Catalan Quotes

She could just pack up and leave, but she does not visualize what's beyond ahead.

In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there

And I got a strong feeling of the passage of time. Not the time of clouds and sun and rain and the moving stars that adorn the night, not spring when its time comes or fall, not the time that makes leaves bud on branches and then tears them off or folds and unfolds and colors the flowers, but the time inside me, the time you can't see but it molds us. The time that rolls on and on in people's hearts and makes them roll along with it and gradually changes us inside and out and makes us what we'll be on our dying day.

The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one's country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called "homesickness." Or in German: Heimweh. In Dutch: heimwee. But this reduces that great notion to just its spatial element. One of the oldest European languages, Icelandic (like English) makes a distinction between two terms: söknuour: nostalgia in its general sense; and heimprá: longing for the homeland. Czechs have the Greek-derived nostalgie as well as their own noun, stesk, and their own verb; the most moving, Czech expression of love: styska se mi po tobe ("I yearn for you," "I'm nostalgic for you"; "I cannot bear the pain of your absence"). In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there. Certain languages have problems with nostalgia: the French can only express it by the noun from the Greek root, and have no verb for it; they can say Je m'ennuie de toi (I miss you), but the word s'ennuyer is weak, cold -- anyhow too light for so grave a feeling. The Germans rarely use the Greek-derived term Nostalgie, and tend to say Sehnsucht in speaking of the desire for an absent thing. But Sehnsucht can refer both to something that has existed and to something that has never existed (a new adventure), and therefore it does not necessarily imply the nostos idea; to include in Sehnsucht the obsession with returning would require adding a complementary phrase: Sehnsucht nach der Vergangenheit, nach der verlorenen Kindheit, nach der ersten Liebe (longing for the past, for lost childhood, for a first love).

Until he was four, Marcel didn’t call her “mother” but “señora.” The first words he said were “white wine” in Catalan, spoken in his playpen behind the tavern counter.

Fa quatre-cents anys, la gent veia la mateixa lluna que veiem nosaltres.

You’re my hero, Mickey Catalan,” Lydia says into my ear, over the roar of the crowd. “Heroine,” I correct her. “Hoo—fucking—ray!” Bella Right screams at me when I get into the dugout. Everyone is yelling my name. Right now, everyone loves me. Right now, I even love myself.

The most famous political dictum of early Catalunya was uttered there—the unique oath of allegiance sworn by Catalans and Aragonese to the Spanish monarch in Madrid. “We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all our liberties and laws—but if not, not.

Había, por tanto, un fuerte núcleo de franceses en casi todas las ciudades catalanas de importancia,

Independència Països Catalans

-¡Ah!, es verdad, Dantés, me olvidaba de que en el barrio de los Catalanes hay una persona que debe esperaros con tanta impaciencia como vuestro padre, la hermosa Mercedes.

He decided that as soon as his daughter had left, he would take Meche what was left of his arròs negre with squid, and the Catalan dessert. Sailing on, he thought, on until the end.

-Sí, ya lo sé, Mercedes -respondió Fernando-; hasta el horrible atractivo de la franqueza tienes conmigo. Pero ¿olvidas que es ley sagrada entre los nuestros el casarse catalanes con catalanes?

Más de una vez me he entretenido imaginando qué habría acontecido si, en lugar de hombres de Castilla, hubieran sido encargados, mil años hace, los "unitarios" de ahora, catalanes y vascos, de formar esta enorme cosa que llamamos España. Yo sospecho que, aplicando sus métodos y dando con sus testas en el yunque, lejos de arribar a la España una, habrían dejado la Península convertida en una pululación de mil cantones.

My publishers, two Catalan brothers with an inherited income, took me out to lunch to inform me that the first print run would be only five hundred copies. Five hundred readers? I accept! And the lunch was delicious.

There was practically nothing on Catalan painting, though the world’s greatest surviving body of Romanesque frescoes, salvaged from decaying churches in the Ampurdan and the Pyrenees, was (and is) right there in the Museu d’Art de Catalunya up on Montjuïc.

Albanian dogs go “ham ham.” In Catalan, dogs go “bup bup.” The Chinese dogs say “wang wang,” the Greek dogs go “gav gav,” the Slovenians “hov hov,” and the Ukrainians “haf haf.” In Iceland, it’s “voff,” in Indonesia, it’s “gong gong,” and in Italian, it’s “bau bau.

What is Catalan?' 'Why, the language of Catalonia – of the islands, of the whole of the Mediterranean coast down to Alicante and beyond. Of Barcelona. Of Lerida. All the richest part of the peninsula.' 'You astonish me. I had no notion of it. Another language, sir? But I dare say it is much the same thing – a putain, as they say in France?' 'Oh no, nothing of the kind – not like at all. A far finer language. More learned, more literary. Much nearer the Latin. And by the by, I believe the word is patois, sir, if you will allow me.

