#Coses de la terra

[useless-catalanfacts]

Petita guia per no ser el rei dels barbarismes.

Nota: els reis d'Orient també es diuen "reixos" en algunes zones de català occidental i els "caramels" en algunes zones es pronuncien "carmels". Totes dues són correctes.

[kapustainu]

MIKU CATALUNYA!!

[no-passaran]

what are your favourite catalan movies?

I'm going to be very mainstream here but I loved Casa en flames (A House On Fire) so much. I think it's the best movie I've seen this year 2024 (not best Catalan movie, I meant best movie of any nationality). Btw, this movie is now available on Netflix with English subtitles! It's a comedy-drama about a family that meets in their holiday home before selling it and all the problems and secrets are brought up, revealing the character's insecurities. It's very well written and shows again how Emma Vilarasau is such an amazing actress.

Another movie I absolutely adored was El mestre que va prometre el mar (The Teacher Who Promised the Sea). I doubted on including this one as Catalan movie or not because it's a Catalan production with a Catalan actor as main character representing a real Catalan man, but the movie is mostly in Spanish since most of the events take part in Spain and not in Catalonia, but I think it still counts. Either way, it's a beautiful movie and definitely my favourite movie of 2023. It's explained from the view of a woman who wants to find out what happened to her grandfather's family and ends up visiting a mass grave being dug up in central Spain (context note: the state of Spain is the 2nd country in the world —after Cambodia— with a highest number of disappeared people because of all the people in mass graves during the civil war and the early years of the dictatorship, thousands of families are still looking for their relatives). It leads her to uncover the real story of Antoni Benaiges, a teacher from Catalonia who was sent to teach in the landlocked Spanish countryside in the early 1930s (pre-Civil War). It's a very heartwarming antifascist story about what a teacher can be, about children's freedom, and a reminder of the importance of historical memory. I really recommend everyone to watch it. (The movie can be streamed in Movistar+ and rented in many other international platforms.)

Other Catalan movies that I liked a lot are La Vampira de Barcelona and Salvador.

La Vampira de Barcelona (The Barcelona Vampiress) (2020) is a thriller with drama and some horror based on the real story of a woman who lived in Raval (poor quarter in Barcelona) who was accused of being a serial killer kidnapping children to use their blood in the early 1900s. I really liked this movie because I think we've all heard the legend but here the filmmakers went for a more historically-accurate version of what happened and how she was used, with a strong social critique, so it was a very interesting take on the story. It talks about very heavy topics though including children kidnapped to be forced to prostitution. (It looks like in some countries it's on Prime Video but I don't know what subtitles or dubbing it has been.)

Salvador (2006) is a biopic showing the events that led the 25-year-old Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich to be sentenced to death in 1974. It's been years since I watched it now, but I remember when I saw it as a teenager it impacted me greatly even though I already knew the story. (The whole movie is on YouTube but without English subtitles, for streaming platforms it's on Filmin but it looks like it doesn't have English subtitles either, but there are downloadable subtitles online.)

[spacespheal]

Twitter requests with catalan Miku:

[girlwikipedia]

tapestry of creation, 11th century, girona

[quatregats]

Vale, prou, aquí la qüestió realment important:

[perqueheplorat]

Setembre del 2024!

[cinnabargirl]

Bon dia pel matí!

[guillemelgat]

Here's another song translation, by Mallorcan band Reïna! Since they're from the Balearic Islands and I don't think I've made a post about that dialect of Catalan I thought this would be an interesting chance to do that as well. But also the song is just really pretty, so I hope you guys enjoy!

Ja m’ha quedat clar que ara vols ser tu es dolent It’s become clear to me that now you want to be the bad guy I que m’escoltes per a no estar tot sol amb es teus pensaments And that you listen to me not to be all alone with your thoughts I que tots es camins que no fèiem encara hi són And that all the roads we never took are still there Tot i que ara semblin més llargs i torts Even though now they seem longer and more twisted

Ja m’ha quedat clar que no tenc clar si t’entenc It’s become clear to me that I’m not clear if I understand you I que te m’acostes per no estar tot sol en es mals moments And that you get close to me not to be all alone in the worst moments I que tot es temps que teníem s’ha fos And that all the time we had has melted Entre es dits que ara semblen més llargs i torts Between fingers that now seem longer and more twisted

[ TORNADA: Ets tan dolç que per dins me mata You’re so sweet that it kills me inside Te tenc tan a prop que sempre m’enrampes I hold you so close that you always give me a shock És tan fort que ja no té importància It’s so much that it doesn’t matter anymore Ets tan dolent que m’arriba a fer gràcia You’re so bad that it’s become funny to me ]

