This thing about speaking Catalan is nothing short of an annoying obstinacy. In fact, for a native Spanish speaker Catalan is an impenetrable language which —as everyone knows— is closely related to Japanese.
Holding press conferences where reporters are allowed to ask questions is merely a way for them to go on and on for no reason and expecting them to report beyond the neat press release. If you are a government minister, why take questions when you are free to make a statement riddled with propaganda, instead of supplying information? Why announce that a dangerous terrorist remains at large when you can state that the jihadi cell has been taken out? In fact, official statements in Catalan, Spanish, French and English only muddle things up when there are 15 dead and over 100 wounded of over 30 different nationalities.
When reality becomes farcical, it is also an eye-opener for many. The events that we have witnessed in Catalonia in the last few days have stirred up so much filth and invited so much propaganda that some political practices which insult the public’s intelligence are unlikely to go on unchallenged. Likewise, it will become equally difficult to call a soldier a reporter. In the coming days we will see if the pointless chatter about the Catalan language and Catalonia’s self-rule is allowed to prevail by Spanish society or whether it is willing to have a serious talk about challenges as complex as the attraction of violence and the struggle between Islam and Islamism. I fear this will prove to be a rhetorical question.
