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Friday, December 15, 2017
Spain and Catalonia
Catalan secessionists face steepest challenge in Barcelona's bruised beltway
Anti-independence campaigners are making inroads in Cornellà, a Barcelona suburb where many come from other parts of Spain
You
won’t find Cornellà in a guide book. It lies to the south of Barcelona,
just off the motorway and close to the airport, a town whose tower
blocks house 86,000 souls, more than half of them born outside
Catalonia, mostly elsewhere in Spain. But it’s as much a part of Catalonia as the pretty villages around Girona and on the Costa Brava. Cornellà is one of several beltway towns hastily built around
Barcelona in the 1960s to house the waves of immigrants fleeing poverty
in the south and west of Spain. “For a long time the streets were just dirt and there were no proper
drains,” says Luis Campo Vidal, a TV consultant, who arrived as a child
in Cornellà in 1960. “There was a lot of speculation. The builders were
supposed to provide services but they didn’t bother.” Many of the original buildings have since been demolished because of
aluminosis – a lung disease caused by aluminium in dust – and the town
has now spread to become part of the greater Barcelona metropolitan
area. However, Cornellà and the other beltway towns are expected to play a key role in this month’s election as the conflict over independence drives even the most apathetic voters to the polls. The centre-right Ciutadans party, the leading anti-independence party in the region, has been making inroads into an area with a traditionally low turnout in regional votes.
Residents were enraged by a recent article on a pro-independence news
site that described them as Spanish “settlers” implanted in Catalonia. “That makes me really angry,” says Cèsar Sierra, 23, who was born in
Cornellà. “They have broken the consensus that wherever we were from and
whether we spoke Catalan or Spanish we shared a political context. Now
anyone who doesn’t fit their definition of a Catalan is an outsider.
That leaves out half of all Catalans.”
Sierra says he’s weary of so-called identity politics. “My brother is
pro-independence but none of the rest of my family is,” he says. “We’ve
stopped talking about politics to avoid problems. I don’t know if I
feel more Spanish or Catalan but I know for certain I feel like I’m from
Barcelona, and from Cornellà.” Cornellà’s socialist mayor, Antonio Balmón, complains that the
independence process has caused administrative paralysis. “The flag has
become more important than people’s real needs,” he says. “Most people here have felt excluded from the secessionist proposal
but we never expected it to be such a blow to our coexistence,
especially given that nearly all of us are opposed to the present
government in Madrid. The secessionists are putting up walls, invisible
ones but walls just the same.” Margarita del Pilar is a retired schoolteacher who came to Cornellà
in 1965 from Extremadura in western Spain when she was a child and is
now coordinator of the local University of the Elderly, which offers the
town’s over-50s a range of 22 courses, from philosophy and history to
astronomy and English.
“I’ve never liked borders,” she says. “My mother was from Menorca, my
father from Extremadura, my husband is from Castilla y León and my
children and grandchildren are from here. I live in Catalonia and I have
always stood up for Catalonia. When I was still a teacher here we had
23 nationalities at the school and there was never a fight over
nationality in the playground.”
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Del
Pilar says she is distressed by the independence process. “I haven’t
been able to sleep. I suffered from tachycardia [fast heart rate]. I
think to get back the coexistence we have lost will take a couple of
generations.” José Antonio Gallego runs a citizens’ security business in Cornellà
and also acts as a consultant to the Barcelona tourist board. He and
most of his employees are from the town. “There are people who want to feel Catalan to the exclusion of all
other identities but I’m not prepared to waste my energy on that sort of
argument,” Gallego says. “There’s a certain snobbishness about it, a
failure to distinguish being different from being superior.” He added: “The independence process has been very painful for us. It’s not real and it doesn’t make any sense.” Sierra says the Catalan government has always treated Cornellà badly.
“We’ve always been Catalonia’s backyard,” he says, insisting this has
more to do with class politics than nationalism. “What I hope for from the elections is a return to common sense. We
still have some left,” says Gallego. Balmón, the mayor, says he hopes
that neither the pro- nor anti-independence blocs reach an absolute
majority so they will have to compromise. “I hope they’ve learned something from all this,” says Del Pilar. “I
don’t know what will happen in [other Catalan towns], but here we’ve
been silent and now the silence is over.”
Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends. His Interviews have been published on CD and DVD by Betty MacDonald Fan Club. If you are interested in the Betty MacDonald Biography or the Betty MacDonald Interviews send us a mail, please.
Several original Interviews with Betty MacDonald are available.
We are also organizing international Betty MacDonald Fan Club Events for example, Betty MacDonald Fan Club Eurovision Song Contest Meetings in Oslo and Düsseldorf, Royal Wedding Betty MacDonald Fan Club Event in Stockholm and Betty MacDonald Fan Club Fifa Worldcup Conferences in South Africa and Germany.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honour Members are Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald's nephew, artist and writer Darsie Beck, Betty MacDonald fans and beloved authors and artists Gwen Grant, Letizia Mancino, Perry Woodfin, Traci Tyne Hilton, Tatjana Geßler, music producer Bernd Kunze, musician Thomas Bödigheimer, translater Mary Holmes and Mr. Tigerli.
