TABLE OF CONTENTS
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
THE   CATALAN   VICTORY OF 1705
KO TAZAWA, MY JAPANESE FRIEND
FOR SELF-RESPECT
THE CHRONICLES
THE MEMORY OF THE BATTLE OF THE EBRE RIVER IS AGAIN ALIVE ON THE LAND
WHAT  CATALONIA  IS
WHEN  CATALONIA  WAS  WILD
THREE  HUNDRED  YEARS
DID  YOU  KNOW  THAT…?

Catalonia Today, Vol 17, No 1

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
The November issue of CATALONIA TODAY is always a little special since it covers the 11th of September. It is well known all over – but not well understood – that the Catalans, or most Catalans, celebrate that day with a kind of strong patriotic love, with a joyous pride, with true belief in the cause they have been honoring for almost three hundred years. Outside Catalonia many people do not understand this. The Basques probably do, and the Scots, but not the Spaniards.
          In fact, this lack of understanding has been more evident this year. Most people in Spain, if they have either written or spoken about the peculiar Catalan Diada have put together the Diada with the Chilean tragedy and the terrible crime of the Twin Towers destruction in New York. These two tragic events took place on one 11th of September, and the terrible tragedy in Madrid took also place on the eleventh day of another month. But all these are just coincidences.
          The Chilean horror was tragically familiar to all of us: a bunch of military men telling the people that they and their guns were the chosen saviors of the land. The New York tragedy was a terrorist attack, that is to say a cowardly attack against unarmed and non violent people. The Diada brings back to us the destruction of our customs, our land, our laws, our language, our cities, and our lives by the Spaniards helped by the French. It brings to our mind the city of Barcelona suffering 13 months of siege, and the terrible indifference of the rest of Europe, as it happened later, too, when Franco considered Catalonia a “conquered land” and special laws were issued to deal with that occupied territory.
          As we have said in other occasions, the Diada is not only a tragic memorial; in fact, this is the least evident part of it. The pride of surviving, the belief in the right to be and in the right to keep alive both the language and the history of our land, the memory of the people who began to fight for all of these things before that 11th day, this is the Diada. Let me finish this with the words of a Catalan newspaperman, Joan Oliver. This is just a fragment of his article for the newspaper AVUI on the 11th of November:
         “What is really important is that today we, the Catalans, will commemorate again the day when we lost our sovereignty at the hands of the Spanish people 290 years ago. And this is a fact that is very clear. We do commemorate it because we still do feel that we are a people, a nation. There is no other nation in the world, that after almost three centuries of suffering constant attempts of annihilation remain alive, have preserved a persecuted language, and have created an open and thriving society. And that, in addition to all this, is courageous enough to commemorate that day, to openly claim that we are still alive, that we do want to go on being alive. And that we want to do it in peace, without needing another June to come”
          These last words come from one line of the Catalan National Anthem which says “let us have our weapons sharpened if another June does come.” It refers to another attack of the Spanish king against Catalonia that took place almost two centuries before 1714.  

THE   CATALAN   VICTORY OF 1705
CHAPTER  XVII
( continued)

