Catalan cutlure

I woke to the thunderous sound of passing planes and the sad realization that my series of CDs in La Vanguardia devoted to Catalan music and Catalan music makers has come to an end.

That newspaper has served me well by providing (at a cost) a series of small paperback books on Catalan artists and a collection of musical CDs with an accompanying history of Catalan music. Alas, both of these worthy publications are in Catalan and therefore take a disproportionate effort on my part to try and fathom what the hell they are saying. I must say that, apart from some paragraphs of impenetrable complexity, I can usually get a ‘general feel’ of what the writer is going on about. Well, at least to my own satisfaction I have worked out some sort of meaning!

The glaring omission, of course, from my cultural explorations is literature. What is the point of learning about Catalan writers if I am going to be constantly frustrated in not being able to read them? Some Catalan books have been translated into English and more into Spanish, but I have to accept at this stage that all I will gain from this country’s literature is a series of names, rather than an experience of their work. I suppose it will be easier to learn about Spanish literature and I have sent for a Companion to Spanish Literature.

Spain, like Britain, is now a minority repository of literature in the old home language and there are many who say that the most exciting literature in Spanish now comes from South America rather than from Spain. It will be interesting to gain an overview of the history of the literature and perhaps hope to find something in translation to keep me going until that longed for day when I can read something in the original with pleasure rather than as a linguistic exercise.

I have just been reading through the free paper that is usually piled up in the bakery and found that I understood most of what it was saying. I think. I do like papers with lots of pictures and little writing. Spain does not have newspapers like the worst of the British tabloid press and most of them are worthy and wordy. I, however, would welcome a Spanish newspaper with the reading age of an averagely intelligent lower primary school student now with illustrations not only to rest the brain but also to suggest the vocabulary necessary to understand the story! The Sun would be about my linguistic level now on a good day, but Spain has nothing to offer me at that low level!

A quick trip to Sitges for lunch –mostly to show my face in a town which has to be the source of the raw pupil material for the school that we hope to found!

Sitges has a very different feel to Castelldefels. It is livelier with a greater concentration of the population constantly passing through the same public areas. Sitges is not divided in the same way as Castelldefels with two motorways dividing the town from the beach. Castelldefels is a town of uninspiring mediocrity in terms of architecture, and at least the old town in Sitges has a cramped charm which, together with the Modernista buildings of the wealthy Catalans returned from making their fortunes in South America (Los Americanos) make for a fascinating architectural mix.

But the prices of property ensure that we will not be moving there for the foreseeable future!

We do keep trying the lottery though!