Ja m’ha quedat clar que ara ets tu es dolent It’s become clear to me that now you’re the bad guy I que m’enyores només quan saps que ho has fet malament And that you only miss me when you know you’ve done a bad job I maldament mos enteníem, ara ja no And even though we used to understand each other, we don’t now I d'ençà es dies crec que tornen més llargs i tot And from hereon out I think the days are becoming longer and all

[ TORNADA ]

Here are some features of Balearic/Mallorcan Catalan which you can hear in the song:

l'article salat - instead of el/la/els/les it's es/sa/es/ses

different distributions/realization of the neutral vowels - /ə/ can also be pronounced in stressed syllables (generally where you would have /ε/ in Central Catalan) and there's similar vowel reduction to Valencian of /ɔ/ and /o/ to /o/ rather than /u/

Using the pronomial clitics me/te/etc. which in Central Catalan usually only come after the verb before verbs instead of the forms em/et/etc. - also note mos (= ens/nos) which also occurs in lots of other dialects of Catalan

importància and gràcia are pronounced importanci and graci (this is common with a lot of words ending in -cia)

tenc = tinc

maldament = encara que

Bonus: Pronouncing /k/ as palatal /c/ - this is much less common, but the lead singer of Reïna does it which I thought was interesting (in contrast to Maria Jaume who doesn't seem to)

[theneesan]

Soc l'últim passatger a l'andana dels teus ulls 😳

[useless-catalanfacts]

Something very strange happened, and I think we need to have a talk about the way some people who don't know about Catalan culture misrepresent the Tió (our pre-Christian Christmas present-bringer, a log who poops presents 🪵🎁).

I have a relative who is a teacher in an adult school, she teaches Catalan language (mostly to immigrants). Some days ago, they were doing an activity about Catalan holidays, and two of her students said that Tió should be banned and that it's the worst thing they have ever heard. My relative was very shocked and asked why they could say such a thing (imagine, it's like saying Santa Claus should be banned in the USA). Their reasoning was that they completely misunderstood everything about it. These people are native Spanish speakers and assumed that the Catalan word "tió" (meaning "log" 🪵) means the same as the Spanish word "tío" (meaning "uncle"), even though both words are pronounced differently. They believed that the Tió represents a man and that we tell children to beat people up, so much until they poop themselves, threatening them to give us things. They said it promotes violence to children and that it's disgusting. Nothing further from the truth.

This is not an isolated incident because a few days ago I saw a post on Tumblr repeating this same mistake. I texted the person who posted it saying that it's not called "Poop Uncle" but "Christmas Log" and they said that this was what they were taught by their teacher (this person is from a different continent), and haven't taken down the post. I have also seen comments on Instagram repeating the same and making fun of how gross and violent it is.

The real meaning of Tió

The Log is a way of symbolically passing down our relation with nature. This is how the tradition works:

In early December, we get a log and bring him home. We take care of him: we keep him in a warm place, with a blanket over him, and we feed him things like orange/clementine peels and walnut shells. On Christmas day, all the family comes together. Children get wooden sticks and go get ready in another room, meanwhile adults place presents under the Log's blanket. Children come back and hit the Log while singing a song. There are many local variants of the song but they all come down to asking the Log to poop us good food. When they have finished singing the song, the children remove the blanket and discover the presents that the Log has pooped. Years ago (now this is only done by some farmer families in rural areas, but back in the day this was generalized), the Log was burned in the house's fireplace and its ashes were spread on the fields, believed to act as a magical fertilizer.

Notice what this whole "ritual" has been about: we take care of nature, nature takes care of us, we are part of a whole and there's no real difference between "nature" and "us" because we all give life to each other.

We take a log from the forest and bring it home. We do this for the Winter Solstice because it's the time of the return of light and the rebirth of nature after the winter sleep, and wood symbolizes the most important things for human life: food, warmth and light. It's difficult for us to imagine nowadays because we are used to electricity, but for our ancestors who only had oil lamps, fire and candles, darkness was almost absolute for many hours in winter, and that's why the Winter Solstice was very important because it meant that light is coming back. We want something from the Log, his fire will allow us to cook, it will give us light, and keep us warm. So we offer him the same: we feed him (notice what we feed it, too: a kind of compost, which is complimentary to human food), we keep him warm, and we love him. Then, we hit him with sticks (mimicking the motion of cutting down a tree) and ask him to give us food, and he does. Then, our ancestors used to burn him for warmth and light, and then take him back to plants spreading his ashes so it will give life to the fields. Which in turn will give us food again, which we will poop and it will fertilize plants again. And it's a cycle that never ends, we're all part of a whole.