          According to historian Castellvi, Desvalls and  Sobies  on the 6th of September had brought together a very great number of people in Cervera and  demanded obedience to Charles III..
           Josep de Peguera i de Cortit and Josep Pocurull, the priest of Cubells, went to talk to the city people representing the voice of the revolted ones.  While these two people were inside, there was a misunderstanding near the rampart and a lot of shots were fired. Later on the Cerverans would say that they had killed sixty people  and that only one of their own people had been killed. Historian Castellví says that there were three people dead from the Desvalls group, and gives the name of one of them, Albareda,Master of Castellblanc. About those that were inside, Castellví only mentions two wounded people.
          It must be kept in mind that the Cerverans, several years later, widely exaggerated what they had done in order to obtain more benefits from Madrid. But the truth is that Ramon Navés, one of the city rulers, was so deeply pro-Philip that he firmly said that to go against king Philip was to go against the Holy Ghost. At the meeting held in the  town hall the agreement was to remain loyal to king Philip.  Gaspar Mir i Cadena was In charge of explaining that decision to Desvalls’ and Sobies’s people.
          A group of English soldiers coming from Vilafranca del Penedès had arrived to the camp of the besiegers. With them were many people from the region. All together were several thousand men. Some historians say the number was ten thousand.
          Considering the hostile attitude of the Cervera people, some haystacks were set on fire at daybreak of the following day. This made the people of Cervera to decide to send  Magí de Vilanova to parlay, since he was a man who seemed  rader in favor of  Charles III.  It was agreed that Gaspar Mir and Josep Montserrat would go to Barcelona to pay homage to the king. According to historian Agustí  Duran i Senpere, the homage was paid at nine o’clock in the morning of the 10th, without the strong opposition that the Cervera people mentioned later on. Duran found that., in the Book of the Council, the decisions taken during those days were so streaked  that they cannot be read. Castellví says that Mir and Montserrat stayed for twenty days in the royal camp. They were asking to Charles III to ratify the Cervera’s right to be a city, a right that had been given to them in 1701 by Philip. Charles did not ratify that right to them because of the pressure brought to bear by the people from Tàrrega, from Agramunt, and from Guissona against Cervera.
          After Cervera had been taken, captain Freixes came again with the order to go to Balaguer. Desvalls, Sobies, and their people had their camps on the Segre riverbanks. They strongly requested Balaguer to surrender and join their movement. The first magistrate, Josep d’Aguilar i d’Alós, immediately gave the obedience oath.  It is possible that the fear of having there an action like the one in Cervera had helped him to make a quick decision.
          The Book of the Council of Tàrrega  tells us that on the 12th  captain Manuel Gomà had arrived in Tàrrega, sent by Sobies. He was asking for twelve carts to go to Barcelona. This was one of the war contributions that were just beginning and that would be there through the following years.In this case the order was given to carry Charles III’s baggage and people to Tarragona and Valencia when they thought of going away from the Barcelona siege. In the Book of the Council of Valls there is the same order, too. Tarrega did not show great enthusiasm since they said that the town already had four carts and eight pairs of mules in Charles’s III‘s service. They promised to do it next time, but not at that moment.
          On that day captain Freixes and Domenec Germanet  de Bellpuig arrived at the camp of Manuel Desvalls and Miquel Sobies at Balaguer. They brought a grant of colonel for Sobies and an order to attack Lleida for the Desvalls. They were also carrying orders from the prince of Hessen-Darmstadt  and from  the Portuguese ambassador the count of Assumar for Alvar de Melo, the governor of Lleida. The governor had a Portuguese nationality, and in that letter he was offered favor and promotion if he joined the pro-Austrian side.
          Josep Aguilar i d’Alós went at night to talk to Melo in Lleida. They were friends. Melo declared that he would defend the city and that if it came to surrender he would go back to Portugal.
            The militia was called in Agramunt, Tàrrega, Balaguer, Cervera and Lleida to carry out the prince’s orders. The militia got together in front of Lleida, on the irrigated region side. The group that left from Balaguer wth the carts went through Castelló de Farfanya on the 15th, through Almenar and Alcarràs on the 16th, and reached Lleida on the 17th. They were giving time to the people from the towns to join them.
          We know that Sobies was asking in Tàrrega for the mayor to appear in front of Lleida  on the following  morning  with all the men he could bring. It was decided in the Council that the mayor would go there with eighty men. It was extremely difficult to find volonteers. Finally the Council decided by lot among the names of all the men in town who could carry arms, and those went to Lleida. That explains why there were ten thousand men in the marquis del Poal’s forces. And the same thing was done in the other regions.
           They were not revolted in the sense of being personally rebellious. They were called by the military institutions of the time to fulfill their duty of defending their fatherland in a moment of danger. All the institutions, up to those that were the basis of the nation, accepted the nobility to direct the defense actions as the military head of the country. It was being done what had always been done in similar moments of danger. The town councils took care of the expenses and they gave to the neighbors sent to similar actions the same that the Tàrrega town council gave:” two jars of wine, two ounces of cheese, three pieces of money… and ammunition, too.” The guns were kept at home or at the town hall. In modern times we only know of two civilized  nations that call their men up according to well organized plans: Switzerland and Israel.
          On the 21st all those people came together in front of Lleida, on the side irrigated by the Segre River. We should not be misled by the propaganda of those days. When one reads the leaflets that appeared at the end of 1705, one sees that they say that  “the fight is against the French and the botiflers.”  Very rarely it is said there that the fight is against Spain. But reality was evident: French or Frogs were the French officers that had come with Philip IV and, with them, some traders. It is difficult to believe that there could  have been many French in the Urgell plains.  The fight was against Philip IV. It was suitable for Charles III to show it as a war against France, but when he wrote to the cities he talked about giving them back their liberties or simply their freedom.
          The Lleida population – not the small group of royal civil servants – was Catalan and in favor of the liberties of Catalonia at all levels. The Lleidan historian Lladonosa writes that at that moment there were only two botifler families in Lleida. He writes, however, about fervent pro-Austrians, like the Maranyosa, Segarra, Montserrat, Soldevila, Olzinelles, Cubells, Alemany, Queraltó, Peiró, Bullfarines, Vega, Ager, Riquer, and Guiu. We will later go over about what the people thought.
          To explain the transfer of authority from the pro-Philip ones to the pro-Austrians, the marquis of San Felipe gives us one of his descriptions full of color and contempt. Leaving aside his spitefulness, we are able to catch a glimpse of the depth of the liberating movement which he wants to discredit. And so he says:
