Welcome! Benvinguts! This blog is a place to share the culture and history (and occassionally current events under the tag #actualitat) of the Catalan Countries, explained by Catalans. Yes, we still exist.
Part of the useless-[country]facts blogs. This blog condemns the genocide in Gaza 🇵🇸
The Catalan sheepdog (gos d'atura català in Catalan) is a dog breed originary from the Pyrenees mountains of Catalonia, spread through all the shepherding areas of Catalonia.
It’s a shepherd dog that accompanied the shepherds in their transhumance routes. They are considered very smart dogs, who don’t only follow the shepherd’s orders but also take their own decisions to make sure no sheep get separated from the group. Adults typically measure around 50 cm tall, they are friendly and loyal and they like being trained. There are two varieties: the long-haired one and the short-haired one.
According to its creator, the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games’ mascot Cobi was a Catalan sheepdog, though its simplified Cubist-inspired shape isn’t detailed enough to identify the breed:
Lately I don't have as much time as I wish, I'm very busy with my work and life but I'm happy to see comments like this, it makes me stay motivated to keep the blog going. When I have time, I queue posts so that it can keep going even when I'm too busy (that's also why you'll see me posting but I take a while to answer asks, sometimes I don't have time to answer properly or I haven't logged in but the queue keeps going). Now in summer I'll have some more free time and I'll add more to the queue :)
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The male dragon (drac) and female dragon (víbria) of the city of Reus, Camp de Tarragona, Catalonia. Here they are dancing on the streets during the local festivities of the Misericòrdia.
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Miniature that represents the king of Catalonia-Aragon James I (Jaume I) in the manuscript Usatici et Constitutiones Cataloniae (the Constitution of Catalonia in the 14th-15th centuries), kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
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La reivindicació de l’Estatut de Catalunya, continguda en aquests cartells que criden a la mobilització ciutadana per al 23 d’abril de 1977, tapen simbòlicament una placa que rememora el comunicat de l’1 d’abril de 1939 amb què Franco proclamava la seva victòria a la Guerra Civil.
Posters calling for a demonstration on April 23rd, 1977, in favour the Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia. Literally and symbolically, covering the stone sign that Franco’s fascist dictatorship put up to commemorate the speech of April 1st 1939 where Franco proclaimed his victory in the Spanish Civil War.
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Vintage postcards of Catalonia, from the 1990s to the early 2000s.
The video is about music but I think he explains this very well, and this can be applied to many cultural aspects.
Some days ago I was talking to a friend who works in the tourism sector and she was telling me that lots of tourists have told her that Catalan and Spanish sound the same. They asked her to say a sentence in both, and they couldn’t hear it. She could not understand how anyone would say this because they sound so different from each other, she said that when she has been in Spain Spanish people have heard her speak Catalan and assumed she was speaking Italian (the same has happened to another friend of mine, where Spanish people assumed they were French because they heard her speaking in Catalan). But she was so confused how someone could think that “M'agrada menjar pomes” (“I like eating apples” in Catalan) sounds the same as “Me gusta comer manzanas” (the same sentence in Spanish), because Catalan constantly has the ə sound (which doesn’t exist in Spanish), open E and O vowels (which don’t exist in Spanish) and often uses the j sound (which doesn’t exist in Spanish either), while Spanish has very flat closed vowels, the /th/ sound (which doesn’t exist in Catalan), and we could bring up many more examples such as the aspirated hard j/h (which doesn’t exist in Catalan either) but those were the things that could be clearly seen from the example she gave. She was baffled, so I tried to explain what Farya Faraji explains in this video.
Personally, when I have been abroad and people heard me speaking Catalan, I’ve been assumed to be from different places. Once I went to the USA (where people are more familiar with Spanish), they all assumed I was French. When I have been in Austria, everyone assumed we were Italians. And my friend from England says he can’t tell Catalan and Spanish apart, but to be fair my French coworker couldn’t tell apart when we were speaking Catalan, Italian, Spanish, or the girl who sometimes answered in Occitan. And my favourite case was an Italian family in Greece who heard us speaking Catalan and excitedly came to greet us (in Italian) saying “we are Italian too!” because they must have assumed we were speaking a regional language from Italy (which, to be fair, technically we were, considering that Catalan is also the language from L'Alguer which is in Italy, though we are not from there).
And I can’t for the life of me tell apart USA English accent from New Zealand English accent or Australia English accent. Or Polish from Russian or Czech or Croatian or Ukrainian.
