<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - Spanishness]]> 10 <![CDATA[Ceuta, racism and us]]>

A few weeks ago, I accidentally overheard a summer conversation between primary school children from Mallorca, about ten years old. They were talking about the last school year and one of them let slip, with the naturalness with which one says things heard at home, that "the best day of the school year was the day of the Feast of the Sacrifice". The others laughed and agreed. There was no need to explain it: it is a day when most of their Maghrebi classmates do not go to class. These children haven't invented anything. They are reproducing, as children always do, what they have heard adults say. And that is, precisely, what should worry us.

]]> <![CDATA[Do you feel truly Spanish?]]>

“Some people say it is possible to become truly Spanish if one makes an effort. Others, on the contrary, think that to be truly Spanish one must have been born Spanish. Which of these opinions do you agree with more?”.

]]> <![CDATA[Tractor protest and Spanish nationalism]]> The tractor protests carried out separately by Mallorcan farmers this past Thursday against the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur have produced very telling images. They were so expressive that they go far beyond the rejection of an agreement that will have very serious consequences—not only economic, but also environmental—and which represents another blow to a sector, to a countryside, already quite battered, especially in the Balearic Islands. The reality is that even in the face of this frontal attack, Mallorcan farmers have not been able to unite. And this not only weakens them, but is also profoundly significant. Because the largest tractor protest, the one led by the ever-conservative Asaja, had little to do with protest and a lot to do with a Torrente movie. A posh lunch at a popular restaurant is, at the very least, a curious way to demonstrate, to protest. It seemed more like a calculated performance: pretending to protest without causing too much of a stir against an agreement that the People's Party—the party of the regional Minister of Agriculture and a long-time leader of Asaja itself—voted in favor of in Europe. It's also revealing that the Mallorcan tractor drivers didn't demonstrate when the Catalan farmers did, during the second week of January, precisely when the Mercosur agreement was at its peak. That was an explicit act of turning their backs on the Catalan peasantry. However, it should be remembered that neither the more progressive union Unió de Pagesos nor the organic farmers of Apaema joined the gargantuan gathering; they held their own demonstration and, moreover, issued statements supporting the demands of the Catalan farmers. In any case, this lack of solidarity with Catalonia is not without reason. Here, as always, it has a clear political meaning. The largest tractor protest, the one that culminated in a picnic, was laden with Spanish flags. They display them at every tractor protest. And Vox is not only a regular presence, but they know perfectly well they can reap significant benefits. While the far right is currently acting as the self-appointed guardian of Palma's libraries, demanding a count of books in Catalan and Spanish—even though librarians have already demonstrated that there are many more in Spanish: 150,004 to 86,945—the anti-Catalan rhetoric is once again proving highly effective.

]]> <![CDATA[My son is Spanish]]> Having a teenager tests your ability to respect freedom of thought and expression, especially when one of the intrinsic qualities of this stage of life is to do the opposite of your parents. So, since my concept of Spain is that of a chaotic and disorganized foreign country, filled with fascist seeds that are growing at a worrying rate, my pup has decided to be proud of being Spanish. Furthermore, he's developed a curious philosophical theory about his Spanishness: "You can say 'Long live Spain!' and hate bullfighting," he said the other day—he was very happy because he'd met a very pretty young woman who thinks exactly like him.

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