FROM THE EDITOR'S  DESK

	The European community seems to be well on its way.  Sometimes it seems to move slowly, as if feeling some sort of doubt difficult to describe.  However, everybody seems to be hoping for the best.

	In the beginning it was thought that there was going to be a “Europe of Nations”, not a “Europe of States”.  All possibility of this being the case seems to have disappeared.  To give just an example: if Spain is not ready, or able or willing to acknowledge the existence of four different nations on its territory, why should Europe act in a different way?
							
	Every six months, beginning January the first and July the first, the ruler of one of the European Community nations become the president of the Council of Europe.  And even though this position is not due to any special quality of the person, even though this is simply due to a previously decided alphabetical order of succession, some of the presiding men seem often to feel otherwise.

	Spain has already presided the Council of Europe twice with president Felipe Gonzalez.  Now president Aznar is the ruler for the first six months of this year.  

	Thinking about all that, it has come to mind that, since 1939 up to today, all the Spanish rulers seem to have on their mind the thought that a place called Gibraltar was stolen from Spain by Perfidious Albion, as Franco’s young guards used to call England at that time.  We have already seen in Dr. Porta’s book what happened to Gibraltar, where Catalans were at least as involved as the English.  After the end of the War of Succession, the place was given to the English crown when Philip V of Spain signed the Treaty of Utrecht in April 1713.  At the time the European kings and rulers believed that the countries they ruled were in fact their personal property.  And so, in that treaty, Gibraltar was given to the Queen of England and to all her successors, forever.  The English queen, following her adviser’s suggestions, had asked that Catalonia be respected in all its rights.  The Spanish king answered that Catalonia would receive the same care and consideration given to Castile, “which is the love of our heart”. It was a cynical declaration.  Catalonia’s rights were ignored and it was submitted to the laws, regulations, and language of Castile.  Since that time, Gibraltar has been a kind of hidden shame for Spain.  And its rulers have always tried to minimize that shame by saying that England stole it from them.  All these rulers have systematically refused to allow Gibraltar inhabitants to express their thoughts on the subject.

	As we have seen, all the above came about because of the Treaty of Utrecht.  There is something else, however, very similar that should be kept in mind and that nobody mentions in Spain.  I am talking about another treaty, the Treaty of the Pyrenees.  This treaty was signed by representatives of the then king of Castile and the king of France Louis XIV.  According to this treaty France was given all the Catalan lands on the other side of the Pyrenees: Rosselló, Conflent, Vallespir, and Capcir, and half of the Cerdanya earldom.  The treaty was signed on November 7th, 1659.  The Catalan Parliament was not even notified, and 33 Catalan villages and towns were given to France.

	Two similar treaties, each of them at the end of a war.  In both of them pieces of land were given to foreign crowns.  Today one of these treaties is considered a deep offense, the other does not deserve even to be mentioned.

	There are also two cities in this very peculiar Spanish collection.  There are Ceuta and Melilla, in the North of Africa.  Ceuta was probably founded by the Carthagenians, then it was Roman, and later it was taken by the Byzantines, the Visigoths and the Arabs.  Then it was conquered by the Portuguese and Philip II added it to the Spanish crown when he added Portugal, too, in 1580.  And he kept it even after the independence of Portugal in 1668.  According to all the Spanish rulers, this is not a colony: this is simply Spain.  And so is Melilla, also a piece of Spain.

	It is an interesting way of looking at things, from different perspectives: robbery, cession, pieces of land... A Spanish puzzle.  Often, a Catalan nightmare.

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THE CATALAN VICTORY OF 1705

CHAPTER XV
(continued)

	Through an office memo from the Council of the Hundred, Velasco received that day a list of the city’s provisions: “... the following are the above mentioned things found today:

First, the wine that has been found		325 loads
  of vinegar has been found			40 loads
  of oil has been found				30,000 loads
  of brandy has been found			12 loads
  of rice has been found 				800 measures
  of broad beans has been found			2500 quartals
  of dry beans, chickpeas, and other legumes	80 quartals
  of cheese has been found			900 measures
  of tuna fish has been found			560 barrels
  salted cod in several houses			108 measures
  pork						30 measures

	Living cattle is not mentioned here, but it often appears in several previous communications, when the need to take the cattle to water at the Llobregat river was mentioned.  When the allies closed the siege, most of the herd was on their lands.

	On the 3rd of September two soldiers from the allied forces went to Velasco’s side.  They explained the landing operation, but were not able to give much more information.  This is one of the few instances when deserters to the Spanish side are mentioned.  On that day Velasco went on looking for provisions, and requisitioned all the wine found in pubs and convents.  He had already provided for the cavalry by contracting 40,000 measures of forage.  Part of it could not reach the city because of the siege.

	The Council of the Hundred tried to keep some food for the civil population.  Their getting in touch with the viceroy, however, was made through short written notes, and the viceroy’s palace always answered the town hall by saying “We will look into it”.

	On September 4th Velasco had a thousand unskilled workers in the fortification of the Portal Nou.  They were city people.  Catalan people forced to work there.  They were complaining because the work was not paid, and when Velasco was defeated they did not see one cent of their salary.

	The viceroy ordered the chief magistrate Francesc de Moyal, the vice-chief and other employees to go house to house to tell everybody that it was forbidden to go out at night, and that they would be severely punished if they had any doors or windows open at night.  They had to say, too, that the soldiers on patrol had been ordered to cut the throat of anyone they found on the streets. Two days later the Council of the Hundred protested because of the harshness of the order.  Velasco reacted by saying that his soldiers had to own the streets without any danger for themselves, and that not even the fire squads were needed, since he had five hundred horses and one hundred soldiers to patrol at night.  The relationship with the civil power became more violent.  The population had to remain silent inside their houses while the soldiers became the owners of the city.

	On that day buying and selling provisions was also forbidden.  The Council of the Hundred told the viceroy that there were enough provisions for the army, and asked him to allow the citizens to get some foodstuff once the service corps had taken what they needed.  Permission was not granted.

	On September 7th two deserters of the Spanish cavalry on patrol at the Creu coberta ran away.  The cavalry troops went to catch them and were met by the people from Vic and a troop of forty English cavalry soldiers.  There was a fight and five Spanish soldiers and two horses died.  Velasco sent then four hundred cavalry men to help them.  They were too late.  The troops were coming back bringing with them a dead man from Vic and a live one who was executed inside the city.

	Near the Portal Nou Mills the cavalry had put in prison two Capuchins who were going to their convent.  They were taken to see Velasco, who insulted them.  They were not hanged because they were priests, but they were confined in the Drassanes prison.

