The CIS has never gone there, but my impression is that if you asked the entire Spanish population what they felt about Saturday’s national festivities roughly 99% would tick “I’m broke, so, defence of our frontiers from Gib aside, why should I subsidise a fucking subnormal goat-worshipping cult?”
OK, Catalanism in Catalonia is Different: the protectionist embezzlers see in independence a safe haven, and have managed to whip up the great and usually amiable mass of the intellectually lazy into plodding along behind the morons and nutcases who will always wet their pants at the sight of the correct number of bars on a piece of cheap Chinese cloth.
But the rest of us – many millions of us – are reasonably sane, honest and intelligent, and we want not a different flag, nor two flags, nor lots and lots of flags, nor a more subtle definition of national destiny, nor to hispanicise Catalonia, nor to catalanise Spain, nor mad totalitarian nuns on the loose, but
- an end to state expenditure on flags,
- perhaps rather more on jobs, and
- the introduction of the concept of individual human rights, which can be summarised as “Fuck off and let me do my thing, bitch.”
OK, there still exists what Vasily Grossman witnessed in the German invaders of the Soviet Union, that
traditional … chauvinism, arrogance, egoism, self-assurance, pedantic care for one’s own little nest, and the iron-cold indifference to the destiny of all that is living on the Earth, from the ferocious belief that [one’s tribe’s] music, poetry, language, lawns, toilets, sky, buildings are the greatest in the Universe…
But I think that – apart from the thieves, halfwits and loonies – that is mainly an old folk’s thing in modern Spain, and I also think that people mostly recognise now that just because they defenestrate barnyard animals in a way that is qualitatively and quantitatively superior to anything seen since some rather messy anthropomorphism in Reformation Prague doesn’t imply that everyone else should have to contribute financially to their little pecado.
How can the fuckwits who organised Saturday’s joke not be aware of this, like, monstrous phenomenon? Jesus!
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My dear Catalanist friends, yes, I do think you are mad, but so are most of my friends. It’s a cross I have to bear, or, in your case, a bear I have to cross.
Yes, Casal Tramuntana are fascists, but they’re quite interesting: the only three features distinguishing them from other fascist groups like Maulets-Arran are their politeness, their use of two flags rather than one (it’s the niggers I think they hate, not the dagos), and their greater expertise in managing zeppelins (see the photo), which they must have got from somewhere, now I come to think of it. Nazis!
Whatever the thieves do now, their followers are so convinced that Paradise is around the corner that – barring a Rubalcaba coup – there is no going back. I and a friend who normally does snails have started betting on who’s going to get killed by whom, when and where, using weapons supplied by whom, etc etc. Are you reading this, PaddyPower?
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“Jordi”, for my money one of the most interesting bloggers in Catalan, has worked in London and for whatever reason now teaches at a secondary school and the official language school in Valladolid. He says that the children are nationalist in a very basic sense, but that none of the adults are. He suggests that this may be because the 78 constitution may have passed its sell-by date, and that unionism’s arguments may thus be solely negative (fear, and so forth), which he thinks may not necessarily be such a bad thing.
One can understand why the CIS and its masters don’t want to touch this kind of stuff, but someone, somewhere must have some numbers.
Well, I think it’s still “Steady, boys!” when it comes to ethnic conflict. Mad as I may be, and professing none of your vexillophobia (the result, no doubt, of a naval upbringing, which is weird because you wouldn’t see me dead near a butcher’s apron), I am concerned that you and some others feel that some sort of clash is inevitable. This is a view espoused exclusively by unionists and I can never work out (a) how likely it is (b) if it’s a threat or a promise – cf Sr. Aznar – and (c) if we loonies don’t believe it is that because we’re loonies? Optimists? Bourgeois types who don’t spend enough time in the wrong bars? Poor judges of the zeitgeist? Or maybe we’re right.
Cui bono ain’t always the safest way to work out who’s behind stolen beers – with insults – but it seems to me that the same political movement wringing its hands at 100db about fractures in Catalan society seems to be the same movement which would most benefit from such cracks developing. And that even if hairline cracks are there, this ‘silent majority’ horseshit might best be likened to a crowbar, applied regularly to said fissures all in the name of mediation.
Whatever Lara says, he’s just feeling the hurt as his rules for the market have been abandoned by everyone else. The question for him is: will he really need more than half a van to move offices when he fucks off to Madrid? Because the rate he’s going, a seat on the AVE and a Chinese suitcase will suffice. And no amount of buying chunks of other crumbling houses will save his.
Finally, you get to wondering why Diari Ara never publishes more than the bare minimum on corruption stories then you spot the ‘Generalitat de Catalunya – Departament de Presidència’ logo at the bottom of the page and you think Oh that’s funny, sure that wasn’t there before, so you decide to look into who owns the wretched thing and you realise it’s a rum cove, friend of the Govern, who splits his time between residence in Switzerland and court in Barcelona on corruption charges and you say to yourself, well fuck – I should have known.
Només lluitant tenim futur! etc etc. Maybe I can get my vexillophobia (good word) treated.
I think there’s a bullshit pacifist strain here which is very old and says “We’re going to do something incredibly grievous, but we love everyone” in order to obtain the martyrs they need to rake in the contributions.
Talking about it with people you learn some extraordinary things. It is said that the military hasn’t dared to update its plans for defending barracks / stopping secession (which is its constitutional duty) since Tejero in 82, but they continue to pay informers in nearby blocks to keep an eye out. And one of the best mates of Our Beloved Leader Jnr (not Oriol the cross-eyed pig but his predecessor) is well in there with Casal T.
Lara’s a thieving twat, and Aznar is just such an incredibly pompous hypocritical arsehole – who did the deals with Pujol that got us where we are?
Oriol is referred to as ‘el pobre noi’ in certain academic circles. Comes from the way he always used to start meetings saying ‘Jo sóc només un pobre noi…’.
The ‘leftist’ ex-colonel Amadeo Martínez says the army doesn’t have even a fraction of the forces it would need to occupy Barcelona, let alone Catalonia. Which would be a good reason for not refreshing the plans. I think the submarine service is sucking up all defence’s cash now, which I’m overjoyed to hear.
You’ll know this: is it true that Arturo (as the family used to call him until quite recently) has told the Mossos to look at floating and sticking Cruise missiles on the Ictíneo in the garden of the Maritime Museum?
If it were true, it’d probably be cheaper and more effective than the S-80.
Stop being so sectarian: it will make a splendid shellfish shelter.
Tom points out that Rosa Díez is just as bad as the rest: http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/10/03/opinion/1380817310_590254.html I agree. Sod em all.
A sensible proposal from Sinn Fein: http://sluggerotoole.com/2013/11/21/sfs-proposals-for-a-single-flag-post-in-each-area/