         “An expedition was organized that was an insult against Lleida. Three-hundred infantry men of the county came to the city. Their arms were old and blackened swords, shotguns badly put together, sticks and spears. There were some one hundred and fifty men armed in the same way riding horses, mules, and donkeys with large baskets. That was the famous army that besieged Lleida!  They threatened to destroy flower gardens and vegetable gardens. The people inside knew what was happening through messengers. They got together and asked the authorities to open the doors. The bishop Francesc de Solís, a good and learned man, was against it with constant fidelity, knowing what his duty was. He called together the clergy and planned the defense. But the people, being either deaf or corrupted by good promises, acclaimed king Charles, opened the doors and took up te arms against those they considered to be disloyal. One of these was Antoni Calderillo who saw that they were chasing him and went to hide in a cave. The bishop ran away on foot. being only able to take his breviary with him, and went to Fraga together with his servants. The governor of the city, having only twenty-four men with him, shut himself in the castle. The men who had been with him deserted and only six men who were ill were still there. And they opened the castle door without the governor knowing it. This is how Lleida was lost.”
          If we should believe this description, we would not be able to understand how a group of men so badly armed could have achieved the surrender of a fortified city, if we did not admit at the same time that the city wanted to be free of the Spaniards. It is true that on the 21st the Desvalls’ men threatened the city saying that if it did not surrender “many bad things would follow, like burning the towers and haystacks, felling  the trees, destroying vineyards, and other great damage that would follow.” They had done this kind of thing in Cervera and, in a lesser way, in Constantí. Other towns were threatened too, and it was very effective.
          As in all the other cities, the civil authorities got together to deliberate. Here it was decided, together with the church authorities, that the General Council was the body to talk to the besiegers.. The governor did not share this opinion. He was told, like in Girona and in Valencia, that he did not have enough forces to defend the city. In the final answer of the city to the Desvalls and Sobies, it was said that “…the city quite agreed to deal about the subject of giving the obedience oath that they asked and to do it through the way of surrendering”. Alvar de Melo protested saying that there still were many brave citizens ready to defend the city. If we look at the Castellví description, we see that he only considers the military column without mentioning the militia men from all the western regions.
          Castellvi says that, on the 17th, it could be seen clearly if the governor could relay on the people from Lleida. He had brought together, with difficulty, around two hundred men in Sant Joan Square and had done his best to convince them to go to the castle to defend the ramparts. However, when he was thinking that they were ready to obey him, the locksmith Joan Sauret spoke. He was there with two countrymen friends of his: Jaume Martí, called “the Ribagorça”, and Pere Màrtir Gisbert. Sauret said loudly that it was not their duty to do military actions, partly because since they were not soldiers, this created a great confusion. Bishop Francesc Solís, a fervent pro-Philip man, went to the Sant Joan church, took out the Holy Sacrament and carrying it in his hands asked those men to go to the castle and do what the governor had asked them to do if they did not want to be taken by the heretical people. Then the Ribagorça went to him and in a low and respectful voice – because the Holy Sacrament was there – he told the bishop to go back and stay out of that affair since those attacking them were not heretics, and that the perjury was done by those who did not obey the Privileges of the country.
          These words bring to mind the reason why those Lleida people refused the obedience to Philip. Let us compare it with the easy way with which Grau  in Tremp had brought together thousands of men in scarcely populated mountains , and with the oath given in front of the Blessed Sacrament in Vallbona by the Desvalls group. We can see clearly that there was a unity of feeling among our people then. I must point out that  historian Castellví, in the 3rd volume, wants to avoid any possibility of making this to appear as an uncontrolled popular commotion.
          On the 18th, on the day following that action in Snt Joan’s square,  the brother of  Manuel Desvalls, Antoni, joined them to take charge of the operations. . “Ribagorça” had sent a countryman there to act as if he were dumb, but really to see what the allies wanted. The countryman, whose name was Andreu Puig, spoke with Antoni Desvalls. He went back to the city that same night , and a group of country people went from the city to talk to Desvalls and discuss how the city’s surrender might be achieved.
          The castle of Gardeny surrendered with thirty-eight men after some twenty soldiers had run away at night through a hole opened in one of the walls connected to a mill. One of those soldiers was called Antoni Prats and fas from Arbeca. Afterwards, Charles III granted him the grade of lieutenant-colonel.
          On the 21st Antoni Desvalls officially asked the city to surrender. Ignasi Maranyosa, professors Biosca and Nogués, and the syndic Joan Bautista Bullfarines were to discuss the surrender from the city’s side.
          There were two or three days of talk. Meanwhile it was heard that a strong column of Lluis de Salazar Spanish cavalry was advancing towards Lleida and so the castle of Gardeny was armed.On September 25th the surrender was signed in the tower of Puig-Pedrell  by the governor’s order. Those signing it were Miquel de Segarra, the head of the group that had been called by the governor” valiant citizens”, and from the Catalan side by Manuel Desvalls and Miquel Sobies,  who had received a written order brought by Freixes when they still were at Balaguer.
          At  two o’clock p.m. the sentry on duty  in the castle opened the latch and the “Ribagorça” and Domènec Gernanet went in with a group of citizens. Once the castle was taken Antoni Desvalls openly entered the city and spoke to the bishop and to the governor, who were scared and hiding inside the magnificent cathedral. He told them to go to the convent of the Descalços, and two days later, on the 27th, he gave them a militia scort to protect them up to Fraga. Thirty-seven soldiers followed Melo. Eighteen bronze cannons and ten iron cannons stayed in lleida.
          Antoni Desvalls asked the city to form the Coronela to defend themselves should an attack come from the Aragó side, and this was immediately done.
          Antoni Desvalls and his brother Manuel were helped  by Miquel and Felip Sobies, the brothers Josep and Geroni Castellvell, Josep de Peguera and de Cortit, master of Gra, Carles Pous, master of Montsonis, Ramon and Josep Rialp  and Safont, Antoni Pocurull,  and Pere Gomar, governor of the barony of Bellpuig.
          Solis went to Madrid and published a leaflet in honor of Philip IV. Even more, he paid a batallion that acted against Catalonia from Jaca. Some years later, when he went back to Lleida, he was very vindictive with the canons who had auctioned off his jewels, furniture, and books in order to contribute to the war expenses. The gap between the bishop and the faithful was so evident that it was impossible for him to stay in lleida even during the years of the worst repression. He asked to be placed somewhere else and Philip IV named him archbishop of Cordova.
(to be continued)             
                                                                                  Antoni Porta