All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Moslem; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are "the Jews of Spain". On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is the Armenians. Lawrence Durrell says that when he lived in Crete he was friends with the Greeks, but that when he wanted to buy some land they sent him to a Turk, saying that a Turk was what you needed for a trade, though of course he couldn't be trusted. This figure who is good with money but a little tricky is always treated as a foreigner even if his family has been around for centuries. Often he actually is a foreigner, of course. He is invited in when the nation needs trade and he is driven out - or murdered - when nationalism begins to flourish: the Chinese out of Vietnam in 1978, the Japanese out of China in 1949, the Jankees out of South America and Iran, the East Indians out of Uganda under Idi Amin, and the Armenians out of Turkey in 1915-16. The outsider is always used as a catalyst to arouse nationalism, and when times are hard he will always be its victim as well.

Still, the farther hills remained as untouched as the sea; high, remote, arid, dark and sterile, poisoned with the sun.

No vull el lent i desvagat destí / de dar a no-res mon oci inconegut; / val més ésser esclafat i escorregut, / la sang inútil trasmudant en vi.

Ens ha costat arribar fins aquí però ara hi som i ho tenim tot per fer.

Li va dir a cau d'orella que no es cansaria de mirar-la

Sentir no era el seu verb preferit.

Alçant els punys pots percudir la lluna.

Tot està per fer i tot és possible

Serem allò que vulguem ser

Un to blau grisós, el color del llac IJssel un dia d’estiu amenaçat per núvols foscos carregats de trons a la llunyania.

I shall get nothing from these fools,' he muttered; 'and I am very much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Here's an envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from under his nose and takes on like a big baby. Yet this Catalan has eyes that glisten like those of the vengeful Spaniards, Sicilians, and Calabrians, and the other has fists big enough to crush an ox at one blow. Unquestionably, Edmond's star is in the ascendant, and he will marry the splendid girl--he will captain, too, and laugh at us all, unless'--a sinister smile passed over Danglars' lips--'unless I take a hand in the affair,' he added.

Catalan metalworkers quickly fashioned armored cars that looked like giant boxes on wheels by welding steel plates to the frames of trucks and automobiles. Others fashioned homemade bombs and hand grenades, and thousands pitched in to build street barricades of everything from dead horses to massive rolls of newsprint to paving stones passed hand-to-hand along a chain of people. Office

Comprenc que no ha de ser fàcil competir amb un record. Ella ja no pot equivocar-se, no ens pot decebre... és una ombra poderosa i, tot i que no puc disculpar-me per això, vull fer-te saber que ho entenc.

Feia vent, i de tant en tant les fulles deixaven a la vista una estrella, i semblava que les estrelles mateixes s'estremissin i projectessin la seva llum per mirar d'esquitllar-se per entre les vores de les fulles.

Aquellos autorreconocidos revolucionarios se limpiaban el culo con el papel noruego más caro del mercado, se hacían traer el vino de una bodega específica y muy exclusiva de La Rioja, el aceite de oliva de Jaén y solo comían en casa el jamón de bellota Isidro González Revilla, uno de los más caros de la península, sin mencionar detalles tan simples como que La Rioja, Jaén y Salamanca, por no incluir Oslo, no eran territorios catalanes.

He used his intellect as he used his legs: to carry him somewhere else. He studied astrology, astronomy, botany, chemistry, numerology, fortification, divination, organ building, metallurgy, medicine, perspective, the kabbala, toxicology, philosophy, and jurisprudence. He kept his interest in anatomy and did a dissection whenever he could get hold of a body. He learned Arabic, Catalan, Polish, Icelandic, Basque, Hungarian, Romany, and demotic Greek.

Typical of Iberia, both the Basques and the Catalans claim the word comes from their own languages, and the rest of Spain disagrees. Catalans have a myth that cod was the proud king of fish and was always speaking boastfully, which was an offence to God. "Va callar!" (Will you be quiet!), God told the cod in Catalan. Whatever the word's origin, in Spain lo que corta el bacalao, the person who cuts the salt cod, is a colloquialism for the person in charge.

Jaume Cabré, Confiteor (translated into French from Catalan), p. 74: [...] un couvent situé si loin de tout qu’on disait que la pluie y arrivait fatiguée et qu’elle ne mouillait presque pas la peau. [...] tellement isolé et difficile d’accès qu’on ne sait pas avec certitudes si les pensées y parvenaient entières" (p. 74) ...a convent situated so far from anything that it was said that the rain arrived there so weary that it could hardly moisten the skin. ... so remote and inaccessible that no one knows with certainty that ideas arrive their in their entirety.

Al cap i la fi, és una foscor agradable, perquè és meva, perquè me la faig jo. És una ceguera voluntària, benefactora, vellutada, tova, confortable, molt millor que la llum que t'aboca a un món que mai podré no podré abastar, ni conèixer, ni controlar, el món de l'agorafòbia, del vertigem, de l'inmensitat

Aquesta remor que se sent no és de pluja. Ja fa molt de temps que no plou. S'han eixugat les fonts i la pols s'acumula pels carrers i les cases. Aquesta remor que se sent no és de vent. Han prohibit el vent perquè no s'alci la pols que hi ha pertot i l'aire no esdevingui —diuen— irrespirable. Aquesta remor que se sent no és de paraules. Han prohibit les paraules perquè no posin en perill la fràgil immobilitat de l'aire. Aquesta remor que se sent no és de pensaments. Han estat prohibits perquè no engendrin la necessitat de parlar i sobrevingui, inevitable, la catàstrofe. I, tanmateix, la remor persisteix.