We give to the forests, the forests can grow with the remains that all living creatures leave on its ground: leafs, excrements, the remains of parts of our food like nuts and fruit peels. These things give life to the forest. And the forest gives life to us: gives us fruits and wood (=light and warmth). We take these things, and in return we give to forests once again.

Nowadays, the part about warmth and light is often lost to kids, but the part about food is still obvious, even if subconsciously. This is why the Log is not the horrible barbaric tradition that the "haha poop and violence" crowd would make you believe.

And don't get me wrong, it can still be funny! We're the first ones to make jokes about it. And you can, too! But don't spread false ideas: the Spanish word "uncle" appears nowhere near this tradition because it doesn't have anything to do with uncles nor with Spanish-speaking cultures. It's called the Christmas Log (Tió de Nadal, Soca de Nadal, Tronca de Nadal, Tizón de Nadal, etc depending on the area, all meaning "Christmas Log") and it's celebrated by the Catalan people and a part of the Occitan and Pyrenean Aragonese people. The word "poop" (as an imperative verb, as in "please poop for us") appears in the song, but not in the name.

I know that, now that misinformation has gone viral, a post won't stop it. But I hope at least people with a genuine interest can learn some more. By all means, keep laughing! Make all the memes you want! But knowing the whole story will give you understanding. And, please, don't argue in favour of banning our cultural practises, we've had enough of that for centuries.

[kapustainu]

Today I posted this recipe for panellets (traditional Castanyada and all saints day sweets on catalonia) on IG so I thought I'd share it here as well. Feliç Castanyada, Halloween or whatever y'all celebrate!

[no-passaran]

can you explain the post about catalan self-hatred

Centuries of occupation and being told we are useless, ignorant, and cringy and thus for our own good we should abandon our culture, language, accent, identity, everything that shows what our culture is (or was, if they succeed) except for very few isolated items that can be folklorized (isolated from our very alive culture, which give them sense, and shown as a curiosity or a relic of an old gone past, or simply as one isolated "fun" addition to Spanish culture, which didn't originate it and which doesn't understand it) and monetized to be sold as Spanish (see: Madrid restaurants selling something they call "paella" and which is really an "arròs de mar" but they have re-made it to suit the taste of tourists and that they will advertise with Spanish flags and sevillana drawings and commercialise as "typical Spanish", completely separating it from its roots and without even knowing what the word "paella" means, so that tourists can consume it without even knowing what culture it's from and what language that word is in), hearing how cringy we Catalans are vs how cool we would look like if we became fully Spanish (and fully Spanish means abandoning Catalanity), all of these happening for generations and permeating literature, TV, popular jokes, pop culture, laws, even church leaders speaking it in mass) etc. well, it does end up affecting you.

Generation after generation of this means that we have a very deeply rooted self-hatred. And it's so normalized that we don't even realise it. Self-hatred is a term used in sociolinguistics that means precisely that, having interiorized the bigotry against your own group. In our case, it means Catalan people who are Catalanophobic, often without realising it, or thinking that it's justified because it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. For example, when Catalans say that it's true that our existence is useless and it's a shame that we were born in Catalonia and that Catalan is still alive because everything would be easier if we spoke only Spanish, which they see as a superior and international language, or say that we shouldn't have Catalan written in public where tourists can see it. As you can see, this is very connected with imperialism. All of us are Catalanophobic. I don't think there is even one Catalan person who is not Catalanophobic, because we are raised in a deeply Catalanophobic legal, political, and social system. The difference relies on how aware of it are we and how much we are willing to rethink it. For most people, they're not willing to rethink it because they believe it's right, and that it would be nonsensical to imagine that we are equal to Spanish speakers or deserve the same rights.

That post was a screenshot I took of a comment on Instagram. It's a video of some Catalan people talking and joking around, everything very innocent and nice, and someone left this comment (in Catalan) saying "why do you speak in such a strong Catalan accent? It makes my blood boil, and I am Catalan, so imagine..." (implying that "if it bothers me, a Catalan, that you are so visibly Catalan, imagine how much it must bother someone who isn't Catalan. Thus you should correct it").

