus. It doesn't get any better). But we were in the shop. It's always quite busy at this time on Fridays. Because the produce is good, because the service is good, because it's a long-established shop you trust and that never lets you down. Fresh, local produce predominates, with an increasingly generous selection of organic products.

]]> <![CDATA[When the 'Argentine' wanted to replace the Spanish: the lesson for the Menorcan debate]]>

In the midst of the tiresome debate about the name and the unity of our language (will it never end?) It's common that, when someone says "Menorcan yes, Catalan no," someone else asks why the same isn't said of Castilian Spanish. In Extremadura, in the Pampas, or on the streets of Mexico City, it's often said that everyone understands they speak the same language, regardless of the variations in vocabulary, phonetics, intonation, and syntax. So why isn't the same criterion applied to Catalan? And it turns out that, indeed, among Castilian speakers there have also been attempts at linguistic secession, which are quite entertaining.

]]> <![CDATA[Balearic Islands as a 'positional asset']]> The Austrian economist Fred Hirsch, a key figure and fundamental precursor of ecological economics, in his best-known work, The social limits to growth (1976), coined the concept of positional goods –positional goods, or status goods– as opposed to material goods: while the latter are those that allow us to satisfy our needs, positional goods are those that, due to their scarcity and high price, are consumed exclusively by the richest individuals, who buy them to signify themselves and position themselves socially.

]]> <![CDATA[The Menorcan exception]]> In a recent radio program commemorating the centenary of Josep Maria Llompart, a Mallorcan intellectual, questioned by the journalist about the current Balearic Islands government's language policy, described it as curious, even strange. She stated that, at this time, laws are being passed or are being considered that go against the language, but, on the other hand, there are numerous institutional activities in favor of the language, funded by the government. The same interviewee contrasted the current situation with that of the disastrous—her adjective was the one she used—government of José Ramón Bauzá. She is right about this, but upon closer examination, Prohens's language policy is not so novel. In fact, it bears many similarities to that of Jaume Matas: maintaining a healthy distance from the most radical wing of Gonella's faction, promoting institutional activities, some quite significant, such as the Any Llompart event itself, subsidizing and treating the cultural sector well to keep it secure, and, meanwhile, limiting any possibility of a real and effective exercise of equality between Catalan and Spanish.

]]> <![CDATA[Priorities]]> The day after the COP30 summit, which was hastily wrapped up and as tense as previous ones, I wanted to know its conclusions. I searched for a while and consulted several reputable media outlets, both local and international. It was difficult, or rather, impossible, to find a concrete list of the agreements reached. Because they're strikes, and because they're no longer of much interest. Pretty wild, huh? Nanda Ramon nails it in her latest article in ARA BalearesWith climate change, the stakes are ever higher, yet paradoxically, we seem to care less and less. I get the impression that even—or perhaps as a starting point—the COP leaders, who have the power and resources to change the course of this race to nowhere, appear weary and apathetic. Could this apparent growing disinterest be induced, and perhaps the initial surge of interest when the climate crisis was the top priority was also deliberately fostered?

]]> <![CDATA[Like two peas in a pod (in stature)]]> I am quite perplexed by the spectacle of recriminations between the PSOE and PP regarding port policy in the Balearic Islands, because this war of mutual accusations is only succeeding in demonstrating that their port policies are exactly the same. Every new headline generated by their squabbles sheds light on the shameful shortcomings of their equally disastrous management, a blatant antithesis of what public policy should be in any area: safeguarding the general interest and preventing public assets, in this case the ports and the waterfront, from becoming a casino.

]]> <![CDATA[Indigenous people and guests]]> In the book The wonderful landing of the Greeks in Empúries, Published in 1925, journalist Manuel Brunet demystified the arrival of the Greeks on the beaches of the Gulf of Roses, which at that time was usually presented as a scene somewhere between romantic and ridiculous. The Greeks who arrived in Empúries were not philosophers or poets but merchants, and their baggage was not lofty ideas or verses but "all the science of brothels, dice, ports and prisons," says Brunet, and explains that the indigenous people of the future Catalan land did not welcome them with songs, did not welcome them with songs of beginning a future.

]]> <![CDATA[Three language policies]]> At a time when no territory in the Països Catalans has a sovereignist government, or at least one with sovereignist participation, what is the outlook for their respective language policies?

]]> <![CDATA[All those who are not Lorca]]> A few months ago, through the help of an archaeology student and thanks to the kindness of Professor Francisco Carrión and his team from the University of Granada, I had the opportunity to visit the excavation and exhumation of Civil War graves being carried out in the Víznar ravine in Granada. The site is famous because it was somewhere in this still-undiscovered area that the poet Federico García Lorca was murdered on August 18 or 19, 1936.

]]> <![CDATA[Is Menorca's star going out?]]>

The late Guillem Frontera, in the interview I conducted for the tribute collection coordinated by Damià Pons and published by Ensiola, insisted on convincing me that, despite the feeling we Menorcans sometimes have, because each one fears what belongs to him, Menorca has withstood different sides of the same onslaught. In comparison with what has happened in Mallorca and Ibiza, Guillem praised the prudence of the Menorcans, the slow and measured steps toward tourism without abandoning other economic activities, from farming to industry, the continuity of associations, the preservation of a humanized and vibrant landscape. A whole series of virtues, Guillem said, that generate in the foreign visitor the sensation of stepping on a civilized land, and that make Menorca a luminous, profoundly Mediterranean landmark that persists amidst a disfigured environment.

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