There’s nothing wrong in accepting that we have this limitation because we’re unfamiliar with the languages or cultural aspect we’re talking about, the problem only comes when we assume that our perception is the absolute reality and that others actually are that much more similar to each other while your own culture/language/ethnicity is the only one that has such a diversity inside it. With languages that have faced persecution or that face discrimination -as is our case- it can also be insensitive to insist to speakers that their language is really just the same as their oppressor’s language, because it can sound as you’re saying that this language/culture doesn’t actually exist. Obviously you don’t have to say you can hear the difference if you don’t, just say you’re not familiar with them and don’t know enough to tell them apart. It’s just a little change in perspective.
I first read about this effect in the context of phonemes, and it is partly about how our neurons constantly trim old pathways and build new ones.
The internet meme about phonemes that I’ve most often seen, is “Engrish.” Because a number of East Asian languages do not make a strong distinction between the sounds “r” and “l.” Certainly not the ways native English speakers do.
Anna Maria Martínez-Sagi (1907-2000), known as la Sagi, a referent in the world of sports.
She was a Catalan reporter and poet who defended feminism, leftist ideas (later explicetely anarchism), and the rights of Catalan people and Catalonia’s sovreignty. She was a member of the Club Femení i d’Esports (“Femenine and Sports Club” in Catalan) and she beat records in swimming, ski, athletics, javelin throw, tennis, and basketball.
La Sagi is most well-known because, in the year
1934, she became the first woman in the board of directors of the Futbol Club Barcelona (Barça). She tried to create a women’s team, but even though she had the support from the president the plan was met with a strong opposition and she ended up resigning at 27 years old.
Her personal life wasn’t easy either. She was from a wealthy family but they rejected her for her leftist and feminist ideas and her behaviour that didn’t match what society expected of her, especially her romantic relationship with the writer Elisabeth Mulder.
[La Sagi interviewing two hairdressers.]
She became one of the most famous and controversial journalists of the time, even openly declaring herself Republican during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. Her fame came especially for having interviewed all kinds of marginalized people including homeless people, outlaws, and prostitutes, as well as politicians. Her face was so recognised that people often stopped her on the streets and trams.
On the first days of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a war that had been started when
the fascist Spanish army led by Franco did a coup d’etat but was met with resistance, la Sagi heard a speech by Buenaventura Durruti which convinced her to become an anarchist. She left her job in the Barcelona city hall and went to cover and publish the events at the front line.
When the fascists won the war, they imposed a fascist dictatorship that would last from 1939 to 1978. Like thousands and thousands of other exiles and refugees who escaped the horrors of Francoism, la Sagi had to leave the country: she crossed the Pyrenees mountains by foot under a heavy snow, and went in exile in France. In France, she joined the Resistance against the Nazis and sneaked Jewish people to escape persecution. She was later awarded by
Moshe Dayan
for the Jewish people she saved from the Holocaust. She managed to avoid being arrested by the Gestapo by jumping out of a window in her appartment in Paris.
[La Sagi in in the 1950s]
When the dictator Franco died in 1975, she returned to Catalonia.
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May in Aigüestortes and Estany de Sant Maurici National Park (High Pyrenees, Catalonia).
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One of the most fascinating documents that have survived about bandits/highwaymen is El catecisme del bon trabucaire (Catalan for “The Catechism of the Good Bandit”), a 19th-century instruction manual written for and by bandits. It explains in detail the best ways to capture victims, to tie them up, to prepare how to escape, and everything else that someone needs to know to become a bandit (with no spare of violence!).
The document is compiled at the end of a chronicle from 1846 that explains a trial against a group of 15 bandits in Les Illes (Northern Catalonia), and this manual was one of the proofs held against them. Even though “The Catechism of the Good Bandit” was attributed (with no proof) to the bandit Ramon Vicenç iPrada alias Felip, it’s unknown who the real author was. Either way, historians agree that this is a real document, but it’s not known how widespread the book was.
Banditry was a persistent problem in Catalonia for centuries, since the Middle Ages and reaching its peak in the 1600s and 1700s, followed by the trabucaires of the 1800s. Many of the most famous bandits are well-known by the population thanks to the legends and songs about them (the most famous case being Serrallonga, of course), but these criminals were not leaving us detailed information of their crimes written down. For this reason, almost all of the reliable historical information we have about them comes from the documents compiled in the processes in which they were tried for their crimes. We can read what the bandits, their victims, and other witnesses confess and explain, but always in the context of a trial where they have their own interests. This is why it’s so unusual to have a document that explains in detail how they operated, explained by bandits themselves!
One of the most well-known Eivissan legends says that a long time ago the islet of Es Vedrà was inhabited by a moody giant who caused fear among anyone who passed near the islet.