	Velasco allowed, however, that in special circumstances and if it was really needed, one could get out.  The person had to go to the patrol, and then he would be taken by some of the patrol members to the doctor’s house, or to the midwife’s, or to see the priest.  He also ordered to be again announced that anybody wanting to leave the city was free to do it.  Only the beggars that had remained in the city used that permission.  The others, remembering how much those who left had suffered, stayed on.

CONFUSION IN THE ALLIED COMMAND

	While the generals went on preparing a siege with which they did not agree, prince George of Hessen-Darmstadt did whatever he could to establish some contact with the Spanish troops inside the city.  He hoped to find a group ready to go to the pro-Austrian side.

	On the 30th of August the naval heads having their personal pennons got together in a council of war in order to coordinate their help to the landed army.  They hoped that, should Barcelona not be attacked, they could go against some other city on the coast.  The generals, however, were thinking differently.  When they heard about the failure of the troops that had tried to free the Portal de l’Àngel, Peterborough and his generals began to complain and to speak about going to Italy.

	George of Hessen-Darmstadt was distressed.  He thought he was going to see for the second time the same thing that had happened in 1704: the landed troops not remaining in Barcelona to help the Catalans, as he had been promised they would do. He knew much better than the English the possibility of defending the city, and he also saw, better than anybody else, the possibility of losing it.

	On September 2nd both he and the king wrote to Peterborough.  The Prince’s letter was more to the point and, if we remember that they had not spoken to each other in two days, it is easy to understand the directness of the letter.  He only asked for the artillery to open a breach.  He would then take the city with his Catalan men, so ridiculed by the English.  Colonel Richards brought Peterborough’s answer.  He made fun of the prince’s project saying that, as head of the expedition, he, Peterborough, could not go against a decision taken by the council of war of the generals without endangering “his home, his goods, his family, and even his own life”.  About the proposed attack he said that if that failed, the failure would be “imputed to Your Highness, something that people would easily believe since it has been said that during the defense of Gibraltar Your Highness did not care too much for the soldiers’ lives.” About the Catalans, he added that even if it was sad that the Catalans would fall in Bourbons hands and that they would terribly suffer, this kind of things happened in all wars, after all!

	One must say that when Richards published his memoirs of the siege he left this letter on file, without daring to publish it.  In fact, to publish it would have been self-defeating, since it had been written to the hero of Gibraltar, who had promised the English he would conquer that place, and to the hero of Montjuïc, at the moment when everybody knew how Georges had died on the battlefield.  But the letter existed.

	The accusation of not caring for the life of his soldiers in Gibraltar could only have come from the generals who had taken part in the siege and who tried, more than once, to be taken as prisoners because they believed the siege was too slow.  The Catalans had known the feeling of being accused of robbing the English military men in Gibraltar.  Now the accusation reached the prince himself.  On thinking if any truth might be found in the accusation, one has only to remember the prince’s decision to keep a fortress that the English had repeatedly considered as indefensible.  Existing data about casualties show that, in the hardest fights, the number of casualties in both sides had been relatively balanced in favor of the besieged.  In any case, the prince had not favored his relatives and friends, since one of his brothers had been wounded there and some Catalans had died.

	The king wrote to Peterborough on the same day.  It probably happened after the prince had shown to Charles III the Englishman’s answer.  The king’s letter coincided with the arrival of the English ship “Swallow”.  According to Peterborough, the ship was carrying letters from Godolphin ordering Peterborough to help the duke of Savoy to conquer Nice.

	Peterborough went to the king with the letters he said had been carried by the English ship.  He wanted Charles III to accept the generals decision to get out of there.  Charles III, who had probably discussed the affair with Prince George and with the prince of Liechtenstein– as it can be deduced from his letter– wrote that same night, on September 2nd, a long letter to Peterborough.  In it he explained all the strategic points of the Austrians and the Catalans.

	In the first place, he accepted the military reasoning about the impossibility of taking the city by using usual war tactics, and admitted that everything would depend on an unknown factor.  It is the argument of a conspiracy in the garrison, although later on he says that he is sure of the garrison’s loyalty.  The failure in the Portal de l’Ángel two nights before showed that there was a deep ferment inside the garrison.

	He repeated prince George’s offer of Catalans attacking the breach if the allied cannons were to open it.  He added that, even though he accepted the general’s arguments, he felt he had to do something for his poor subjects.

	He then mentioned the secret letters and instructions that Peterborough had shown him and insisted in still having eighteen days to do something in Barcelona.  Going back to the general’s arguments, he said that if at that moment to attack Barcelona was difficult, it would also be very hard to go to Tarragona leaving behind a victorious Barcelona.  If they decided to go to Savoy, however, nothing else could ever be done for Barcelona.

	He ended the letter saying that if the garrison was really too strong to be confronted and all its members were against the king, he would be ready to leave at the end of those eighteen years.
	It is evident that Charles mentioned twice in the same letter that he relayed on the rebellion of a part of the garrison.  Even though he acknowledged that this argument went against the good strategy laws.

	On the 3rd,  the captains of Dutch ships got on board the “Deventer” to pass judgement on some sailors that had been involved in fights with other sailors.  Admiral Van Almonde said all that was happening while the generals did nothing but grumble about the difficulty of the siege.  Van Almonde did not know anything then about the king’s letter.  On the 4th, that letter was discussed in a council of war.

	Peterborough was feeling very angry about the king.  He wanted to force a decision and went to Shovel with an order to prepare everything to re-embark and go to Italy. Shovel called the admirals and all of them together declared to be ready to help the land troops in all the intents to be made in the peninsular coast, since it was too late on the year to think of going to the Italian coast.  However, if it was decided to go there, the fleet could only support any action about a week long.  After that, the troops would have to be left on land without help, in such far away waters.

	On the 5th, Peterborough called again a council of war.  Again, it did not approve to attack Barcelona.  On the 6th, for the fourth time in a very few days, another council of war took place.  In this one, and without saying why, they decided to attack.  Perhaps to be able to say that they had not developed the decision just presented, they added the proviso that the fleet had to provide sailors to fight on land.

	If a negative vote was expected, they were mistaken.  Shovel agreed, together with all the commanders of the fleet.  The answer was, then, that Peterborough could relay on four thousand gunners and fifty carpenters.  There were also eleven hundred and fifty marines that had already landed.  Peterborough had to face this answer with his real opinion.  Instead of accepting it gratefully, he attacked it.  He declared it to be useless because the admirals had met without himself presiding and, since his own admiralty was superior to Shovel’s, the meeting was not valid.

	On the following day, the 7th, another ship arrived from Lisbon with letters from Peterborough.  He said he had again received the order of going to Italy.  On the 8th Peterborough went personally to see Charles III and tried to persuade him of going to Nice.  We do not know if the letters really said what Peterborough declared or if, on the contrary, the letter only spoke of his willingness to go to Nice and help the duke of Savoy.