Williams, having awarded Orwell the title of exile, immediately replaces it with the description ‘vagrant’. A vagrant will, for example, not be reassured or comforted by Williams’s not-very-consoling insistence that '"totalitarian" describes a certain kind of repressive social control, but, also, any real society, any adequate community, is necessarily a totality. To belong to a community is to be a part of a whole, and, necessarily, to accept, while helping to define, its disciplines.’ In other words, Williams is inviting Orwell and all of us to step back inside the whale! Remember your roots, observe the customs of the tribe, recognise your responsibilities. The life of the vagrant or exile is unwholesome, even dangerous or deluded. The warmth of the family and the people is there for you; so is the life of the ‘movement.’ If you must criticize, do so from within and make sure that your criticisms are constructive. This rather peculiar attempt to bring Orwell back into the fold is reinforced by this extraordinary sentence: ‘The principle he chose was socialism, and Homage to Catalonia is still a moving book (quite apart from the political controversy it involves) because it is a record of the most deliberate attempt he ever made to become part of a believing community.’ I leave it to any reader of those pages to find evidence for such a proposition; it is true that Orwell was very moved by the Catalan struggle and by the friends he made in the course of it. But he wasn’t exactly deracinated before he went, and the ‘believing community’ of which, in the aftermath, he formed a part was a community of revolutionary sympathisers who had felt the shared experience of betrayal at the hands of Stalin. And of Stalin’s ‘community’, at that epoch, Williams formed an organic part. Nor, by the time he wrote Culture and Society, had he entirely separated from it.

15 de agosto de 1343 Misa solemne de campaña El ejercito entero, concentrado en la playa, rendia culto a la Virgen de la Mar. Pedro III habia cedido a las presiones del Santo Padre y pactado una tregua con Jaime de Mallorca. El rumor corrio entre el ejercito. Arnau no escuchaba al sacerdote; pocos lo hacian, la mayoria tenia el rostro contrito. La Virgen no consolaba a Arnau. Habia matado. Habia talado arboles. Habia arrasado vinas y campos de cultivo ante los asustados ojos de los campesinos y de sus hijos. Habia destruido villas enteras y con ellas los hogares de gentes de bien. El rey Jaime habia conseguido su tregua y el rey Pedro habia cedido.Arnau recordo las arengas de Santa Maria de la Mar: "Cataluna os necesita! El rey Pedro os necesita! Partid a la guerra!". Que guerra? Solo habian sido matanzas. Escaramuzas en las que los unicos que perdieron fueron las gentes humildes, los soldados leales… y los ninos, que pasarian hambre el proximo invierno por falta de grano. Que guerra? La que habian librado obispos y cardenales, correveidiles de reyes arteros? El sacerdote proseguia con su homilia pero Arnau no escuchaba sus palabras. Para que habia tenido que matar? De que servian sus muertos? La misa finalizo. Los soldados se disolvieron formando pequenos grupos. - Y el botin prometido? - Perpiñan es rica, muy rica -oyo Arnau. - Como pagara el rey a sus soldados si ya antes no podia hacerlo? Arnau deambulaba entre los grupos de soldados. Que le importaba a el el botin? Era la mirada de los niños lo que le importaba; la de aquel pequeño que, agarrado a la mano de su hermana, presencio como Arnau y un grupo de soldados arrasaban su huerto y esparcian el grano que debia sustentarles durante el invierno. Por que?, le preguntaron sus ojos inocentes. Que mal os hemos hecho nosotros? Probablemente los niños fueran los encargados del huerto, y permanecieron alli, con las lagrimas cayendo por sus mejillas, hasta que el gran ejercito catalan termino de destruir sus escasas posesiones. Cuando terminaron, Arnau ni siquiera fue capaz de volver la mirada hacia ellos.

Bevíem a glops aspres vins de burla el meu poble i jo. Escoltàvem forts arguments del sabre el meu poble i jo. Una tal lliçó hem hagut d'entendre el meu poble i jo. La mateixa sort ens uneix per sempre: el meu poble i jo. Senyor, servidor? Som indestriables el meu poble i jo. Tenim la raó contra bords i lladres el meu poble i jo. Salvàvem els mots de la nostra llengua el meu poble i jo. A baixar graons de dol apreníem el meu poble i jo. Davallats al pou, esguardem enlaire el meu poble i jo. Ens alcem tots dos en encesa espera, el meu poble i jo.