This is something that I have been told countless times in my life. In high school, my best friend always used to make fun of me when I said something in Spanish because I have a strong Catalan accent. She would repeat my words after me exaggerating the accent to make it ridiculous and laughable, and would laugh at how bad it is and how "rural" it makes me sound (note: I am not from a rural accent nor speak an accent of Catalan from a rural area, it's that having a Catalan accent in Spanish is seen as being uneducated and "from the provinces"). The thing is tho: she had the same accent. She does not speak any better than me. She also had told me many times about how much she dislikes going to visit her dad's family in southern Spain because the whole town laughs at her for having a Catalan accent and that some kids have insulted her for being from Catalonia, and even her dad (born and raised in that town of southern Spain but who has been living in Catalonia for decades) gets made fun of and receives hate speech for being Catalan now. But so many people always look for someone else, someone who is more visibly Catalan for whatever reason, and give them the same bigotry that they have received. As if that will redeem them somehow, or distract from their own "faults"— and I'm not using the word "fault" just because, that's what we feel but don't say out loud, except when someone slips like that Valencian politician who started a speech by apologizing in case she "slips and says a word in Valencian" because "sadly it's my mother tongue, I have this defect". (note: Valencian and Catalan are two names for the same language). Some people on the internet complained because she said the quiet part out loud, but how many of those people don't act like that in their everyday lives, simply refusing to state it so clearly that that's how they see it?

It's to be expected to get these comments from Spanish people. When I was 15, I was part of a programme for students and we had to go to Madrid for a meeting of all the students in the state of Spain who were being given this scholarship, and I was the only Catalan and the rest of teens spent most of the time making fun of me and my accent. But what I remember the most is that one of them was nice to me, and he talked to me having normal conversations (the others only said bigoted things against Catalonia and against Barça team and tried to get me to talk about bullfighting, knowing that it's illegal in Catalonia, to make me feel excluded), but even this nice boy at one point said out of the blue "you really can't hide that you're Catalan!". It would be nice to answer "so? Why do I have to hide it?" but the thing is that I had tried my best, not to hide it 100% maybe, but to not make it easy to see. For example, when we introduced ourselves, everyone said our name and where we're from, I was aware that I should say Barcelona (even though I'm not from the city itself) instead of Catalonia. After that, I tried taking some online lessons I found on YouTube on how to have a Castilian accent, but I never managed. It would be useless anyway, just a few years later I was on Erasmus and when I introduced myself to the other students (I had literally only said "hello my name is Elna") the two Spanish students laughed and one of them said while laughing "that's a very Catalan name, like very very very Catalan, isn't it?", like it was a funny joke.

So yeah, it's whatever to get it from Spanish people and Spanish-speakers in Catalonia (I mean, to be fair, it's not whatever when it means you can get a harsher sentence for the same trial if you spoke Catalan in the court, that you might get arrested or mistreated by the police if you spoke to them in Catalan, that you can get kicked out of the doctor's office for speaking in Catalan, etc and believe me I have had my share of discrimination from doctors for this very reason) but it is so much more insidious when it comes from ourselves. And it's painted not as bigotry but as "common sense" or just "not being cringy". I'm tired of my existence being considered cringe! I'm tired that if I speak about what happens to us it's seen as cringe and "distracting from things that are actually important" (because we are useless to the world!)! Or if I say more autochthonous expressions that don't have a direct translation to Spanish to get told I'm like a grandma and I'm cringe! I'm even tired of the well meaning ones, some time ago a friend's Spanish-speaker friend heard me talk to another friend and said "aw that's cute, you speak Catalan, it's like you're grandmas". Or that children will get bullied for celebrating the Castanyada instead of Halloween because it's cringe. I love the Castanyada and I will say it now, I spent my whole high school years pretending like I don't celebrate it. I do! I eat panellets that my aunt makes, and sometimes I make them too, and I go with my family friends in front of the fireplace, and we roast chestnuts and we sing Marrameu torra castanyes, and we like it! And I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. And if that means everyone laughs at me and says I'm cringe and elderly, then so be it. I spent long enough hiding from my own people. I am so so so so tired.

I heard this sentence once: "what Franco couldn't manage to finish, we will do it ourselves". They couldn't eliminate us with violent force, but the long route of psychological war makes us be our own enemies and our own executioner. As has already happened so much more in the part of Catalonia under French rule, and all other nations still nowadays under French rule.

Here's what I did and helped me very much. Every time I have a Catalanophobic thought or I think as myself as lesser than for something related to being Catalan, I imagine a tiny Franco inside my head and I shoot him. This makes me take a moment to pay attention to what I had thought and that I don't want it, and do better in the future. Being conscious is the only way to learn self-respect.

[spacespheal]

Cada 31 d'agost, la Miku s'aixeca ben d'hora, ben d'hora per veure el seu nom a la llista de súpers que fan anys aquell dia

[quatregats]

Però jo sabré que és mentida

I tu sabràs

que no és

Veritat