	Parnell says that after Barcelona had been conquered nobody ever mentioned again the letters of the London ministers, and that the question was never mentioned again, he also implies the possibility of a private agreement between Peterborough and the duke of Savoy, an agreement that would have nothing to do with the queen’s orders. This insinuation is based in some expressions used in the letters between the count and the duke.  Peterborough is always presented as having the idea of making the duke a king.  It is not clear that he was unable to see the possibility of creating a king of a much bigger kingdom in Barcelona.

	Charles was not convinced.  In the meeting between Peterborough and his generals on one side, and the prince of Liechtenstein as the king’s steward and his courtiers on the other side, the discussion was so violent that at a given moment the prince took a chair and threw it to the head of one of the generals.

	While the generals went on grumbling and protesting, the admirals of the fleet were trying to fulfill their decision of helping the land troops.  On the meeting of the 7th it had been agreed that a fifty-two cannon battery was needed and they were now considering the best way of landing those pieces and place them where they would be needed.

	How could one explain the generals’ attitude?  Perhaps it was due to the lack of preparation of the Catalan troops, which were only beginning to be instructed.  Prince George, however, knew very well how the Catalans could fight.  In any case this is a weak reason because the allies were very strong and, since a hint of rebellion had already appeared in the Portal de l’Àngel, other rebellions could come. It was also impossible to think that all the soldiers were ready to fight to the last cartridge for a cause they did not clearly understand.

	Another explanation given to us by Gelabert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury’s, in a book he published some years later as a diary.  It is possible he had heard it from general Stanhope, who went to London after Barcelona was taken and stayed at the bishop’s house.  Burnet says that when the English army landed a lot of war material was not there, and that the lists of ammunition and guns were very different from what the ministry had been asked to send.  The equipment was not enough for a long siege.  According to Burnet the cause of these defects were either carelessness, treason, or “having too many generals in our ministries”.

	The English and Dutch generals knew very well that throughout Catalonia, Catalan troops were conquering towns and cities, and that Charles III’s territory was growing.  But this was not of primary importance to them. They would have better liked to have the Portal de l’Àngel on their hands without having to fight for it.

Antoni Porta

e

(to be continued)

To the interested reader: 

LA VICTÒRIA CATALANA DE 1705, by Dr. Antoni Porta can be ordered from:

Clara Prat
Sant Pau,l6
08340 Vilassar de Mar. Barcelona. Spain 

Price: $20, postage and handling included. Send check or money order with your order. Please allow 6-8 weeks 

							

CATALANS D’AMÈRICA
(Catalan Version)

	És a les primeres dècades del segle passat que es va anar popularitzant aquest concepte: catalans d’Amèrica.  Abans, també n’hi havia de catalans al continent americà, però poc nombrosos.  Mès aviat excepcionals durant els segles de l’anomenat imperi espanyol, degut a les limitacions que comportava el fet d’haver-ne estat exclosos (com estrangers al regne de Castella), i més nombrosos, però sense relleu nacional, al segle XX, quan se’ls pot trobar treballant fort i sovint fent fortuna sobretot a Cuba i també a Puerto Rico.  Molts d’ells retornats a casa i coneguts per les seves residències i les seves inversions en indústries o ferrocarrils.

	No oblidem, en tot cas, les notables individualitats que, en l’administració colonial espanyola, varen destacar.  Com és el cas de Gaspar de Portolà i Pere Fages, a Califòrnia, o el Virrei Amat, al Perú. I els que varen jugar fort per a la Independència.  Citem-ne només dos, emblemàtics: Domènec Matheu, al Río de la Plata, i Josep Sardà, a Mèxic i a l’àrea de la Gran Colòmbia.  Més evident, a Cuba, Ramon Pintó.

	Al tombant del segle XX, és a dir, després de la independència de Cuba i Puerto Rico, és quan tot canvia i apareixen grups de catalans organitzats en tots aquells indrets d’Amèrica on s’hi havia produït immigració considerable.  Cuba i l’Argentina s’havien avançat, amb sengles entitats mutualistes –Societat de Beneficència de Naturals de Catalunya (1840) i Montepio de Montserrat (1857)– i centres catalans –1882 a l’Havana, 1886 definitivament a Buenos Aires– amb altres intents en els mateixos països i en altres.

	Destaquem, en aquest darrer sentit, la publicació de La Llumanera, a Nova York.  Però ès a la primera dècada del segle XX quan tot agafa força i una més clara definició, amb entitats que faran història: a Rosario (1902), Santiago de Xile (1906), Méxic D.F. (1906), Santiago de Cuba (1907), Mendoça (1908), nova entitat més combativa a Buenos Aires (1908), Montevideo (1909)... La independència de Cuba animava els catalans! Totes elles, associaciones clarament catalanes, situades al marge de qualsevol mena d’espanyolitat.

I tot seguit publicacions d’una gran consistència: La Nova Catalunya a l’Havana (1908), Germanor a Santiago de Xile (1912) i Ressorgiment a Buenos Aires (1916), amb moltes altres d’entitat menor i no tanta continuïtat.  A la capital argentina s’hi va afegir Catalonia (1927), que després (1930) es va convertir en Catalunya, d’una gran qualitat.  Remarquem, però, Resorgiment, per la seva excepcionalitat, a l’Amèrica i a Catalunya mateix: de periodicitat mensual, va mantenir una gairabé absoluta regularitat durant cinquanta sis anys!... Tot plegat un esplet cultural amb presència notable i bona consideració en les societats respectives: teatre, música, dances populars i masses corals de prestigi.  Precisament això darrer –Orfeó Català– va ser l’origen i donà nom a l’entitat catalana de la capital mexicana, encara avui existent.  I totes elles amb ressò a Catalunya: d’ací l’anomenada dels catalans d’Amèrica.  Eren entitats tradicionals  que no solament estaven culturalment al dia, sinó que també aportaven ajuda al ressorgiment catalanista general.

	Varen ser la base, des de la catalanitat més estricta, per a rebre forts contingents de refugiats després de la desfeta de 1939, és a dir, en acabar la guerra civil i produir-se el gran èxode subsegüent.  Pocs varen arribar als Estats Units, no gaires a Cuba i a l’Argentina, però molt nombrosos a Mèxic i a Xile, més un considerable escampall pels més diversos indrets del continent americà.  És així com es varen reforçar sensiblement moltes entitats i se’n varen crear de noves.  No aglutinaven la totalitat dels catalans residents a les ciutats, però si majories que no mancaven mai quan la gent era convocada a les festes tradicionals, com podien ser balls en dies assenyalats; activitats culturals, com representacions teatrals o festivals folklòrics, o les commemoracions nacionals del 14 d’Abril (proclamació de la República Catalana el 1931) i l’11 de Setembre (la desfeta del 1714).  I els Jocs Florals de la Llengua Catalana, celebrats inicialment el 1941 a Buenos Aires, el 1942 a la Ciutat de Mèxic, el 1943 a Santiago de Xile i el 1944 a l’Havana.

