#ppcc

Bona diada dels Països Catalans!

Sant Joan és una de les poques festes (de fet, l'única que no és una celebració religiosa) que se celebra de forma conjunta arreu dels Països Catalans: des de la Flama del Canigó a la Catalunya Nord, a les fogueres d'Alacant, les festes amb cavalls de Ciutadella i la crema de bujots a Sant Lluís a Menorca, el ball de Sant Joan Pelós a diverses localitats de Mallorca, les baixades de falles al Pirineu i Andorra i totes les revetlles populars celebrades arreu de Catalunya, el País Valencià, la Franja i l'Alguer.

És una festa lligada al foc i a l'aigua, que simbolitza el final de la sega dels camps ("Pel juny, la falç al puny") i la celebració del solstici d'estiu. Des de la dècada del 1980, se celebra també com a Festa Nacional dels Països Catalans, amb el foc i la llengua com a elements centrals que ens agermanen, i com a símbol de resistència del poble català, que no s'ha deixat vèncer pels segles de repressió i persecució dels estats espanyol i francès.

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Happy Day of the Catalan Countries!

Sant Joan (Midsummer, June 24th) is one of the few holidays (in fact, the only one that isn't a religious feast) that is celebrated together all around the Catalan Countries: from the Canigó Flame in Northern Catalonia, to the Alacant bonfires, the horse festivities of Ciutadella and the burning of Bujots in Sant Lluís in Menorca, the Sant Joan Pelós dance in various towns of Mallorca, the falles in the Pyrenees and Andorra, and all the eve parties and festivals celebrated all around Catalonia, the Valencian Country, la Franja and L'Alguer.

Yes, mostly in the parts of the Catalan Countries that are not under Spanish occupation. Those are: Northern Catalonia (under French rule, so they speak French), l'Alguer (they speak Italian) and Andorra (an independent country where most people learn both French and Spanish but not everyone will speak both equally well).

That's a map of the Catalan Countries. The parts I've highlighted in red are controlled by the state of Spain: Catalonia, la Franja de Ponent, the Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands. Here, everyone speaks Spanish, it's mandatory by law that we must speak Spanish. Nowadays, it's recognised we also have the right to speak Catalan, but nobody has the obligation to know it. A shitty imperialist law that puts Spanish above the language of the land, but it gives you an idea.

The smaller area I've highlighted in blue is Northern Catalonia, which was annexed by France in 1659. That's before Spanish was imposed in Catalonia, so Northern Catalonia has never spoken Spanish (except like, if someone learned it on their own in the same way you'd learn any other foreign language, but there has not been a state-led programme of Spanish imposition like in the south). Instead of having Spanish imposed on them, they had French.

And the purple part is l'Alguer, in the island of Sardinia (Italy). It's only one city.

In the areas under Spanish rule, there are some people with disabilities who only speak Catalan, and you could also still find a few (but very few) elderly people in rural areas who also only speak Catalan.

There's also foreign people who aren't from the Catalan Countries but who have chosen to learn Catalan. They have to be careful because they are often mistreated by the Spanish police. They have repeatedly reported being harassed by the Spanish police in airports when landing in Catalonia because the Spanish police doesn't believe someone would learn Catalan and not Spanish, so when they can't answer in Spanish they get angry and sometimes arrest them. Catalan people have been sentenced to pay a fine for speaking in Catalan to a Spanish policeman in the airport too (it's considered disrespect of authority to speak to them in Catalan, plus they'll add a bunch of made-up crimes to make you pay a fine for it, even a fine of 200,000€, or they take your passport to make you miss your flight, threaten you, or hit you while shouting anti-catalan slurs against you while waiting at the airport security), but with foreign-born people who don't speak Spanish they literally don't have a choice, they can't do that.

I remember a case from two years ago, there was a Flemish man who lived in a town in Catalonia, he spoke Catalan but not Spanish because everyone in the town spoke Catalan. The cops harassed him, humiliated him in front of everyone, made fun of the fact that he had to wear an ostomy pouching system as a result of a medical operation (basically it's when your digestive and excremental systems don't work correctly so you have a bag connected to your belly that collects the excrements) and the cops forced him to take off his trousers right there in the line to show the excrement bag. Then the cops arrested him and took him to a small room where they reported him for the crimes of perturbing public order. Then they made him get naked, supposedly to show the excrement bag, but then the cops decided they didn't want him to remove his trousers even though it's the only possible way to show it, so they made him take off his shirt for absolutely no reason. They kept him there shirtless and registered his suitcases and interrogated him (all of this, in Spanish which he had said he has a hard time understanding). At one point, the cops asked him the name of the town and wrote it down wrong, then he told them they had clicked the wrong one and repeated the correct one, but the cops got angry for being corrected and reported him for the crime of refusing to cooperate with the police. He was banned from flying and could not go back home. (x)

També és necessària una crítica al que s'ha anomenat indestriabilitat dels eixos. Els avenços en la lluita feminista de les darreres dècades són innegables i d'haver-se supeditat a l'avenç dels altres eixos haurien estat frustrats. D'altra banda, qui no consideri la independència nacional com un objectiu per si mateix, potser no s'hauria d'anomenar independentista. Nosaltres no considerem els projectes d'independència i socialisme com un tot, sinó que el projecte socialista pren molta potencialitat en un context d'alliberament nacional, al contrari que en un Estat de naturalesa imperialista com l'espanyol. N'és una bona prova que justament les nacions sense estat no tinguin grups equiparables d'ultradreta com les que tenen un estat al darrere; per créixer, aquestes ultradretes necessiten determinades connexions amb elements d'un Estat i una burgesia forana (aparell repressiu, mediàtic...), impossibles d'aconseguir si el que vols és separar-te'n. Vet aquí el potencial pel moviment socialista que esmentàvem anteriorment, que inserit dins del marc d'un moviment d'alliberament nacional i amb un qüestionament implícit cap a la classe dominant assoleix una correlació de forces interna molt favorable. I vet aquí també, alguns elements que realment apuntalen el sistema capitalista i que cal combatre.