Catalan Dance

4 January 1992

I met Gary at the cathedral square to watch a Catalan regional dance. Barcelona is in the region of Catalan and has a different language and a strong regional pride and a secessionist movement (but not like the terrorism that’s going on right now in the Basque region). During the reign of Franco, the government tried to squash regionalism and this dance was outlawed. Still, it was performed secretly in basements. Now it is performed twice every Saturday and three times every Sunday and holiday. Young people have coaches and take part in competitions. It’s amazing. It’s a very subtle dance. Gary is interviewing one of the dancers for his article and that’s how he knows all these things and he told me about it while we watched the dance. It’s very interesting to see a city with the input of someone who is researching it.

This whole thing brings up, again, the issue of boundaries, which I keep finding is so important in Europe. Again there is evidence of some arbitrary unification and an underlying sense of arbitrary distinctions. In history class they always make unification sound so glorious! Of course, when it’s a unification that doesn’t reflect the current, obviously superior, "divine right" borders, it’s called "occupation" or "imperialism" or some such thing. So why is it sometimes glorified? I guess just to justify today’s arbitrary borders. I had no idea that history was that politically propagandistic. I mean, I had some idea, but I thought it was mostly just smart-ass defiance and paranoia and other weird vague anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment ideas, I never realized it in such concrete terms.

Here is the sticker they gave us for donating money to pay for the band, which we didn’t actually do, but the man Gary was interviewing did and he gave us each a sticker.