	L’Any 1945 va ser el de la prou coneguda Apel.lació del Consell Nacional de Catalunya a la International Organization Conference de San Francisco: The Case of Catalonia.  N’hem parlat amb anterioritat i a’escaurà insistir-hi, amb les comunicacions subsegüents a Nacions Unides, el 1946, especialment Catalonia accusse, sempre amb la iniciativa dels catalans de Nova York, encapçalats per Josep Carner i Ribalta, que hi va esmerçar tot el seu dinamisme i la seva creativitat, amb valuosos col.laboradors, entre altres, com Josep M. Fontanals, Joan Ventura i Sureda i Sureda i Josep Anton Gibernau.

	Allò que, d’entrada, sorprèn i admira més en l’Apel.lació, és el volum i la diversitat d’adhesions de pràcticament tots els catalans d’Amèrica organitzats, plena d’entusiasme pel fet de poder fer-se partíceps d’aquesta presència catalana en el nou i tan prometedor fórum internacional.  Recordem-ho una vegada més.  Entre entitats, publicacions, programes radiofònics, agrupacions corals i teatrals, clubs esportius, partits polítics, mútues i grups culturals o patriòtics, sumen un total de més de cincuenta associacions, en vint-i-cinc ciutats de dotze països, representant molts milers de Catalans.

	Era la Catalunya exiliada a l’Amèrica.  Tota una cultura popular en marxa, bandejada del seu propi territori.  Espontània, sense cap més suport que la voluntat i la llibertat creadora de cadascú, de tots plegats.  Dominava, entre els més actius, els capdavanters i els més assidus participants en al vida associativa i en les actuacions, l’esperit independentista o, en tot cas, un sentit autonomista real, no pas per a la mena d’Autonomia precària que ara vivim.

	I, de fet, l’Apel.lació a la Conferència de San Francisco era la culminació de tot un procés de plena identificació amb els aliats i, implícitament –quan no explicitament– d’adhesió entusiasta al lideratge dels Estats Units.  Per això, l’acabament de la guerra va propiciar, en totes aquelles col.lectivitats catalanes d’Amèrica, grans  Actes y Festes de la Victòria.  Com la que els de Nova York varen organitzar, el 10 de setembre, al Roof Garden de l’Hotel Piccadilly.  En varen ser hostes d’honor el Lendakari Jose Antonio de Aguirre i el poeta Josep Carner com a Vice-president del Consell Nacional de Catalunya, amb participació de Jaume Miravitlles, Joan Ventura i Sureda, Josep Lluís Pujol i Font, Ferran Casablancas, Josep Carner i Ribalta i Josep M. Fontanals, president del Casal Català.

	De l’Apel.lació esmentada, important en tants conceptes, s’escau remarcar-ne un, molt ben desenvolupat amb arguments sòlids, d’extraordinària oportunitat, i novetat, en aquells moments, però d’una rellevant validesa en els nostres dies: Catalonia is not a Spanish conflict but a European problem.  Els catalans de 1945, exiliats, portaveus al món lliure de la Catalunya subjugada per la prepotència feixista espanyola, sabien per on anaven i per on, al cap de prop de setanta anys de sofriments i de marrades perdedores, ens convé anar.

Victor Castells 

e

THE CASE  OF  CATALONIA(English Version)

	This concept, Catalans in America, began to be familiar in the first decade of the last century.  There had been Catalans in the American continent before that time, but not very many.  Very few were there during the so-called Spanish empire, because of the limitations implied in the fact of the Catalans being excluded –as foreigners in the Castilian kingdom– Their number grew in the twentieth century, but without national relevance.  At that time Catalans could be found doing hard work and often becoming quite wealthy, most of all in Cuba and Puerto Rico.  Many of them went back home and were known by their residences and their investments in industry and railroads.

	In any case, we should not forget those who were outstanding in the Spanish colonial administration.  Among them we have Gaspar de Portolà and Pere Fages, in California, or the viceroy Amat, in Perú.  Also, those who were strongly in favor of the independence.  At least two of them should be named: Domènec Matheu, at Rio de la Plata, and Jorge Sardà in México and in the area of Great Colombia.  Later on, in Cuba, Ramon Pintó.

	At the beginning of the 20th  century, after the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico, everything changed.  Groups of organized Catalans appeared in all those places in America where a considerable immigration had been established.  Cuba and Argentina had been the first, with mutual societies –Society of Social Welfare of People from Catalonia (1840), and Montepío de Montserrat (1857) –and Catalan Centers: 1882 at Havana, 1886 in Buenos Aires, and other attempts either in the same countries or somewhere else.

	Among these attempts we must not forget the publication of La Llumanera, in New York.  In the first decade of the 20th  century, however, when everything gets stronger and better defined.  With entities that were there to stay: in Rosario (1902), Santiago de Chile (1906), Mexico D.F. (1906), Santiago de Cuba (1907), Mendoza (1908), a stronger entity in Buenos Aires in 1908 and in Montevideo in 1909.  The Cuban independence encouraged the Catalans.  All those associations were clearly Catalan, without any Spanish feeling.

	Important publications appeared at once: La Nova Catalunya in Havana (1908), Germanor (Brotherhood) in Santiago de Chile (1912) and Ressorgiment (Revival) in Buenos Aires (1916), and others whose publication was not as consistent as those mentioned.  In 1927 appeared Catalonia in the Argentinian capital, a publication of high quality that in 1930 changed into Catalunya.  We would like to point out, however, how exceptional was Ressorgiment, both in America and in Catalonia.  It appeared monthly and it kept an almost absolute regularity during fifty-six years!  All together was a considerable cultural harvest, well presented and well considered in their respective societies: theater, music, popular dances and prestigious choral groups.  One of these chorales, the Orfeó Català was in fact the one that originated and gave its name to the entity in the Mexican capital, an entity still alive today.  All of them were known in Catalonia, and so were the Catalans of America.  These were traditional entities that not only were culturally up to date but contributed to the general Catalan revival, too.

	They were the basis, from the most strict Catalanity, to receive a considerable number of refugees after the 1939 defeat, that is to say,  when the civil war ended and the great exodus began.  Very few reached the United States, not many went to Cuba and Argentina, but very many went to México and Chile, and others scattered in several places of the American Continent.

