10 The year was 1936. A few months before the outbreak of the Civil War, a multitude of intellectuals signed the Response to the CatalansIt was not a symbolic or circumstantial gesture. It was a serious, well-considered, and courageous manifesto that stated something very simple: Mallorcans share a language, share a culture, and want to walk together. In other words, it was a declaration of the Catalan identity of the Balearic Islands. It was drafted by Miquel Ferrà i Juan and signed by 151 leading figures of island culture. The coup d'état and the Francoist dictatorship cut it all off at the root, as Spain tends to do when something makes it uncomfortable.

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