"Prongs rode again last night."

‘’someone’s light will never go out if it helped you find your own.’’

Así de bonita está la Plaza de Neptuno, luciendo los colores del orgullo LGTBI. Por la integración y la no discriminación. Por el derecho a decidir sobre nuestros cuerpos y lo que hagamos con ellos.

Ni decir tiene que por ser hetero no tenga que apoyar esta causa.

Because it’s at the very least a sign of respect????That is the MINIMUM they could do after all these centuries of occupation and systematical erasure of our peoples. Do you think we’re bilingual because god felt like creating bilinguals that day? We’re bilinguals because we’re an occupied nation, and as such we’ve been forced to replace our language (Catalan, Basque, Euskera, Aranese) for our invader’s language (Spanish).

If there’s no point in considering our language worthy of being on the website of the government we are forced to obey, then what’s the point of having the local languages be co-official in their own territory in the first place. What’s the point of keeping our languages and cultures alive, when we could just forget our identity and give in to their imperialism, and simply speak Spanish. In fact, what’s the point of speaking Spanish when we could speak English, the international language?Be careful anon, the imperialism that benefits you now might erase you later. If you believe your own culture and language are worthy to keep alive, then why ours isn’t?

This is not just some text in a website, this is yet another reminder that our languages are treated like inferior. When she was a child, my grandma couldn’t speak a word outside her house, ‘cause Catalan was illegal and it was the only language she could speak until she was about 9 years old. My parents were beaten at school for speaking Catalan. For about half of the 20th century, the anthem of Spain was Cara al Sol, which includes lines such as “catalán, judío y renegado, pagarás por los daños que has causado” (“Catalan, Jewish, and renegade [atheist], you’ll pay for what you have caused”). Our parents’ and grandparents’ generations were taught that only uncultured people speak our languages. That it is rude and shameful to speak our languages. Nowadays, there’s many people who think Catalan/Basque/Galician/Aranese/Astur-Leonese/Aragonese are okay to be spoken at home, but nothing more. Not at school, not at work, not in formal settings, ‘cause they’re inferior languages that are unable to express more advanced concepts.By not adding our languages to the official government pages, they are perpetuating this idea (which is already fuelled enough by Spanish and French media and by the mentality many of have to hear all the time).When this mentality is shared by most Catalans, our language will quickly decline and die. This declination is already happening in Galicia, where people choose to speak to their children in Spanish instead of Galician ‘cause that will make them more intelligent or useful.For the last 3 centuries we’ve been invaded by Spain. For the last 3 centuries we’ve been constantly hearing that we are worthless, rojos separatistas, catalufos, polacos…

(Violence trigger warning for the following paragraph)Imagine, for the last 3 hours you’ve been beating and stabbing a person. Now, if you keep this up for a little more, this person will die. You will have killed this person. But you stop cause you want to give a good image of yourself, though you still kick them from time to time. The person dying asks you to please give them something simple that would seem insignificant to you, like a bandaid. You refuse.You are not beating them so strongly anymore, so if they die now it won’t be your fault, right?No. The very least you can do is give the bandaid, and let us cure ourselves (don’t outlaw all our linguistic immersion policies, etc).

We are tired. We just want to live in peace being ourselves.

Besides, what about immigrants who have only had time/resources to learn 1 language and chose it to be the language spoken where they moved to?