To the interested reader: LA VICTÒRIA CATALANA DE 1705, by Dr. Antoni Porta may be ordered from 
Clara Prat
Sant Pau 16
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 for delivery.

From EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA

KO TAZAWA, MY JAPANESE FRIEND

          I was happy to get to know Kotazawa more than ten years ago. He is the Japanese to whom the Generalitat of Catalunya has awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi.
          Our first contact was really curious. He had sent me a letter to the address of the newspaper AVUI where I was then a columnist. In the letter he was asking me if it would be possible for me to find a family in Barcelona who would accept to have him as a guest during three weeks. He wanted to hear people speaking in Catalan. Why? It is worth to summarize the story..
          Ko Tazawa had been born in Yokohama. He had studied sociology and had found a job in a bank. This bank sent him to an office in Madrid. Before going there he stayed in Barcelona in order to study Castilian. It was the time of the referendum for the Catalan Statute. He worked for three years in Madrid, he married Yoshiko – he had met her in Santander – and then they went back to Japan.
          But he had changed. He was not any more a Japanese ready to sacrifice everything for his place of work. He wanted to go on studying. He received a PHD in Hispanic Philology from Osaka. And the subject of his thesis was the linguistic situation in Catalonia. And this is almost unbelievable: he learned Catalan in Japan on his own, with books and cassettes!  And then was when he wrote to me about wanting to come to Barcelona to get to know better the Catalan language and culture.
          I met with this Japanese who was already speaking a very acceptable Catalan. And he soon told me that he would be back to stay a longer time, bringing his wife and his two sons. And so they did.
          The children, Yu and Key – six and four years old, I think- had a radical immersion: they just joined a Catalan school. They were a very nice and intelligent family.
           Here Tazawa published two books written in Catalan, where he explains how he sees the Catalans and gives interesting information about the Japanese. In Japan he has published a Catalan Grammar for Japanese people and a Japanese-Catalan dictionary. He has also translated Catalan books into Japanese.
          And he has been awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi, the Saint George’s Cross. I am happy for my friend, most of all because it implies an appreciation of his work. Dear Ko, I do not know Japanese but I dare to say to you : SHUKUJI TO ARIGATO, congratulations and thank you1 

                                                                                     J.M. Espinàs

From the newspaper AVUI

FOR SELF-RESPECT 
          It is enervating that so many people be telling me from many diverse points of view that I am an inferior being. They are mistaken, of course, but they say it with a very impassive conviction, as if they were sure of it. The Vatican did it a few days ago, telling me clearly that I am inferior because I am a woman.
          The other day it came from the brand-new Euro-deputy Josep Borrell. He was telling me that my language is not important, and this undoubtedly means that it is an inferior language. Therefore, since I am speaking an inferior language I am inferior too. I know that if we were talking about Spanish, with the ñ included, Josep Borrell would have raised both arms, like Moses in front of the Red Sea, and would have turned the situation upside down. And even the mellifluous Zapatero would have mentioned Cervantes name, full of wrath. But, if you allow me to use the male chauvinist appellative, Catalan is “un coñazo”.
          But I am not second class, no matter how many words you use to try to convince me. We are constantly appealing to the laws to see when, how, where, and in which way I can use my language, and that means that the whole thing is a loud failure.
          Some of those that give up are Catalans who form the mass of those convinced that they really are inferior. But I will not change my mind. I am a citizen like any other citizen, and I will only be silent in the extreme case of having my freedom taken away and not being able to get it back. But not even then would I be convinced.  The human being may be extremely cool, it may happily adjust to the environment, it may have a flexible central nervous system but, even so, we are different from the animals because we cannot be tamed like the goats, the dogs, or the fowl.
          It is striking to consider that we, all the women of the world together, are a sensational number. So much so that if one day we were to get together and give a kick on the floor, not only the Earth would shake, but also the petrified and terrible heart of the totalitarian people would tremble. And it is shocking that if we put together those of us who do not have our own State, we would get an enormous number of citizens. The rest of human kind looks at us unfavorably. For instance, Peking had just announced that they will squash any separatist move from Taiwan. Squash: as if they were beetles, and as if the genocide was allowed.
          That is why I will vote NO to the European Constitution. Because I cannot accept that I am inferior. That is to say, for self-respect.