To our amazement Jimmy received a letter, dated August 20, 1963, from Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and peace activist, saying “I have recently finished your remarkable book The American Resolution” and “have been greatly impressed with its power and insight.” The letter goes on to ask for Jimmy’s views on whether American whites “will understand the negro [sic] revolt because “the survival of mankind may well follow or fail to follow from political and social behavior of Americans in the next decades.” On September 5 Jimmy wrote back a lengthy reply saying among other things that “so far, with the exception of the students, there has been no social force in the white population which the Negroes can respect and a handful of liberals joining in a demonstration doesn’t change this one bit.” Russell replied on September 18 with more questions that Jimmy answered in an even longer letter dated December 22. Meanwhile, Russell had sent a telegram to the November 21 Town Hall meeting in New York City at which Jimmy was scheduled to speak, warning Negroes not to resort to violence. In response Jimmy said at the meeting that “I too would like to hope that the issues of our revolt might be resolved by peaceful means,” but “the issues and grievances were too deeply imbedded in the American system and the American peoples so that the very things Russell warned against might just have to take place if the Negroes in the U.S.A. are ever to walk the streets as free men.” In his December 22 letter Jimmy repeats what he said at the meeting and then patiently explains to Russell that what has historically been considered democracy in the United States has actually been fascism for millions of Negroes. The letter concludes: I believe that it is your responsibility as I believe that it is my responsibility to recognize and record this, so that in the future words do not confuse the struggle but help to clarify it. This is what I think philosophers should make clear. Because even though Negroes in the United States still think they are struggling for democracy, in fact democracy is what they are struggling against. This exchange between Jimmy and Russell has to be seen to be believed. In a way it epitomizes the 1960s—Jimmy Boggs, the Alabama-born autoworker, explaining the responsibility of philosophers to The Earl Russell, O.M., F.R.S., in his time probably the West’s best-known philosopher. Within the next few years The American Revolution was translated and published in French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. To this day it remains a page-turner for grassroots activists because it is so personal and yet political, so down to earth and yet visionary.

Like Italian or Portuguese or Catalan, Spanish is a wordy language, bountiful and flamboyant, with a formidable emotional range. But for these same reasons, it is conceptually inexact. The work of our greatest prose writers, beginning with Cervantes, is like a splendid display of fireworks in which every idea marches past, preceded and surrounded by a sumptuous court of servants, suitors, and pages, whose function is purely decorative. In our prose, color, temperature, and music are as important as ideas and, in some cases-Lezama Lima or Valle Inclan, for example-more so. There is nothing objectionable about these typically Spanish rhetorical excesses. They express the profound nature of a people, a way of being in which the emotional and the concrete prevail over the intellectual and the abstract. This is why Valle Inclan, Alfonso Reyes, Alejo Carpentier, and Camilo Jose Cela, to cite four magnificent prose writers, are so verbose in their writing. This does not make their prose either less skillful or more superficial than that of Valery or T.S. Eliot. They are simply quite different, just as Latin Americans are different from the English and the French. To us, ideas are formulated and captured more effectively when fleshed out with emotion and sensation or in some way incorporated into concrete reality, into life-far more than they are in logical discourse. That perhaps is why we have such a rich literature and such a dearth of philosophers.

Para los catalanes, España solo era el nombra que se otorgaba a una confederación libre de naciones; los castellanos, en cambio, en la palabra España veían una prolongación imperial del brazo de Castilla. ¿Ven lo que les decía? España no existe; no es un sitio, es un desencuentro.

In the Catalan metropolis, heart and symbol of the revolution, legal authority stopped at nothing in disarming whatever remained alive, spontaneous and anti-bourgeois.

muy pocos catalanes podían resistir a las llamadas de su propio interés.

«Siempre la lengua ha sido compañera del imperio»,

los nobles y los ricos burgueses se refugiaron en las iglesias

Cataluña, como nación, era tradicionalmente, y violentamente, antifrancesa,

i després d’haver fetes les lleis no estan subjectes a ellas…

Cataluña era una república independiente. Pero solo iba a durar una semana.

propuso que el Principado se colocase bajo el gobierno del rey de Francia,

Cataluña había cambiado un señor por otro.

La fuerza defensiva francocatalana se enfrentó al ejército de Vélez en la montaña de Montjuich,

You have not bought the right to a truthful answer: your truth has not bought it. Sincerity is not to be bought: it is given, if it comes at all—given or inflicted. And really, you cannot invade a man’s privacy like that.

In the lifetime of the Catalan philosopher and mystic, Ramon Lull (1232–c. 1316), the Iberian peninsula was the home of three great religious and philosophical traditions. Dominant was Christianity and the Catholic Church, but a large part of the country was still under the rule of the Moslem Arabs; and it was in Spain that the Jews of the Middle Ages had their strongest centre. In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis.

In later centuries, both Spanish and Italian patriots have claimed him; but in fact the background of this obscure map maker and sea captain is extremely vague. He himself was always quite evasive about his origins, although he claimed to come from Genoa. In Spain he referred to himself as a foreigner (extranjero), but he kept his journals and made marginal notations in his books in Spanish, not Italian; his letters to his brother Bartholome and his son Diego were also written in Spanish, and he wrote Latin in a recognizably Spanish manner. Yet his Spanish was the language of the fourteenth century, and his characteristics seemed to suggest a Catalan background. Furthermore, although he made an elaborate show of his Christian piety, he always kept company with Jews and Muslims.