One day, two brothers named Joan and Toni went to the islet to pick rock samphire, a medicinal plant they needed to cure their ill father. After having tried all sorts of remedies without any luck, they were told their only hope was using rock samphire picked in Es Vedrà (the islet has been associated with religious and magical stories since antiquity). Even though they were very scared of the giant, they were decided to do anything to help their father.
They sailed on their boat to the islet, praying that the giant wouldn’t notice them. But right as they were mooring their boat, the giant woke up and captured them. Every day, the giant sent Joan to fish octopus, his favourite meal. Meanwhile, he kept Toni imprisoned in a cave as a hostage, so Joan wouldn’t be able to escape. The giant said he wouldn’t free them until they Joan had fished all the octopus in the area, adding that if he didn’t bring enough octopus, he would eat both brothers.
One day in which Joan could catch many octopus, he came up with an idea: he hurried up to fish as many octopus as he could in one day, but made sure to hide a sea urchin inside each octopus. As always, when he brought them to the giant, he ate them all in one bite. But this time the sea urchins caused him such a stomach ache, that he went to sleep. Then, the two brothers used the moment to tie up the giant’s hands and feet and escape, taking with them a cure for their father.
The brothers’ father was cured, and since then nobody has seen the giant of Es Vedrà again.
les calces al solsinging to the sunliteraturaartsRegina Rodríguez Sirventbooksliteratureromcomusaother countries
A publishing house from the USA has translated the Catalan best-seller Les calces al sol… But it’s censored!
As the author Regina Rodríguez Sirvent explains in this interview, the publishers were worried about taboos of USA culture. The novel is a light-hearted romantic-comedy. Its original title means “Panties under the sun”.
The USA editors not only censored the title, but also made references to underwear be removed from the content of the book. They allowed references to Kalashnikov guns, though!
Regina defended the original title, but the USA publishers said that printing the word “panties” would be a “literary suicide”. Regina called 2 meetings with the publishers to insist that the title catches people’s attention precisely because of this word, that it sets the tone for a humorous novel, and that all other countries have translated the title as it is. But the publishers considered it too taboo.
Here’s the book cover. In order: the original in Catalan followed by the translations to Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
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And here it is in English for the USA:
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You can see a shy silhouette of a panty in the laundry line’s shadow.
They also censored another line. When the main character moves to work abroad, she calls her grandma on Skype, and her grandma asks her “Rita, are there black people where you are now?”. The USA publishers said this can’t be published in the USA because it’s politically incorrect. Regina told them that the grandma character is based on her own grandma, illiterate like many elderly women here, who couldn’t go to school but has a deep curiosity for the world and to know what it’s like and might ask insensitive questions because of this. Still, this is a difficult topic in the USA, as we all know, so the publishers said that NEVER EVER there is ABSOLUTELY no way they are printing that.
So, in the English version for the USA, the sentence now says “Rita, are there weapons where you are now?”. (The European mind cannot comprehend how the existence of ethnic diversity that one is unfamiliar with is considered politically incorrect but weapons are not!)
I know I have some followers from the USA, so I am curious to ask you. Is underwear really so taboo in your culture? Is it considered a rude word to have on the front of a book, even if it’s a comedy? Or are these publishers maybe religious extremists?
Update: from the comments I have been made aware that “panties” might be seen as a word used only for children’s underwear. I don’t know what word the translator would have used in English, I saw the interview in Catalan and translated it myself when I wrote the post in English. In any case that’s an English language mistake on my part. Substitute the word “panties” in this post for “underwear” or “knickers”.
Els Banys de l’Almirall. A public bath house built in the 13th century in the city of València following the mudejar style (an architectural style from the Iberian peninsula in
the Late Middle Ages, right after the Moorish occupation had ended, still heavily influenced by Moorish culture even though these territories were already Christian).
![Screenshot of Wikipedia that reads: Mariscal explained, "Cobi is the first Olympic mascot to be sad, to be crying, to be depressed."[4] He has a Mona Lisa smile, opposable thumb in some renderings, a nose is on the side of his head,[5] and "a sly grin" according to Mariscal. "He can be a bad, a poor little boy, a druggie, a guy who is cleaning your car windows, an athlete, an idealist carrying the Olympic flag, or a disillusioned youth."[2] Mariscal designed the character to have a personality that differs from the intense competitive spirit of the Olympics, saying "The best thing about Cobi is that he has the desire to live life. Cobi is the more relaxed part of the Olympics."](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3cedf97b7e637d9e746a658a5303aef4/ac19fc6018f7732d-30/s640x960/31603a6268b4734d1779621db1a693c734ed08a5.jpg)
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