                                                                      Isabel-Clara Simó

THE CHRONICLES

          The Chronicles of Jaime I, Bernat Desclot, Ramon Muntaner, and Pere III, the so-called “four great Chronicles”, are the four outstanding works of the abundant Catalan historiographical production. And they are so both for their literary quality and for being a necessary and often unique source of information about the history of  the Catalan-Aragonese monarchy, about the long period of time that goes from the birth of Jaume I in 1208 to the death of Pere III el Cerimoniós in 1387.  Of  these four Chronicles, the one by Desclot  and the one by Muntaner are those with more international projection. The Chronicles by Jaume I and by Pere III  are mainly centered in domestic and peninsular policy. Desclot and Muntaner are telling us about the years that saw the Catalan-Aragonese monarchy entering the Mediterranean and the European scene.
          The fifty years that go from Pere II el Gran ascending to the throne in 1276 to Jaume II’s death  in 1327 are the years where we see a reorganized and much more complex exterior policy  after the failure of the South of France policy with Pere I’s death in the battle of Muret. That new policy greatly surpasses the Iberian peninsula and the fight with the Moslems. It is the time of confrontation with powers like the papacy, the Anjou and the Capets monarchy and, even farther, with the confused world of the Mediterranean East of the Latin States, of the Byzantine Empire and the Turks. And they are, too, the years of the great main role of the almsgivers.
          The two historians, Desclot and Muntaner, narrators of the history of those fifty years, are the creators of the “myth” of the almsgivers. Each one of them did it in his own way, according to the historic facts each of them personally attended. And also , for each one of them, according to their cultural level, their social position, their capacity, their vision of the world and. finally, their publicity needs. Ramon Muntaner is the writer that has given us the most wide, detailed, and rich relation of the almsgiver epic, but its creator is Bernat Desclot.
           Bernat Desclot, author of the “Llibre del rei En Pere d’Aragó i els seus antecessors passats”, is what would be defined in the Middle Ages as a professional historian. He was a civil servant in Pere II’s chancellery. His work put him in touch with the world of learning and of archives as well as with the royal court that was the neuralgic center of policy and information. These two elements are clearly reflected in the composition of his work.
          Desclot is an objective historian. He is not objective in the sense of always telling the truth of the facts he explains. In this sense, objectivity perhaps does not exist even in modern science. He is objective because, unlike Jaume I and Ramon Muntaner, for example, he does not search into his personal memories for reasons to write, he does not give an especially individual interpretation of the events, and he does not limit the story to his participation in those happenings. Desclot carefully selects his information sources – historical, documental, testimonial – on which he will build his work. In that work it is often difficult to separate his personal idea from the expression of an ideology and a political position that is monarchist and noble.
          From this point of view, Desclot works out a model of royalty based on the value of the lineage, the  courage, the conquests, the imitation af the ancestors, and on justice. In one hand, this model develops and completely builds some principles of monarchic ideology that had been already worked out during Pere I’s reign ( 1196-1213). On the other hand, it upholds the noble autonomy in front of the absolutist tendency of king Pere II. This way of thinking took him, too, to defend the unity of the king and his kingdoms, to criticize indirectly Jaume I’s division of his domains with the creation of the semi-independent kingdom of Mallorca, and to justify the reincorporation of that land to the central and main part of the kingdom. It is important to bring up these elements because they are absolutely opposed to Muntaner’s point of view.
          As I said above, Desclot is the inventor of the almsgivers’ myth and a recent discovery made by this writer  allows us to see how, when, and possibly why he did it, and in this way makes us able to go into the inner mechanisms of elaboration  of a medieval chronicle.
          Desclot writes the last part of his chronicle, the one that deals with the convulsed years 1282-1285, from the very center of what was happening. We might think that, as other historians have done, he would write down what was happening when the news reached him; later, he would organize what he had and write everything again in a second moment, when he would think that the situations he wanted to relate had been finished. And this happened after the death of king Pere, on November of 1285.
          The news, however, did not circulate with the same speed they do today. And we must remember that Sicilia was far away, and that the news about war events happening there probably came slowly and with delay. We know that things went on more or less that way by remembering what we know about the dynamics of historic writing in the Middle Ages and also thanks to a fortunate discovery: the existence of two different writings of the Chronicle. The second writing, the one we read in the modern editions, had a publicity character much more stressed and controlled. And, something that more directly affects us, it gives much more information, mainly about the military operations in Sicilia.
          In the first writing, that I think that was just finished after the death of the king, Desclot shows that he has knowledge of the first stages of the war with some gaps. That is to say knowledge of what happened between June 1282, when the expedition went to Tunisia first and to Sicilia later, and November of the same year, when Charles d’Anjou challenged Pere to fight a duel, the famous Bordeaux challenge.
          It is very possible that during that time one or several messengers would have arrived n Barcelona with news about the victories in the north of Africa,  the successful conquest of Sicilia, and the challenge. The first writing of Desclot’s Chronicle at that moment completely ignores what had happened in Sicilia, and the almsgivers evidently are absent from it.
          I think that there are two reasons for this absence. One reason is ideological, the privilege granted to the knightly model of war where mercenary troops on foot had no place. A second reason is more practical: the almsgivers were a determinant part of the action in all the military operations, basically in guerrilla warfare and in rapid and deadly raids, all taking place in the continent. At the moment of putting in order the first writing, Desclot did not know about those operations.
          When more and most complete news came, Desclot decides to compose a second writing to widely explain the deeds and the victories over the Angevines in Italian lands and seas. And he finds himself in a rather atypical situation:  all the battles are naval battles, and he will give them a large space, but there is none in land, even though the Catalan supremacy was indisputable both by sea and by land. What was the source of that supremacy?  Who were those “pocs però bons” who according to another historian of the time “van guanyar 14.000 cavallers fins aleshores invictes”? Those “pocs però bons” were exactly the almsgivers.