	In this way many entities were sensibly reinforced and new ones were created. They did not bring together all the Catalans residing in cities, but they did attract the majority who never failed when they were called to celebrate traditional festivities as dances in certain dates, cultural activities, theater representations, folklore festivities or national commemorations as the  April 14th –proclamation of the Catalan Republic of 1931– and September 11th –the defeat of 1714.  And the Jocs Florals (Floral Games) of the Catalan Language, initially celebrated in 1941 in Buenos Aires, in 1942 in México City, in 1943 in Santiago de Chile, and in 1944 in Havana.

	1945 was the year of the well known Appeal of the National Council of Catalonia to the International Organization Conference of San Francisco: The Case of Catalonia.  We have mentioned it before and we shall deal with it, with the subsequent communications at the United Nations in 1946, especially Catalonia Accuses.  A great deal of it was due to the initiative of the Catalans of New York, led by Josep Carner i Ribalta, who brought to it all his dynamism and creativity.  He had very good collaborators, among them Josep M. Fontanals, Joan Ventura i Sureda, and Josep Anton Gibernau.

	From the beginning we are surprised and admired by the quantity and diversity of support in the Appeal.  Practically all the Catalans in America were there, organized, full of enthusiasm for having the opportunity to participate in this Catalan presence in the new and promising international forum.  Let us again look at it.  If we add the number of entities, publications, radio broadcasts, choral groups and theaters, sport clubs, political parties, mutual societies, and cultural or patriotic groups, we reach a total of more than fifty associations in twenty-five cities of twelve countries, representing many thousands of Catalans.

	It was the Catalonia exiled in America.  A popular culture on the march, ejected from its own country.  A spontaneous culture, whose only support was the will and the creative freedom of every member, of all of them together.  The independent spirit was dominant among the more active, the leaders, and those who most strongly participated in the associative life and actions.  In any case, there was a real autonomous feeling, not the kind of  feeling of a precarious autonomy such as the one we are living now.

	In fact, the Appeal of San Francisco Conference was a culmination of a whole process of identification with the allies and, implicitly or explicitly, of an enthusiastic support to the US leadership.  The end of the war brought big Acts and Celebrations of Victory in all those Catalan collectivities of America.  One of them was organized in New York on the 10th of September, at the Roof Garden of the Piccadilly Hotel.  Honor hosts were the Basque Lehendakari Josep Antonio de Aguirre and the Catalan poet Josep Carner as Vice-President of the National Council of Catalonia, with the participation of Jaume Miravitlles, Joan Ventura i Sureda, Josep Lluis Pujol i Font, Ferran Casablancas, Josep Carner i Ribalta, and Josep M. Fontanals, president of the Catalan Casal.

	The Appeal was very important.  One of its ideas, well developed with solid arguments, was new at the time but it is very important in our days: “Catalonia is not a Spanish conflict but a European problem”.  The exiled Catalans of 1945, speaking in the free world for the Catalonia subjugated by the fascist power, knew very well where they were going and, after near seventy years of suffering and blundering, they should know  where they should be going now.

Víctor Castells

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 FREDA  MORRILL  ABRAMS  
(l9l7 -  l990)

Translator of Catalan Christmas Carols

(continued)

	It was four years and a half before Freda Morrill wrote again to Pau Casals, near the end of 1962 and she did so in order to send him the check for $50 which she had obtained for publishing the translation and piano accompaniment of “The Song of the Birds”, so the Maestro could send that money to the Spanish republicans detained in the South of France.

	This musical work was published in the book CHRISTMAS, together with her article “The Christmas Story in Catalan Carols”.  In sending him the book, Freda Morrill expressed once more the desire “to have truthfully and faithfully treated this subject which is so dear to you”.

	She continued “I would like very much to do my best so Catalan folk songs would be better known to English speaking people.  I have made translations of many more of the carols and I would like to publish a booklet of them... It occurred to me that perhaps a little booklet of such songs might be useful to the Spanish Aid Committee in New York to offer for sale to its friends, and the proceeds go to refugee relief.  I think it might be published in pocket size to sell for twenty-five cents each.  I will talk to a publisher I know about this.  I’m sure he would be very sympathetic with such a purpose.”

	It is pertinent to remember that Freda Morrill was an active person in the Quaker community and the fact that this community was from the first moment in favor of the republican side and that after the Spanish War put in lots of effort and money to help the desperate situation of the losing fighters on their exile.
	It is at the end of this important letter that we realize Freda Morrill knows she has an important work from which she can obtain a cultural benefit, more than a material one – in which she was not interested.  She decided to go even further in the relation she had with Maestro Pau Casals.  Besides telling him the books of Catalan songs she has consulted, and of mentioning the convenience of respecting authors’ rights, she puts forward the following petition: “I know that the publisher I know who might publish my little book would also like to issue with it a phonograph record of the songs, sung in both Catalan and in English.  Do you know of anyone to suggest who might be able to make a tape recording, sing the songs in Catalan? Would you be willing to play them on the ‘cello for such a purpose?  I know something of your life and how busy you are and how many calls are made on your time and heart.  I hesitate very much to add another task to your days, even the one of answering this letter.  I am sure that you would support in spirit my desire to make Catalan songs better known; and I will understand completely if you say that you are unable to do anymore than that; or even if you are unable to answer the letter.  I will understand that.  It really isn’t important.  What I really want to do is to wish you and Señora Casals a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  God bless you in your endeavors.  You can be gratified that you touch many lives and that your own life has meaning.”

	It was written on the 12th of December, and she received an answer from Pau Casals on the 15th of December!

“Dear Mrs. Abrams,

	I have just receiving your letter, and I sincerely appreciate your very kind words.  First of all I would like to congratulate you on your work of translation and arrangement of “Cant dels Ocells”, and also for your generosity in donating to our Spanish Refugees what you have earned for it.  I want to tell you my deep appreciation for this gesture I am sure I can thank you also in the name of these poor people who will certainly make good use of this money for their most urgent needs.

	I think your idea of a small booklet of Catalan songs to be sold for the benefit of Spanish Refugee Aid, NY is a most generous one also, and I think it would be of interest.  It would be of course, much more interesting to publish it with a small recording.  But I feel that it would be more genuine and appealing if they are “sung” rather than played.  Song is their original form, and most of them would serve better the purpose if they are “sung”.  I am sure that there would be someone who could do it, giving them the right color and character.