So there is nothing inherently subversive about pleasure. On the contrary, as Karl Marx recognized, it is a thoroughly aristocratic creed. The traditional English gentleman was so averse to unpleasurable labour that he could not even be bothered to articulate properly. Hence the patrician slur and drawl, Aristotle believed that being human was something you had to get good at through constant practice, like learning Catalan or playing the bagpipes; whereas if the English gentleman was virtuous, as he occasionally deigned to be, his goodness was purely spontaneous. Moral effort was for merchants and clerks

many learners’ expectations of language classes have been in large part conditioned by a ‘discourse of nativisim’ – the idea that the best way of learning a language is the way that we learned our mother tongue, i.e. by total immersion. This argument underpins the dissatisfaction expressed by my Catalan friend above. Many learners – and many teachers – feel intuitively that anything less than total immersion irrevocably weakens the ‘push’ to use – and therefore to learn – the target language.

El día del Watusi fue el 15 de agosto de 1971. Aún no era septiembre y ya habíamos ocupado la portería en la que iba a trabajar mi madre, un sótano próximo al gran templo que bautiza el barrio donde impone su sombra. Toda la ciudad, y no sólo las familias de comerciantes y empleados a los que ella iba a servir, comulgaba en un exagerado afecto por la quimera arquitectónica. Eran incesantes las cuestaciones populares para que ese delirio creciera aún más. «¡Ya tenemos cinco torres! Ya tenemos seis!», exclamaba la población con entusiasmo.

Dir-nos "valencians", en definitiva, és la nostra manera de dir-nos "catalans

La porcofília de la nostra societat és filla de la por de ser descoberts per la Inquisició, i també del deler de no semblar jueus mai més i d’esborrar els orígens conversos de molts.

Stephen Maturin sipped his scalding coffee, the right Mocha berry, brought back from Arabia Felix in the pilgrim dhows, and considered. He was naturally a reserved and even a secretive man: his illegitimate birth (his father was an Irish officer in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, his mother a Catalan lady) had to do with this; his activities in the cause of the liberation of Ireland had more; and his voluntary, gratuitous alliance with naval intelligence, undertaken with the sole aim of helping to defeat Bonaparte, whom he loathed with all his heart as a vile tyrant, a wicked cruel vulgar man, a destroyer of freedom and of nations, and as a betrayor of all that was good in the Revolution, had even more. Yet the power of keeping his mouth shut was innate; so perhaps was the integrity that made him one of the Admiralty’s most valued secret agents, particularly in Catalonia – a calling very well disguised by his also being an active naval surgeon, as well as a natural philosopher of international renown, one whose name was familiar to all those who cared deeply about the extinct solitaire of Rodriguez (close cousin to the dodo), the great land tortoise Testudo aubreii of the Indian Ocean, or the habits of the African aardvark. Excellent agent though he was, he was burdened with a heart, a loving heart that had very nearly broken for a woman named Diana Villiers: she had preferred an American to him – a natural preference, since Mr. Johnson was a fine upstanding witty intelligent man, and very rich, whereas Stephen was a plain bastard at the best, sallow with odd pale eyes, sparse hair and meager limbs, and rather poor.

Whisper it softly, but many Greeks, including clergy, welcomed the Ottomans. On the whole Muslim rulers have been much more tolerant of infidels than their Christian counterparts have. As long as their subjects paid taxes and provided recruits to the harems and armies of the Sultan, they could have whatever religion they liked. Only when they joined religion with revolt did scimitars and stakes come out. Orthodox Christianity was under far greater threat from the Roman variety imposed by Venetians and Franks and Catalans. Jews too were safer from pogrom under the crescent than the cross. This is not a line of thought that goes down well in Greek company.

For example, in Spain, the Barcelona Age Factor (BAF) project studied the effects of changing the age of beginning to teach English to Catalan/Spanish bilingual students. When the starting age for teaching English was lowered, Carmen Muñoz and her colleagues took advantage of the opportunity to compare the learning outcomes for students who had started learning at different ages. They were able to look at students’ progress after 100, 416, and 726 hours of instruction. Those who had begun to learn later (aged 11, 14, or 18+) performed better on nearly every measure than those who had begun earlier (aged 8). This was particularly true of measures based on metalinguistic awareness or analytic ability. On listening comprehension, younger starters showed some advantages. Muñoz suggests that this may be based on younger learners’ use of a more implicit approach to learning while older learners’ advantages may reflect their ability to use more explicit approaches, based on their greater cognitive maturity. She points out that, in foreign language instruction, where time is usually limited, ‘younger learners may not have enough time and exposure to benefit fully from the alleged advantages of implicit learning’ (Muñoz 2006: 33).

In the early 1990s, Moon and colleagues showed that two-day-olds can distinguish the sounds of their language from those of an unfamiliar language if the overall rhythms of the sentences are different between languages. Their tiny subjects could tell English from French and Japanese because they have different rhythmic structures, but not English from Dutch, because the rhythmic structures are very similar. By five months, English-learning babies could distinguish English from Dutch, too. At that same age, bilingual Catalan-and Spanish-learning infants could distinguish both of their languages from other languages and from each other.