          So Desclot used the accusations that had been made about king Pere being poor, with just a little power and insufficient troops and made of it a point of strength  and pride of the Catalan military success, considering the almsgivers to be collectively heroes, with some individuals standing out. That was going against the knightly rules of war, seen as an activity attached as a privilege to the noble courage of the cavalry, at least in the written records about the hard practice in the battle field. In Desclot’s work the almsgivers did not achieve the same main role that the king had, most of all Pere II, the role that also had admirals like Roger de Llúria and Ramon Marquet.But they did get out of the anonymity of the war workers and did step into the literary scene. After all, historiography is also literature, most of all if it uses the so-called vulgar language.
          The task of describing the –so to say- culminating point of the almsgiver epic was taken by Ramon Muntaner, the other great historian of that time, who was both an eyewitness and an actor in that epic. The very strong autobiographical character of Muntaner’s Chronicle has always been considered to be one of the more evident and essential marks of the work, together with a belief in the Providence’s work and in the strong unity and harmony existing among the different branches and dominions of the House of Aragó. 
          But we must go a step further. We must consider the personal and autobiographical element not only as a rhetorical resource, but as a strong factor in the selection of the subjects to be studied and most of all the way of developing them. If we did not keep that in mind we would not be able to explain  either  why Muntaner gives so much importance to the expedition to the Orient or the way he does it, without falling  in the triumphal Renaixença.
          Muntaner is a historian completely different from Desclot.  He loved to read, with a “popular” culture made of Ramon Llull and some texts like the Arthurian novels and epic poems. He was, in fact, a self-educated man without any scholastic formation, with only the first rudiments that allowed him to read, to write, and to reckon up.
          In his case it is not exceptional for him to write without being a professional of learning. What is exceptional is the way he does it.  The diffusion of the vulgar languages as cultural instruments impulse in the way of learning and through the XIIIth and XIVth centuries an always greater protagonist of laymen who had no academic or official studies, and Muntaner is one among many through Europe.
          It may seem a paradox, but what in fact moves Muntaner to write is the same thing that moved Jaume I and that will move Pere III: to justify himself, to find a sense in his own life, in his own actions, and to make it public. And this is done always expressing a point of view and a perspective of interpretation of what is happening that are rather personal and subjective. Just the contrary, therefore, of what Desclot had done. When we have other sources to compare we see that Muntaner manipulates his story, leaves out some facts, transforms other facts and he is mistaken in other points. We cannot be sure, therefore, that he is not doing the same thing when he is the only witness of some events that cannot be verified by other documents.
          This is not the point, however. I do not want to argue about Muntaner’s reliability as a historic witness, and it does not interest me to discuss how much did he manipulated his facts. What does interest me is to notice it and wonder why he does it.
          Muntaner gives us a false vision of the Catalan-Aragonese imperialism and of the relationship among the different kings of the dynasty. . However the fact that this vision may be historically false does not mean that it could not be true for him, for his experience, for his perception of the truth. It is quite possible that Muntaner’s manipulation of the facts is not completely willful in the sense that it is not due to any official reason of ideology and propaganda, as it happens in many other historians like, at least partly, in Desclot.
          Muntaner’s manipulation, when it is willful – and I think that it is often so- it is mainly due to personal reasons, to the strong autobiographical need to account for his life, and he does it according to his intellectual resources. These resources, of which one is providence, are partial and limited, as much for the person as for the moment of time.
          Muntaner traveled along the whole Mediterranean Sea. Without any problems of borders or enmity, he served under all the kings of several Catalan dynasties, he was actively present in many events and he was also appointed to official posts. He was one of the outstanding heroes in one of those events: the Expedition to the Orient with Roger de Flor and the almsgivers. From today’s point of view, it was not perhaps a deed of which to be proud, because the political results were not too many. But he could not know it beforehand and it was, in fact, an expedition characterized by a high level of brutality and ferocity: pillaging incursions, plunders, devastations, and deaths.
          Perhaps he did not see the expedition in that way, although his religious moralism would make us think that he did so, at least in part. However, the main thing is that it was his great adventure, whether or not he liked it, and that he and all those participating in it had to do well, like heroes and not like depredators. Muntaner has a good capacity of political analysis in his comments on each of the events, but his global perception is limited, partial, and we can even say diverted.
          The perception of a man of a lower rank that finds himself side by side with the great, the powerful and the famous men was diverted by his personal experiences, by his possibility to know about the events and about the decisions that caused those events, and for his popular perception. And all has to be heartfelt, marvelous, and peace has to reign everywhere. If it was not so, how could I – Ramon Muntaner, born in the village of Perelada – how could I live through all that, and do all that I have done? And how would we have been able to win so many times fighting against more powerful enemies and in so many difficult situations if it not were because of the Providence?
          The Providence has always been the universal medicine to explain what was inexplicable according to reason and also according to morality, the last resource of interpretation, never the first one, when any other reason is missing.
          If we read the Chronicle with care, we will see that Muntaner himself uncovers for us his purpose and his mental journeys, because he tells us in the chapter 193 that the real reason that made him to write was the need to tell about the Expedition to the Orient which, however, could not be explained by itself. It was necessary to find for it a more general sense. And since one can only speak about oneself when what has been done affects the noblemen – chapter 255- so Muntaner, in order to explain about himself, had to narrate the history of the kings of Aragó, always protected by God and the Providence.
          And the way he did it is strictly conditioned to the need to justify and to motivate the main role he decides to give to those who normally do not have it, to the important beings that, since they are not the leaders, they are always blurred in the background, that is to say like himself and the almsgivers.

