Dialogue beneath my window

Hyperbole and hysteria aside, most Spaniards are pretty reasonable.

Fortunately, my main course for dinner tonight was salad.  This was fortunate because it meant that all I had to do was boil an egg, which meant that instead of standing over the stove (possibly with the hood on) I was chopping vegetables at the counter by the (open) window, so I was able to hear the dialogue below it, indistinctly at first, and then more clearly when I realized it was interesting, and opened the window wider and moved the cutting board closer to it.  (Hey, it's a pueblo.  If you have interesting conversations in the street people are allowed to listen.)



I'd just returned from the pool before making dinner, so I think that the two men talking were those who were coming out of the little private gym by my house, which runs evening classes which finish around 8:30, and therefore has people spilling out of it until around 9:00.  One sounded older (partly by accent, which unfortunately meant slurring words, and partly because he spoke in a lower register, which combined with said slurring made his side of the conversation a little hard to follow), and the other was younger, more of a high tenor, and also more impassioned and louder.  He was the one who drew my attention, and his side of the argument was easy to follow.

They were talking about Catalunya, so it took no intelligence to guess that the discussion was about the convoked Parlament tomorrow in which Puigdemont, the president of the Govern, is going to "discuss the situation."  Everyone has interpreted this as meaning that he's finally going to either declare independence unilaterally or back down, which I think are two forms of wishful thinking, since his desperate desire (like most politicians) is to hold on to power, and therefore he's going to try to keep spinning this thing out as long as possible without having to make an actual decision with actual (electoral) repercussions.  (In a society balanced 50-50, principled politicians are hard to find.  They have much more principles when there's a social consensus that's more like 80-20.)

In any case, the younger (louder) man was passionately defending the Catalans' rights - if not to independence at least to a fair hearing of their grievances because (my loose translation and paraphrase) "I've been to Barcelona, and what they're saying about how the Catalans are fomenting hatred isn't true.  They have their own culture, the speak Catalan among themselves, and it's true if you speak to them in Castilian te miran raro, but that's because they speak Catalan, and if you say 'noy soy de aquí.  Soy de Madrid,' they say 'tío, un abrazo,"  You can say 'soy del PP' and that's fine even."  (NB: Based on the position he was espousing I doubt the young man actually tried saying "soy del PP" because really, why would anyone want to say that, but he was making a rhetorical point.  I am reminded of the people I met in the Parque San Isidro the weekend before last, who asked if I was a Trump voter, not in a hostile way, but more with the kind of cheerful interest of people who had never seen this rare and bizarre species, and were hopeful to maybe get a chance to, even though it seemed unlikely.  But I suspect he's right.  The PP does after all have voters in Catalunya, and generally Spaniards - and Catalans - are amazingly courteous and cheerful with people who have politics they oppose.)

The older man was grumbling interruptions (or possibly just trying to interrupt a monologue in full flow) but I gathered that he was disagreeing, because the younger man insisted that "por cuarenta años" the Catalans had been attempting to gain more autonomy from Madrid (he repeated por cuarenta años" various times, but I wasn't sure what the substance of his specific point was....in a a general way, he meant since the dictatorship, e.g. as long as recorded time for those who are 40 and younger, and yesterday for those who are 50 and older).  He finished passionately that lo que hay que hacer es dialogar.  I gather that he did not convince his interlocutor, but they finally parted amicably, with both saying something along the lines of "well, we'll see," and wishing each other buenas noches, before a car door slammed, a pair of headlights went on in the street, and a car started, which I gather was when one of them headed for home.  (The other presumably went on foot toward metro or bus.)

It's amusing because this neighborhood (like the rest of Madrid, and indeed according to the papers the rest of Spain) has become a forest of Spanish flags (which have been moved del cajón al balcón as the newspapers here put it), previously reserved for World Cup years.  But the flags do indeed seem to be more or less just a way of expressing support for Spain as a single political entity (not particularly the government), and there certainly doesn't seem to be any deep-seated anti-Catalan sentiment in the street.  (Quite the contrary, in my street.)  I suspect the same is largely true in Catalunya, in spite of the flags, and a few loud morons on both sides who have unfortunately succeeded in scaring everybody because after their last bad experience with Civil War and dictatorship Spaniards are (literally as well as figuratively) gun-shy and get overly excited about potential divisions.  I think it's pretty clear (except to those with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears) that the international business as well as political community doesn't see a future in dividing Spain, and as the saying goes, when money talks, nobody walks.  Or if you prefer the quintessentially Spanish and resentido version of Quevedo (who was as anti-capitalist as the CUP could dream of) poderoso caballero es don Dinero.  But it's nice that in spite of the relentless press hysteria Spaniards seem to be more calm and level headed (and certainly less filled with rage and infantile narcissism) than their leaders.  Wish I could say the same of Americans.