If your idea materializes, perhaps I could help you in suggesting to you someone to sing them.  But I would also suggest to you to write to Mrs. Nancy McDonald of the Spanish Refugee Aid, N.Y., as to the material possibilities of such an idea, before you begin an actual preparation.  Also, as you said, you would have to find the permissions, and publishers, etc.  Naturally, I am very ignorant of the “material” or “practical” aspects of things; but I can tell you that I sincerely appreciate your idea, whether it materializes or not.  Your sensibility reflects in your words and actions.  Thank you again for your kind letter and generous contribution to the Spanish Refugees.  Please accept my best wishes and cordial greetings for Christmas and the New Year.

	It was more than eight years before the subject was taken up again, coinciding wih the visit the Abrams’ paid the Casals’ in Puerto Rico.  We know of it through the photocopy of the manuscript letter than on the 19th of November, 1971, she addressed to the Casals’ in the following terms:

Dear Señor y Señora Casals,

	I am sorry I have been tardy in returning this program you so kindly lent to me of the words of the beautiful El Pessebre.  Now, if only a recording of the music were available!  My husband and I will always remember with joy our visit this Spring in your home when we talked of Catalan carols and so much else.  I am still trying to complete a book of Catalan Christmas songs with translations and illustrations.  Much of the work is done.  We shared with our family and friends an account of our visit, so the joy spread even further.  We hope you had a happy summer in Vermont.  We were happy to hear about the concert and the United Nations.  Friends of ours were there and were very much moved.  How can we thank you for your generosity in sharing your time and warm kindness with us?  Perhaps in trying to live for the values which you both, and we, too, cherish.

With love, reaching out our hands,

P.S. I had copies of the program made for my use and I’m sending you one since you said you only had one.”

	I believe these abstracts of such valuable correspondence illustrate much better than anything we might want to add.  We see Freda Morrill’s enthusiasm, in her work of translating and in the tenacity she had until her death, of publishing and making our Christmas carols known, and also Pau Casals’ sincere interest in the task our friend was carrying out and... maybe also his inability to help her effectively due to the activity he was still carrying out at such an advanced age with already precarious health.  Despite this, as we have seen, in 1971, when he was already over 95 years old, he was still capable of having an animated conversation on many subjects, of which we can only imagine the elevated human quality, with admirers he only knew from the correspondence we have partially reproduced.

	There is no need to be an expert, and I am not, in order to realize the difficulty there is in the translation of any text to be sung, fitting in the sentences and their corresponding syllables, with the notes which, in fact, are “musical syllables”.  The obstacle is even bigger if, as well, as it is a verse to be translated also in verse into another language of very different construction: I must say here that maybe we have the advantage of the fact that both in Catalan and in English there are many monosyllabic words.  But this isn’t the main difficulty.  The difficulty is to write a verse that will have a high poetic quality and try not to change the meaning.  There is more.  It is very difficult for this meaning to be textual, and due to the mentioned adaptation difficulties, sometimes other images have to be used, not to mentioned more frequent new words which will keep the historical and anecdotic context.  That is, the time and spirit.  To be able to reach this point it is necessary not only to have “gone into” the spirit of the author of the original work, but also into the spirit that animates the popular characters.  That is to say, have to capture their nature and many hues that, without a great capacity to observe, coupled with an extraordinary sensitivity, would not yield the final necessary quality.  This is Freda Morrill’s great merit and it is what we find in her translations, and I really believe I do not exaggerate carried away by my admiration for her enthusiastic work.

	I hope our friend Irwin Abrams, her widower, will be able to have them published.  If so, I imagine that, respecting whatever necessary copyrights, it would be very useful to use the translations in many of the cases in which our choirs sing abroad, I refer especially to Europe and North America, in order to have the public understand the words of the songs, which is so important when you want to enjoy sung music in all its sentimental and artistic dimension.

	I leave written evidence of this in these lines, which include the intention to cooperate as much as possible in this laudable undertaking.

J.M. Nubiola

P.S. Freda Morrill’s last letter was answered by Marta de Casals in her name and in the name of “maestro Casals” himself in 10 manuscript lines in which they also thanked for the present they had received of some exquisite drawings of birds.

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From EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA

A HUMOR LICENSE PLATE

	It was decided that the model of license plates for cars had to be changed.  But the solution chosen by the Spanish government is wrong.  It is wrong to create unnecessary irritation.

	A political decision may be irritating, but at the same time it may also be the only one that is fair and reasonable.  But to cause irritation when there is no need for it cannot be said to be a sign of political ability.  Most of all if the final decision goes against what had previously been announced.  The Ministry of the Interior had promised to the Generalitat that the new Catalan licenses would include a Catalan distinguishing mark: the three letters CAT.  At the moment of truth, the Ministry has been a liar.

	Would it go against the constitution, or against the State security the fact that a license plate showed a Catalan, Galician or Andalusian symbol together with the European symbol and the E for Spain?  Many words have been said about the State of Autonomies.  Now when it is possible to show that such a State is fully accepted, taking advantage of such a peaceful occasion as the license plates, it is decided that no autonomy symbol is admitted.  Only the symbol of “Spanishness” is accepted.

	Even the provincial reference is being erased.  So that I am left without the B of Barcelona, my belonging to Catalonia is not acknowledged, and I am directly registered in Spain.  In Germany, and in other countries, a new license plate model was adopted long ago.  The model respects the plurality included in their States.

	Aznar’s government has converted what could have been a simple constitutionalist and conciliatory step into a provoking pre-autonomous unitarian Spain.

	It is good to remember that in the United States a musician’s car carried the license CUGAT.  It would perhaps be useful to explore the possibility of each citizen being able to chose its own license, as it is now possible to register one’s own web or electronic address.  PAUDESANTS, ECOLOPEZ, KAMAKO... licenses that would be clear and easier to read, and therefore more suitable to be fined, than those combinations of numbers and consonants so difficult to remember, like 9478-LTV.

	The decision of the central government eliminates the vowels, too.  I am sure that, when they took the decision, Catalan was on their minds.  Catalan has a lot of monosyllabic words: pet (fart), cul (arse), ase (donkey), ruc (dunce), fot (fuck), nap (turnip, dwarf), pit (bosom), sac (sack)... Some of them have not enough dignity.   Like CAT, probably.

J.M. Espinàs
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From AVUI

NEWSPAPERMEN

	The document “Reflections on the media and terrorism”, from the Spanish Radio and TV Corporation is more than a cause for concern: it is an inadmissible document.

	What has happened is that the administrative board of the Spanish Radio TV has written a document directed to all media, both public and private, where the information about terrorism is regulated. (* TN.  Spanish Radio TV belongs to the Spanish government and is called public).  I think that it is extremely grave that an institution depending on the administration dares to explain to the media –which have the freedom of information guaranteed by the constitution– to explain how the media must treat a given problem, be it heavy or light.  The only limits of information are those given in the penal code.  Everything else is control and management, and this is unacceptable in a regime of freedom.