                                                                                Stefano Maria Cingolani  

THE MEMORY OF THE BATTLE OF THE EBRE RIVER IS AGAIN ALIVE ON THE LAND

            Around 10 a.m. of the 16th of November 1938 after 116 days of bloody fight and struggle of the republican army, the Franco’s troops entered the town of Flix. It was the end of the Ebre battle, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, a battle that ended with more than 100.000 men dead.
           Sixty-six years later the battle sites have come back with the opening of the first centers of interpretation of that tragic historical event. It is an ambitious project developed by the CONSORCI MEMORIAL DELS ESPAIS DE LA BAYALLA DE L’EBRE (Memorial Association of the Sites of the Ebre Battle). Their purpose was to pay homage to all the combatants, without distinction. David Tormo, director of the Association, says: “The heroism of war is avoided, showing the hard and sensible side and trying to help a reflexive thinking”.
          In this wide historical space one will be able to see how the soldiers lived, what did they eat and even how they died. Some of the recuperated places are the trenches  of the Deveses in la Fatarella: two shelters and a line of 50 meters of trenches that the republican army built to defend the  urban center of la Fatarella,  and that the rebels took over on the 7th or 8th of November. The ditch has been getting reduced through the years. It initially had a depth of a meter and a half and now it has only 50 centimeters. It is being restored and will be covered with earthen bags, trunks, and branches so that it will look as it did during the war. People will be able to visit it after November 2004.
          At the same time and with the title “Les Veus del front” the town Pinell de Brai will offer a permanent exhibition of the role of the press and the propaganda of both armies. The so-called fallen houses of the Civil War will be marked, and so will be the Monument for Peace in the elevation 705 of the Pàndols mountain range, from where one can look at all the places where the battle was fought.
          The most ambitious project, however, will not be inaugurated until next February. It will be the Ossera Monument of Sant Bartomeu de la Fatarella. It will be formed by a space inside the Templar hermitage of Sant Bartomeu. In a large hall people will be able to read the biographies of ten soldiers from both armies Tormo says: “It is meant to be an homage to all of them, so that people will understand that the fighters were just people, most of them very young, coming from faraway places of the State, and all did suffer in the same way.”
           There is also the project to create a depot with the recuperated rests, classified and inventoried, of these mainly republican soldiers, who had remained badly buried because of the battle conditions and had not been identified. 
          This is the first part of the project. Later, probably in five years “depending on the financing”, they would like to have eight or ten itineraries and five centers of interpretation. Some of them will explain the role of the engineers in a battle where the river is the main star, or the role of the medical groups with Dr. Trueta as emblem. Others will explain the everyday life of the soldiers that were not in the firing line. and the difficulty they had to find anything to eat. The idea is to recuperate material from private collections and to negotiate again with the Spanish army, after the Aznar period when receptivity was non existent.
          The project has a budget of four and a half million euros, and it is mainly financed by the Generalitat. 
                                                                                Nùria Valls      

From LA VANGUARDIA
 WHAT  CATALONIA  IS

          We have an open debate about what Catalonia is, that is to say what should it be called in the Constitution or in the Statute.  The debate is not irrelevant: one cannot play with what the people are. And although the Catalan saying “el  nom no fa la cosa”  is true, it is also true that sentimental charges gather behind the names,  charges that firmly establish themselves in the most loved history of the collective beings.
         Catalonia is a nation because, among other things and basically, the great majority of citizens of Catalonia see it as a nation. There is no academic reason or doctrinal claim that may have any value against this feeling. Whatever other people may say, for the citizens of Catalonia their country is a nation.
          For this reason, in the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia the latter is defined as a historical nationality. Nationality because defeating the centralist resistance to accept the name of nation, it recuperated the old principle of the Catalan nationality that the great ideologists of the Catalan nationalism had coined at the end of the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth centuries, Historical because, without any kind of doubt, the identity of Catalonia as a nation does not find its beginning in the Constitution of 1978, but in a much more remote history.
          However, for the first time in the history of Spanish constitutionalism, the 1978 Constitution acknowledged the evidence of nationalities  in the integration of Spain as a State, making a difference between them and the regions as the expression of a division more administrative and institutional than historic-political.
          Should this debate be opened again now? This question must be answered by the Parliament since it is the representative of the collective will of the citizens of Catalonia. But we should keep in mind that what we have already won should not be lost in that debate. That is to say, do not carry to other settings what only Catalonia may decide. We are what we are, and we would truly like that our feeling was shared outside Catalonia. But this does not mean that our identity exists because we had been so defined from outside Catalonia.
          To share would be good, but to let our identity be defined by people who have nothing to do with it would be a very serious thing. 
          The debate may be good, but so should the outcome be, too.

