Strange weather
From the column Unnatural Habitat
Originally published on Barcelonareporter.com

You know how they say wherever you go people always talk about the weather?

It's too often and too easily that people differentiate themselves and take the moral high ground. Since the Estatut of Catalonia was proposed last October politics and to some extent the citizenry throughout Spain have been polarized. Each side is convinced they are on the ethical side. The right side. There are the bad guys, there are the good guys. Sound familiar? Bush said the same thing a few years back to rally people behind him.

Then there's the gray area, the wild card that can see reasonable facets on both sides. This is the most precarious place to stand, because both extremes will call any defense of their opposition as unconditional support for whatever ideology it is they oppose. The gray area doesn't get much recognition because polemic is what the media thrives on, and people like Rajoy and Carod are particularly adept at raising hackles. Rajoy recently called Zapatero a “solemn fool”. Carod, since his covert meetings with ETA, has consistently irritated conservatives all over Spain. His supporters see only good intentions in whatever he does, his detractors see something sinister - I've heard the word Nazi thrown around like popcorn in reference to his nationalistic politics. Maybe one day he'll get his coveted statue on Via Laietana, in place of Francesc Cambo, where instead of independentistas dowsing it with red paint bombs, Spanish nationalists will cover it with Celtic crosses and arriba España slogans.

It's politics as usual, Spanish style. Former president Aznar has his sinecure at Georgetown University where he preaches to a choir about the moros - whom he acts like he personally had to expulse 500 years ago. He's so obvious it's sickening. He knows his audience and he uneloquently tries to tie Spain 's plight centuries ago to the Iraqi war coalition his government supported. His military legacy will be best remembered for his re-conquest of the microscopic island of Perejil, whose only previous population was a herd of goats. The US and Britain have their Iraq. Russia has its Chechenya. China has its Tibet. Spain has its desert island with goats. Different scales, same politics, same intent.

Feeling different is ameliorating in today's world with its Ballard-esque scenarios of war, corruption and torture. When in 1905 Einstein unleashed relativity upon the world it almost seemed like the new philosophical climate would last. One hundred years later monotheistic fundamentalism is making a huge comeback. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because that gray area is so hard to stay in. You have to feel justified somehow. You have to have a cause. That's why university kids who have never been oppressed or prohibited from reveling in their culture join radical nationalist parties, on both sides of the spectrum. That's why in other parts of Spain people started boycotting all Catalan products, as if the ERC represented all of Catalonia. Or, as if the Spanish flag meant not a multicultural peninsula, slowly coming together these last 30 years, but only 50 years of fascist oppression. It's the us and them mentality.

Not so 3 years ago when people across Spain rallied together to protest peacefully against the government's logistical and political support of a US-led invasion in Iraq. I found myself in the middle of one of these manis , in Plaça Catalunya. There was a sea of people stretching through the canyons of downtown Barcelona, the vibrations of common purpose were palpable, stretching out from under my feet; candles were lit in solidarity; there were even somewhat contrived musical performances of American protest songs from the 60s. Some kids even went to Iraq to act as human shields. What did that war have to do with them? Curiously, I remember a group of Moroccan guttersnipes sitting in a tree rudely chanting Barça football hymns. People hushed them in indignation.

Solidarity could especially be felt after the bombing in Madrid. But it didn't last long because of strategic subterfuge - by the PP government then in power - that backfired. The common cause quickly fractured along party lines, and, as a direct result of Aznar's underhanded maneuvering, his party lost the elections three days later. If anything good can come out of tragedy it's a union of people. Unfortunately, it doesn't last.

Undoubtedly Catalonia has a history that unites it with the rest of Spain. There is a common culture that transcends whatever frontiers you want to put on Catalonia, going back centuries. People are now bilingual here not because of Spanish oppression, but because so many of the inhabitants of Catalonia are descendants of Andalusians, or Galiceans among others. The lingua franca in many parts of Barcelona, for example, is Spanish (and not just the guiri circuit). The language that opens doors is Catalan. Anyone living here needs to speak both because that is the reality. Catalonia is part of Spain. Spain is part of Catalonia. Travelling abroad, two Spaniards might meet, one from Madrid, the other from Barcelona and there is complicity because they both grew up with a common culture. The differences arise when they search for them. The differences everyone talks about almost always smack of anachronistic contrivance.

It's those isolated incidents that make you realize we might not be all that different after all. Unfortunately the more brutal or scandalous the incident the more salient it is in the news. Take the incident a few weeks ago of three kids dowsing a homeless woman with flammable liquid and burning her to death. They were gaming aficionados. One even lifted his screen nick from the pervasively popular Star Wars franchise: Vader. That's the kind of thing, had it occurred in the US, people would be saying, “Only in America ”. They filmed their homeless-beating escapades and shared the videos with classmates, reminiscent of the happy-slapping trend in Great Britain.

Any discerning ear in Spain will hear countless racist jokes, derogatory name-calling, and above all a suspicion of anything raro , or different from the norm that guides their lives. I won't go into them here, because that would be focusing on the effect, rather than the cause, and to explain it well it would require an essay in itself. El Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), has revealed that 60% of Spanish people think there are already too many immigrants residing in this county. I believe it is a majority that feel this way, maybe not exactly 60%, because in any everyday interaction with Spaniards you'll notice the growing trepidation with which people embrace immigrants. Product of our times, of news from France, of our natural tendencies to discriminate? What about illegal Moroccan immigrants? Aren't there parallels with illegal aliens in the US? Don't people tend to fan out to opposing sides on this issue?

People here thrive on racial stereotypes to differentiate themselves just like anywhere else. In another news item which had all the flavor of an “Only in America ” or “estos ingleses” type event, a businessman in Sant Boi de Llobregat faked his own kidnapping by terrorists/blacks/Moroccans in order to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with his paramour. He even had someone call his beleaguered wife to demand a ransom, and to “authenticate” his kidnapping he had them impersonate someone with an Arabic accent. Later, before fessing up to suspicious police, he would claim they were black. The guy was pathetic, but the way he was trying to tap into common fears is illuminating.

But, Spain does have its particular quirks, as with any country. For example, the half-assed implementation of the smoking ban, which began this January 1st. 7 years after California there is now a smoking ban in all public places, including bars. But the ban ends with this sentence because everywhere I've been people are still puffing away. Bars and restaurants smaller than one hundred square meters, it seems, have the option of allowing it or not. Conveniently, large-ish bars have shrunk to ninety-six or so meters; I've read letters to the editor with headlines like “My boss came to work smoking a cigar like a pimp”.

Also, just this last weekend Spain 's military general José Mena, in a classic example of chuleria , invoked his sworn in duty to defend the constitution by implying the use of force if the Catalonian Estatut comes to pass. He then punctuated his speech with a pithy “Viva España”.

Old habits die hard, they say, especially here in Spain.