	In this document that group says things as grave or fallacies as evident as the following: that the transparency of information must have exceptions in “cases in which other essential rights of people may be threatened”, but it does not say either who decides which are these exceptional cases or which state of exception is referring to.

	Would an article defending the legalization of drugs be a part of that definition? And what about the dissertation about the evils –or the good things!– of colonialism? If we describe the worse zones of any city, are we excusing and therefore promoting delinquency since it is attributed to social causes?

	Then the document says: “Silence and concealment do not solve the problem of terrorism”.  Two questions come to my mind: Does disclosure solve terrorism? Is it the media’s objective to solve political and public order problems?  The document also attests that an equidistant treatment  “creates the opposite effect to objectivity”, an affirmation impossible to prove; and that “the media cannot be neutral”, a question that only the media can solve, without any political control, and keeping in hand their professional deontology.

	Of course the unions have already protested and have said that the document may open a conflict between politicians and newspapermen.  There is no doubt that any damage to the freedom of information, for any motive, would be extremely harmful for the democratic system.  Even more so in a country ruled by people longing for dictatorship.

Isabel-Clara Simó

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From EL TEMPS

REQUIEM FOR THE PESSETA

	On the 20th of October 1868, the pesseta began its official life thanks to the Catalan man Laureà Figuerola, Minister of the Treasure.  The real life of the pesseta, however, had begun long before that.  It had been clearly related to the political and economic history of Catalonia in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries.

	The first official pesseta was a standard silver coin of 835 mill, five grams of weight and 23 millimeters in diameter.  This was the first official pesseta, born 135 years ago during a revolution presided by general Prim.  This revolution expelled the Bourbons from Spain for several years.  It was the first time that the pesseta became an official coin, but that was not the first time it was minted.

	In fact, the name “pesseta” was quite well known from past times.  See, for instance, the comments that Arthur Young wrote in his book A Journey to Catalonia in 1787.  On July 17th of that year, Young wrote: “People are burdened by too many taxes... Nothing comes into the city (Barcelona) without being taxed.  A cargo of 220 bottles of wine pays 12 pessetes, that is to say 12 English shillings.”  A day later he wrote: “We saw many mules carrying alfalfa.  Each load weighs 450 pounds and must pay 4 pessetes, that is almost 4 English shillings...”

	The pesseta, then, was a word well known by the people, even though the coin had not been minted yet.  And this did not happen only in Catalonia.  In the 9th of February 1752, quite a few years before Young’s travel book, an edict in Mallorca forbade the circulation of “pessos fuertes y pessetas remarcados” that had appeared in the Islands.

	But what about the coin’s name?  Where did it come from?  Josep Pellicer Bru, president of the Spanish Numismatic Association goes back to the beginning of the XVIIIth century, when in the Peninsula the war of succession to the Spanish crown was fought.  The two sides were led by the archduke Charles of Austria and Philip of Anjou, who later became Philip V.  In the conflict Catalonia was on the side of the archduke Charles of Austria.  Between 1707 and 1714 the latter was acclaimed as king of Spain and ordered to mint small Spanish silver coins with his face on them.  “Those small pieces of silver where called by the Barcelonians pessetes, a word that stayed in the common language.  Since the big pieces were the coins of 8, called “duros”, these new ones were called small pieces, or pessetes”.

	From then on, the name pesseta was used in different periods, always meaning the smallest coin of a series.  It is interesting to remember that although in the XVIIIth century it was already a well known name, this name was not printed on a coin until a century later.  This was due to Napoleon’s invasion (1808-1814) and happened in Barcelona, again.  Now one could read on the coin the name “peseta”, in Castilian.

	At the time Barcelona lived in a peculiar political situation that allowed the city to mint money different from that used in the rest of the Peninsula.  It was the city where the French troops stayed longer and, according to historian Francesc Cabana, the French commanders were the party interested in “separating Catalonia from Spain and stirring up the divergences with the rest of the state”.

	Whatever the real motive may have been, the minting of the money is officially justified because of the need “to increase the country’s hard cash, since the scarcity of the latter resulted in having the manufacturing stopped and the trade held back.”  The truth is that from August 1808 until two days after the French troops had left the city –on June 1814– the Barcelona mint produced gold, silver, and copper coins with special features.  The name used was pesseta; the French went on using the coins minted in Madrid and Seville, the “rals”.  On the pesseta one could see the name of the city where it was minted, Barcelona, and the scutcheon of the city was reproduced in one side of the coin.
	It was, in fact, the first time that the name pesseta appeared on a coin in those years, but under the authority of Ferdinand VII coins were minted in Tarragona and Lleida with the value of 5 pessetes in 1809. Once Napoleon’s occupation had finished and the absolute regime had been reinstated, the only trace of the pesseta was found in the Balearic Islands in 1823 through a piece of 5 pessetes.  It is curious to see how Catalonia, under the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII was not allowed to mint gold and silver coins, as numismatist Josep Pellicer points out, and could only mint copper coins.  “It is the so-called fiduciary coin, to circulate every day. To do small exchanges, to buy milk, wine... But not to do big business.”

	The pesseta reappeared again during Isabel II’s reign.  In 1836-37 two atypical mintings appeared.  The first with the inscription Principat de Catalunya on silver.  It was a rather complex economic time because of the excessive expenses of the previous monarch, Ferdinand VII.  Six projects appeared to reform the monetary system, some of them with the idea of reducing the weight of the coins.  The monetary unit of the time was the “ral”, and the pessetes and half-pessetes were minted with a value of 4 rals and 2 rals, respectively.  In Barcelona the Assembly of Armament and Defense of the Princedom ordered to mint pessetes to face the expenses of the first Carline war and the salaries of the military.  That is why these soldiers were called “pesseteros”.

	Therefore, when on October 20th, 1868 the decree establishing the pesseta as a monetary system unit was published in the Gaceta de Madrid, that coin was perfectly known to the population.  The decree was signed by Laureá Figuerola, a Catalan born in Calaf, and Minister of the Treasure of the Provisional Government formed after the Revolution of 1808 that forced the Bourbons to go.  Historian Francesc Cabana says: “The pesseta has a Catalan origin, but this has nothing to do with the fact that Figuerola was a Catalan.  What is clear is that Castile had the “peso” –a masculine name– that appeared in all the colonized America, while in Catalonia we had the “peça” –a femenine name.  The future pesseta is a diminutive of the latter name, in the same way that France would have the “piecette”

(To be continued)
Bàrbara Amorós
MARATHON

	It seems that, according both to a universal perception and to this magazine, the matter of the relationship between East and West is once more a problematic question.  It is one of those questions that ask for both reflection and outlook if we do not want to get lost and bewildered, carried only by the wind of the most sensational contemporary issues.