Hola,” my daughter offered meekly. “¿Cuál es su nombre?” the woman asked. What is her name? “Stella.” “Hmm?” “Stella.” The woman still looked puzzled. Drew jumped in. “Estella.” She broke into a smile. “Ah, Estella.” “Sí.” I smiled, too. “Y tu hijo?” she asked, running her hand over our son’s blond head. He shook his head impatiently. “Cole,” I replied. “Col?” she asked, again looking puzzled. “Sí.” Everyone wanted to call Stella “Estella,” and sometimes she’d get mistaken for chela, the Mexican slang for beer. Cole, on the other hand, is a Spanish word, at least how it’s pronounced. It’s Catalan as well, which is the second language in Barcelona (or first, depending on who you ask). Cole is pronounced like the Spanish word col and means “cabbage.” We accidentally named our son after the slightly smelly vegetable they put in cocidos and ensaladas. Meet our children: Beer and Cabbage. Apparently it didn’t matter, as the abuelita quickly launched into a story about her three children and eight grandchildren (who all lived outside the city, sadly) and her hand injury that had only recently healed. I nodded and Drew offered, “Sí, sí, vale, vale,” the usual Spanish murmurs of agreement. The bus stopped and we said our good-byes as she departed. After the bus had started rolling again, I leaned over to Drew and whispered, “If we have another baby, we are naming her Alejandra—or Javier if it’s a boy—something so Spanish no one ever asks us twice.” He grinned. “Agreed.

Las actas originales de la fundación de la Beneficencia en 1848, y también otros papeles más recientes, casi todos de la década de 1920, relacionados con una especie de conspiración entre catalanes para crear un estado independiente... No sé si usted sabe que Francesc Macià estuvo en La Habana después de su loco intento de invadir Cataluña para independizarla. Y aquí se escribió un proyecto de Constitución republicana... Hasta la bandera independentista catalana se creó en Cuba... Dicen que por eso se parece a la cubana, con la estrella solitaria. Había muchos nacionalistas catalanes que pensaban que debían seguir el ejemplo de Cuba e independizarse de España. Y querían aprovechar la crisis que existía en el país, la situación de caos en Cataluña, utilizar incluso los métodos de los anarquistas... Parece que algunos de los nacionalistas se reunieron acá en La Habana con el anarquista Buenaventura Durruti para sumarlo a la causa. ¿Sabían eso?

En cuanto a Cataluña, se disfraza su caída dentro del Imperio musulmán, como el resto de España, o su participación entusiasta junto a todos los demás en la Reconquista, así como los tantos y tantos años bajo la corona aragonesa y luego española. Se oculta del mismo modo que el nombre de Cataluña no aparece en realidad hasta 1114 con Ramón Berenguer III y que fue poco después, en 1150, cuando Ramón Berenguer IV (1113-1162), conde de Barcelona, Gerona, Osona, Cerdaña y Ribagorza (esos eran los condados catalanes), decidió sin dudarlo mucho cambiar su título de conde por el de princep de Aragón, aceptando incorporar sus condados al Reino de Aragón que regía Petronila (hija del rey Ramiro el Monje) a cambio de que su hijo Alfonso II (1157-1196) fuera rey de Aragón. Este reino, andando el tiempo, abarcaría Valencia, las Mallorcas, Barcelona, Sicilia, Cerdeña, Nápoles, el Rosellón y la Cerdaña. Se trata de borrar cualquier traza de que la unión con Aragón y con España entera ha sido lo normal en su historia.

Los catalanes han formado parte de la empresa común española casi sin interrupción, al menos mientras han entendido que sus enemigos eran los mismos que los nuestros: turcos y franceses fundamentalmente, y a partir de finales del siglo xvi también ingleses. Así pasó con la expansión de Aragón-Cataluña en el Mediterráneo, donde siempre estuvimos juntos, y donde los muertos los puso toda España más que Cataluña sola. Los nacionalistas se han equivocado casi siempre de enemigo: España les ha acogido fraternalmente e incluso ha olvidado rápida y gratuitamente sus graves ofensas. Por el contrario, quien ha maltratado sus derechos, les ha quitado tierras, ha tratado de someterlos periódicamente, ha perjudicado su industria y sus productos, los ha engañado e intentado utilizar como una colonia ha sido… Francia. La fecha clave en su historia no es 1714, donde ya estaba todo el pescado vendido, sino 1231, la batalla de Muret, donde el rey francés acabó con la expansión aragonesa.

We went from French to a sort of hybrid of the Catalan and Castilian that he taught me, and I wonder if that's part of the reason I don't miss him, that everything we ever said to each other was in languages I'm starting to forget.

The noise and the shouting made her break out into a cold sweat, and feeling faint, she darted to stand in the shade of an impossibly tall building. She asked a passing older man with dark skin, whom she took for one of her own, where she could find the Barrio Chino. The man spoke Catalan, but at least he waved in the direction of the sea, which was where María decided she should head

So, nationalism (Spanish nationalism as well as Catalan nationalism), both in Catalonia and in Spain, takes the forefront of the political landscape in line with a broader trend sweeping European democracies.

