A bit like Casanova that Dylan immortalized to Desolation Rowwhich ends up dying after being poisoned in words, a good part of Catalan nationalism completely loses oremus when it falls by a very specific word. The word in question is charnego. This is what happened with the speech given by the screenwriter at the awards ceremony a few days ago. If it were not for the poison that the word inocula, they would realize that the single speech was only the update, for the 21st century, of the idea of integration according to the nationalist creed of Jordi Pujol.
What did he say alone? In an allegation against xenophobia, he suggested that if he, a proud scriptwriter Xarnego who came from the bottom, had been able to write great Catalan stories, so could other immigrants arriving in Catalonia. I want to emphasize the probably unconscious substrate of his speech. It is significant that he did not say that he wrote great universal stories, but great Catalan stories. In this sense, his would not be universal stories made in Catalan or made by a Catalan; In their own words, they would be great Catalan stories.
Where does this need to emphasize that their stories are Catalan? Of desire, I suppose, to keep the suspicion away that, since it is Xarnego, it is not Catalan. No Catalan artist with Catalan surnames would feel that he has to show that he is a Catalan artist (and in this sense he could directly produce great universal stories, if he wants). The idea that legitimizes the discourse alone is that, in order to be accepted as Catalan in Catalonia, those who are like alone will have to prove something that the Catalans of unequivocally Catalan surnames do not have to prove. A charnego that presented himself as such and arguing that he writes universal stories would not be, in the imaginary that unconsciously deep, a Catalan artist.
It sounds frankly peculiar that someone whose parents were born in Catalonia, who speaks and writes Catalan perfectly and whose aspect is mimetic to that of the Catalans of Catalan surnames, he feels the unconscious need to show that he is Catalan. I find it a waste of time trying to prove what is already. But each one lets passing the little time that is given to us as well.
In an interesting passage of the exceptional memories of, the former president explains an anecdote of an official journey he made in Argentina. In Buenos Aires he visits the Casal Català, filled with people born in Catalonia and his descendants. Pujol tells them that the maintenance of Catalan is very good, but that they are not mistaken: they are Argentinians, not Catalan. Pujol is a fervent believing in the idea of integration. It is taken seriously even when, to put it somehow, it does not benefit Catalonia. Sola’s speech is perfectly imprisoned in Pujol’s doctrine. But with an addition that updates it. The declaration of being proudly Xarnego is only a banal reflection of how identity is conceived – any identity – in the 21st century. On the one hand, my identity is to identify and disseminate very solemnly those minor differences that distinguish me from those who look most like. It is the narcissism of the small differences that characterizes our age. In the case of Sol, this translates to emphasizing that, unlike the Catalans of relief, their grandparents were not born in Catalonia. It is the public overexploitation of this narcissism that caused the concept of Xarnego, like a Caspous Lazarus, to rise from his grave now ten years. And it is probably this same narcissism of small differences that, in part, explains the growth, thirteen years ago, of independence.
On the other hand, identity in the 21st century is built on grievances. This has not always been or everywhere. But for some time now, every identity has been, in one way or another, that of a victim. Sometimes these are real grievances, others of fictional grievances or at least exaggerated. It hurts to say, in the middle of 2025, what it means to be a charnego born in the 1980’s, like sole (or like myself). But whatever it is, I am moderately sure that it does not mean, as he said alone, “to come below everything.” With regard to an epic biography, abundant in situations of sordid misery or lumpenproletarian life, the charnegos entered at thirty or sailing forty years we have a bad piece on the loom.
Sola’s speech is the product of incorporating Pujol’s nationalist doctrine of the twentieth century the recregolate concept of identity of the 21st century. In our time, national integration looks like sole speech. Apart aside – we will leave for another day or for another life – it is the uncomfortable truth that, in Catalonia or outside Catalonia, the idea of integration in the 21st century is still as reactionary and sinister as it was already in the 20th Century.