	In fact, to speak about East and West is the result of a Eurocentric vision of the world.  Or, to be more accurate, it is a result of considering the Mediterranean Sea as the center of a flat planet: through this border the sun appears, and is the East; through the other border the sun dies, and it is the West.  And, since we come from the western side, not from the eastern one, we look at the geography and history, ethnography and politics, battles religions, languages and cultures with the eyes of those that consider their own all that has been made and organized in this part of the hemisphere, not in the other.

	This is in fact unavoidable, and it happens in other parts of the world and with other civilizations.  It happens to the Japanese, who are the empire fo the rising sun and who for many centuries were practically not interested in the rest of humanity.  And it happened to the Chinese, who were the empire of heaven; that is to say they were not the center of the earth, they were all the earth.  Therefore, we, the western Europeans and our “continuators” in oversea lands, do not have the exclusive right of interpreting the world from our own yard: this is, in fact, a universal flaw.

	This being said, it must be added that there is no other society or civilization –or at least I do not know any other– that had ever projected such a well articulated vision, a theory, and a methodological consciousness of that general opposition between ourselves and the others, between those in this side and those on the other side.  Perhaps because no other “civilization” –excuse the word, it is just a way to understand each other– no other civilization, then, has developed and ordered a systematic way of thinking, theories and systems, and the use of the rational method as a tool to understand both the world and the history.

	Rationality, method, and the sense of history: this is our “western” singularity, besides the uncertain invention of democracy.  When Herodotus –the father of historians and ethnologists– wrote the “History of the Median Wars” he began with a collection of news about peoples and countries that had fought against the Greeks, which were all those that at the time were included in the Persian Empire.  He speaks of the Egyptians and their funerary obsessions, of the wealth of Mesopotamia, watered by two large rivers; of the strange worship that Medians and Perses were offering to gods that had no human shape; of the splendid organization of the empire of the Great King and of other interesting news.

	Everything that differs from what the Greeks did amazes him and he admires it, too, as it is quite natural and happens to all of us.  However, a special item of that amazement has always come direct to my heart.  He says that the Persians, when meeting somebody of a higher condition, would greet him with a deep bow.  If the social distance is very great, they would kneel down and bend their head to touch the ground, as they do when meeting high nobility or the king.  The question is that a Greek would never do that.  He would not do it for another Greek: all citizens have the same rights, and nobody bows in front of a magistrate elected by an assembly.  And he would not do it for anybody without being forced to do it.  In fact, in order not to do it, a few badly armed fellows lacking a regular army, stood up to the most powerful empire of their era.  The idea of freedom perhaps did not completely agree with our modern concept, but it was a new idea, and they fought for it.

	When the Persians landed at Marathon and the Athenians rejected the  attack in the famous battle, a soldier equally famous ran for more than forty kilometers to reach the market square in Athens, where distressed people were waiting.  He said “nenikékamen”, we have won, and he died.

	If the Greeks had lost that war, if they had become a simple province or satrapy of an oriental king, I do not know what our history would have been.  If  “occident” had not been born that day, I do not know when it could had been.  Perhaps it would have never have happened and we, certainly, would not be speaking of it.
Joan F. Mira

	DID     
                 
		YOU            
                                          
				KNOW
                                                                    
						THAT…?

***  The first issue of  “Work of research Francesc Battle” appeared a few days ago.  This publication is sponsored by Omnium Cultural and the town halls of Arenys de Mar, Arenys de Munt, and Pals.  This issue begins with a study by historian Jordi Bilbeny that, under the title “Saavedra i Cristòfor Colom” explains and documents “a scientific, ideological, and kindred relationship in Portugal and Catalonia that once and for all explains the Catalan discovery of America”.  Bilbeny presents the conclusions of his research: Vázquez de Saavedra, a key person in the planning of Columbus trip and up to now of a mysterious origin, was a Portuguese nobleman, a relative of king Pere IV of Catalonia and living in Catalonia.  Bilbeny affirms it was in Catalonia that Columbus and Saavedra together prepared the famous trip.

***   Literature and wine, and also music and wine, have always had a good relationship.  The Gandia wine cellars have asked musician composer Cristóbal Halfter to write the piece “Cerimònia”, based on an ode to the wine written by Greek philosopher Xenophanes.  This piece was performed for the first time by Mireia Pintó in the IVAM, in València.  The Gandia cellars are leaders in wine export.  Their wines are sold in 73 countries.  The Gandia family opened the cellars in 1885 and since then have renovated them with the most modern oenological techniques and the introduction of new stocks.
*** The exhibition room of the Politechnical University of València offers an interesting exhibit of the works of architects Rafael Guastavino Moreno and his son Guastavino Expósito.  These two architects, at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, brought revolutionary innovations tot he North-American building system.  The exhibit is called “Guastavino Co. (1885-1962).  The re-invention of the vault”. The exhibit includes documents, photographs, original drawings, and objects of the Guastavino collection of the Avery Library.  All these objects draw a journey through the Guastavinos’ professional life, from their beginnings in Catalonia to their trip to New York, where father and son applied the characteristic building of Catalan architecture to important vault construction in that city and in other American cities.  Instead of using wood, as it was traditionally done in America, Guastavino used layers of thin tile bedded in layers of mortar to create curved horizontal surfaces.  Ceilings, stairs, roofs and floors can be build with this system, usually in the shape of vaults or domes.  This process notably diminished the risk of fire in the buildings.

*** Work being done in the neighborhood of St. James Square, in Barcelona, has brought some startling discoveries.  The most valuable pieces have been found on the point where the Call and St. Honorat streets meet.  This point seems to have been the entrance to the Roman forum.  A small altar, the sculpture of a child of the first or second century and a polychrome mosaic of great beauty from the IVth century, very well preserved, have been found there.  The importance of these findings is that they belong to private homes, not to public buildings.  The archaeologists working there –some 20 of them– hope to have all the materials studied, drawn and documented in a little more than a month.  Then the pieces to be kept will probably go to a museum.  Besides the mosaic, the altar, and the child sculpture, archaeologists have found ceramic pieces and coins dated on a time when all the Roman territories had the same kind of coins.  Mare Mayer, general director of the Patrimoni Cultural, says: “It is like the Euro of that time.  The same pieces were minted in cities like Lyon, Treveris, and so on” According to Mayer, the discovery shows that Barcelona became most important on the IVth century and in the Visigoth era when king Ataulf, established Barcelona as the capital of his kingdom.
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