Obviamente se cometieron abusos, pero desde el principio la intención de los Reyes Católicos fue que se tratase a los indios muy bien y amorosamente (cfr. Primera Instrucción de los Reyes a Colón). Y las normas que perfilaban los derechos de los indios fueron constantes a lo largo de todo el periodo de presencia española. Para la época en que estamos hablando, donde la esclavitud era moneda corriente, pueden considerarse hasta ejemplares. De hecho, se ha barajado como causa de la destitución de Colón por parte de los reyes, el que aquél no cumpliera sus órdenes respecto a no tratar ni comerciar a los indios como esclavos (H. Thomas, 2003, p. 220). Curiosa o paradójicamente, fue el muy alabado Colón (al que todos quieren tener todavía hoy como nacional de sus tierras, incluidos, cómo no, los catalanes) el que propuso a los Reyes Católicos la venta de esclavos «a 1500 maravedíes la pieza», y es la depreciada, por muchos, Isabel I, la que obliga a tratarles como personas libres e no como siervos (R. Menéndez Pidal, 2012, p. 3). Otro mito que se cae: Colón, como buen genovés quiso desde el primer momento hacer dinero vendiendo a los indios como esclavos, contra la opinión y las órdenes de los Reyes Católicos «españoles».

Expresiones como «nunca me he sentido español», «soy apátrida», «a mí la bandera me la sopla»… no salen (sólo) de la boca de separatistas vascos o catalanes, sino de significados exponentes mediáticos y de la llamada «cultura» española. Responde a la obsesión de ir de modernos o «guays», y sobre todo de que nadie les pueda colgar la etiqueta de «carcundia». Mientras, paradójicamente los representantes de la cultura catalana y vasca están legitimados para decir alto y claro que se sienten muy amantes de su bandera (aunque sea más artificial y reciente) y de su patria (aunque sea hipotética), sin ser calificados por ello ni de fachas ni de carcas.

También desde el secesionismo catalán se ha querido librar a Cataluña de responsabilidad alguna en este artificio considerándolo un invento castellano. Eso supone desconocer que la Inquisición nace en España con una bula de 1478, que permitió los primeros tribunales en Aragón (1479) y Sevilla (1480); o que fue Fernando de Aragón el que más insistió (y no tanto Isabel) en reinstaurar la Inquisición, o dejar de preguntarse por qué Ramón de Penyafort y el resto de catalanes, aragoneses, mallorquines y valencianos contribuyeron activamente a la Inquisición en esos reinos.

Stephen bowed: but when they had put on formal clothes he said, 'Interpret, is it? As I told you before I do not speak - not as who should say speak - Portuguese. Still less do I understand the language when it is spoke. No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese, without he is a native or brought up to comprehend that strange blurred muffled indistinct utterance from a very early, almost toothless, age. Anyone with a handful of Latin - even Spanish or Catalan - can read it without much difficulty but to comprehend even the drift of the colloquial, the rapidly muttered version. . .

The essential traits we associate with maps today evolved gradually over millennia. We first see cardinal directions on Babylonian clay tablet maps from five thousand years ago, for instance, but distances don’t appear on maps for three thousand more years—our oldest such example is a bronze plate from China’s Zhou Dynasty. Centuries more pass before we get to our oldest surviving paper map, a Greek papyrus depicting the Iberian Peninsula around the time of Christ. The first compass rose appears in the Catalan Atlas of 1375. “Chloropleth” maps—those in which areas are colored differently to represent different values on some scale, like the red-and-blue maps on election night—date back only to 1826.

But our church will be the opposite. It won’t be as long or as tall, but it will be very broad, so that every Catalan will be able to find room to be with their Virgin. Once it’s finished, you’ll be able to appreciate it: there will be a shared space for all the faithful, without distinction. And the only decoration will be the light: the light of the Mediterranean. We don’t need anything more than that: space and the light that will pour in from down there.” Berenguer de Montagut pointed to the apse and drew his hand down toward the floor. “This church will be for the common people, not for the greater glory of any prince.

That work ethic, instilled in him by his parents, is very much part of the Catalan character: saving the soul through industry, effort, honest labour and giving your all to the job.

Although he wanted an element of democracy within the group, with players using their initiative, making suggestions and keeping an open mind to new ideas, Guardiola did not delay in imposing a number of strict rules in his first few days in charge: such as insisting upon the use of Castilian and Catalan as the only languages spoken among the group, arranging a seating plan at meal times to encourage the players to mix and to prevent the team forming up into different cultural or national groups and cliques.

I would argue that without social media and the internet, the Catalan independence movement could not possibly have progressed so far in such a short space of time, and even with the same chain of political events, levels of pro-independence activism and voter support would have been much lower at this stage.

The facts as I have tried to relate them suggest that FC Barcelona not only allowed themselves to be completely outmanoeuvred, but also in the end fell victim to their pride in voluntarily giving up Di Stefano rather than accept a deal that would have him playing alternate seasons for Barça and Real Madrid. Undoubtedly though, the whole saga helped fuel the collective sense of victimization that Catalan nationalists have always felt in their relations with Spain's central government and which has helped politicise FC Barcelona's rivalry with Real Madrid.

- Посмотри мне в глаза и скажи, что любил кого-нибудь после меня, любил так, как любил меня. - Нет, такого не было. Господь уберёг.

In 1790 an official investigation established that a majority of people in France spoke and read a language other than French: Celtic, German, Occitan, Catalan, Italian, or Flemish. Even in 1893 every eighth schoolchild between ages seven and fourteen knew no French.

En cuanto a la otra mitad del país, no se enteraba, o no se quería enterar. La mayoría eran inmigrantes del resto de España y, mientras les estaban vaciando la cartera, creían que el asunto no iba con ellos, que esto de la Generalitat era cosa de los catalanes de pura cepa, que ellos sólo estaban de paso aquí. Menuda cagada...

The nation-state furnished an ideology of national identity that made it easier to rally people for military adventures that their rulers considered profitable. The “common language and culture” of each of these new entities was in no way a natural human community like early tribes and bands. Rather, they were created by brutal conquest such as that of the British over the Irish, Scots, and the Welsh, or the Castilian Spaniards’ conquest of the Basques and the Catalans.

Mi conclusión fue que Madrid y Barcelona eran dos ciudades completamente distintas, sobre todo en lo referente al modo de vivir y de relacionarse las personas. La gente de Madrid siempre me pareció más desenvuelta, más independiente y mucho menos convencional que la de Barcelona, donde todos los catalanes parecían estar emparentados entre sí

For years Matisse had battled his conflicting impulses, between commercially viable conservatism and something else, although he had not yet grasped what that something else was. Earlier that year he had helped organize the first official exhibition of Vincent van Gogh’s works, as part of the Salon des Indépendants—certainly an influence, for he later gave credit to van Gogh as well as Gauguin for his summer breakthrough. But it was the little fishing village of Collioure that dazzled him with color and light, and drove him to take more risks than ever before. Two summers in the south of France had exposed this northerner to vibrant color, and he responded ardently, even gratefully. Collioure radiated color and light, but it also exuded an element of savagery, for there was a fierce primitivism in this Catalan town that expressed itself in the explosive colors and contrasts of Fauvism, so unlike the gentler colors of the Impressionists. Embracing Gauguin’s insistence that art should primarily communicate emotion, Matisse forged ahead, daring all by rejecting art as representation, and producing works of shattering impact.

Despite having the largest budget in the league, Guardiola had failed to mount a serious challenge of any sort. And the media seized on his continued failure to reach a Champions League final without Messi, his on-field nuclear weapon. All of it was proof that his tippy-tappy tiki-taka might have worked in Spain or Germany, but Guardiola couldn’t expect to try that stuff in Manchester and succeed. The phrase “Welcome to the Premier League, Pep” was uttered and printed sarcastically more times that season than anyone could count. The tabloids even had a new name for this delicate Catalan genius. Fraudiola.

Però jo odio la guerra i la idea en si que una persona tingui dret sobre la vida d’una altra persona

Si votar és delicte, aquí al banc dels acusats hauríem de ser milions de catalans.

Jahia l'amich en llit d'amor. Los lançols eren de plaers, e lo cobertor era de languiments, el cuxí era de plors. E era qüestió sil drap del cuxí era drap dels lançols o del cobertor.

Quan vaig veure la senyera dalt de la torre, vaig descavalcar del cavall, em vaig girar vers orient, i vaig plorar dels meus ulls i vaig besar la terra per la gran mercè que Déu m'havia fet.

Panikkar’s thought, his ‘incarnate spirit’ resides in the various languages he spoke and wrote: Spanish, Catalan, German, English, Latin, Italian and French. His work is multilingual and by definition, not reducible to a single language. Referring to one of his expressions: «not everything can be said in English», it must be stated that ‘all of Panikkar’ cannot be limited to any one single language.

Parar l'orella al silenci és descobrir com n'arriba a ser de rar. Sempre hi ha alguna cosa que es mou (…). Aquesta mena de silenci no és una negació del so. El món s'hi queda suspès i jo a dins.

el mexicano nunca ha sido mitad español y mitad indígena, ese discurso va en menoscabo de nuestra propia diversidad, principal riqueza y guapura de la nación. Más bien descendemos étnica, cultural y moralmente de muchos otros grupos. Amuzgos, catalanes republicanos, asturianos franquistas, matlazincas, italianos del Véneto, mixtecos, gente de diferentes regiones de África, mayos, barcelonetas, pueblo kikapú, población rom y caló y ludar, purépechas, otomanos de religión judía o no, yopes, austrohúngaros variopintos, chocholtecas, el pueblo zoque, Estados Unidos, Centroamérica, Perú, Argentina, menonitas, chinos y, en fin, un amasijo en una misma vasija.

It's very comfortable being married and knowing that I can à always return to her arms, meanwhile enjoying all the independence in the world. I fall in love with a Catalan scientist, with an Argentine woman who makes jewellery, and with a young woman who sings in the metro. The royalties from my lyrics keep rolling in and are enough for me to live com fortably without having to work and with plenty of time to do everything, even... write a book.

Andròmina", "rai", "colla", "déu-n'hi-do", "coent", "petar", "cofoi", "patxoca", "nòmer", "somiatruites" són exclusius de la llengua catalana. I són únics perquè, si els cerquéssim en un diccionari bilingüe, ens costaria Déu i ajut trobar-ne la traducció a les altres...