                                                                          Miquel Roca i Junyent

From El Temps

WHEN  CATALONIA  WAS  WILD

                    Catalonia is lately living a political period which is full of jolts.  Some years from now these jolts will surely have a historical dimension. Right now, we do not have enough analytical capacity to weigh them up. This political acceleration, however, has generated at least a clearly positive phenomenon. This phenomenon is made clearly specific in a clear increase of social interest to understand what has brought us to the present situation with all its limitations and its dissatisfactions.
          To say it in another way, we Catalans have recovered an interest in history, but most of all in our history. This circumstance has helped splendidly to generate didactical products like the magazine SAPIENS, one of the few unquestionable hits of the press in Catalan in this country’s stands. In another field, the series HISTORIES DE CATALUNYA of the Catalan Television has broken several platitudes and has obtained a very good ratio of audience, with a result that can be considered homologous of the best European productions of historical background.
          The writer Agustí Alcoberro is part of this success that was still unsuspected four or five years ago. Besides being an adviser to the above mentioned magazine and television program, he has written about questions that are unknown to most people, for instance the pro-Austrian exile. This almost journalistic style of choosing the subjects and most of all the way how he explains them have placed his book  PIRATES, BANDOLERS I BRUIXES in this flow of historiographical interest.
          Alcoberro has chosen  the three social groups that were the last refuge of those who were politically and socially excluded of the Catalonia of  the XVIth and XVIIth  centuries, a place almost wild, without either political  direction  or economical orientation, a place where it seemed that history had clearly decided not to stop. All the attention of the House of Austria kings was directed towards America. Catalonia, being poor, depopulated, with a juridical and administrative system too confused  to waste one’s time there, was changed into a colonial territory where the structures of the Crown of Aragó were kept untouched but inactive.
          All this aggravated the results of the medieval heritage, like piracy for instance. The villages on the coast and even the farmhouses on the nearest mountains had to fight that piracy fortifying themselves with their own resources.
          Alcoberro’s book  “Pirates, highwaymen, and witches is essentially good to faithfully guide us through the heroic reality of some people who  have deeply marked the Catalan oral tradition. Most of all this has been the case of the highwaymen who acquired so peculiar a shape in Catalonia that has made them to be alive in the people’s mind up to our times. After all, who can deny that people like Quico Sabater at least partly acquired an almost mythical dimension in the social sympathy just by a remembrance of brigandage?
         In that Catalonia full of forests Agustí Alcoberro tells us about bands of highwaymen  hidden in the bends of the roads that went to Barcelona, with practically unconcealed connections with some groups of noblemen or even with the farmers who lived  generation after generation without being able to get out of the threshold of ruin.
          This was the Catalonia that existed just before the later topics which considered the Catalans as having the same flaws that in fact defined the Jews in the rest of Europe. At that moment the Castilian writer Miguel de Cervantes did not imagine the Catalans as being stingy traders but as fearsome natives. He writes: “More than forty highwaymen suddenly surrounded them and told them in Catalan to stop and do not move until the captain had arrived.” The captain was Perot Rocaguinarda, and Don Quijote and his attendant spent three days and three nights with that Catalan highwayman, hiding themselves together through the woods around Barcelona.
          Perot Rocaguinarda was one of the few highwaymen who avoided the gallows. .Agustí Alcoberro uses Perot’s exceptional personality to compare him with those that, like Serrallonga, acquired quite a popularity in their own time. But in that context, - as in many others through history -, it was necessary to have a tragic ending at  the hands of a despotic power in order to add a new character in the gallery of popular heroes.
          Some other rejected people, the witches, had that same ending. They have also become a part of the Catalan folklore although, paradoxically, with an opposed function: the supernatural dimension and the belief that the worst misfortunes that society might suffer should be attributed to those hapless women. This took away their individuality and changed them into a class that appeared or disappeared according to the will of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.
          Pirated, highwaymen, witches…All of them were a part of the same popular classes that have always kept them in mind. 
          It was worth talking about them
                                                                          Salvador Cot

 THREE  HUNDRED  YEARS

          It happened some years ago. I was going from Montreal to the city of Quebec by car and without being in a hurry. I was in the old road that 	goes along the edge of the Saint Lawrence River and through all the villages and towns. At the entrance of each village and in all the streets and squares of that village there were little flags and posters where one could only read   “300 anys”. Three hundred years, nothing else. But three hundred years of what?  I thought that it probably was a historical date of those lands and valleys, perhaps meaning three centuries after a battle they had won against the English, or about some other war they had won. It is not normal to celebrate wars that had been lost. Only one strange country celebrates as a national feast a great defeat.
           But I could not recall any famous battle that would have been won at the end of the XVIIth century by the Quebecois or the French from Quebec. So that we went on through towns and villages following the majestic river until I decided that I wanted to know what those words meant. So we stopped the car and got out of it  in a village square, and went to read a poster that began with the puzzling  “300 years”. The whole poster told us: “300 years since the Heart of Jesus appeared to Saint Marguerite-Marie Alacoque". You know that I am talking about that mystical nun who saw the heart pierced and bleeding, the nun that created one of the great baroque devotions and who promised us that if we went to take Communion the first Fridays of nine consecutive months we would go to heaven directly, without any doubt.
          This is an unfailing guarantee and deserves a public commemoration especially in the Quebec lands where the people were so strongly catholic that they escaped being mewled with the protestant English speakers. This little history shows that, through the wide world, everybody remembers or commemorates what one chooses and how one chooses to do it. It is clear that three hundred years is a notable, impressive figure that deserves feasts, dances, serious acts, and other ways of celebration.
          Like, for instance, the inhabitants of Gibraltar on August the 4th – the day that I am writing this,- when they celebrate the three hundred years of the English arrival there. Gibraltar has been British since three hundred years ago, and the inhabitants of the small territory are extremely happy to be the heirs and the beneficiaries of that condition. They are an interesting people who speak Andalusian without any complex, who declare themselves to be British body and soul, and whose most rigorous thought is that they do not want to be Spaniards, not from afar, not for a joke, not in any way.
          Well, you probably have read that some months ago a British princess visited Gibraltar to give strength to the celebration. And later on they had the visit of a minister from the government of Her Majesty, who is British, too. This is not as important as the visit of the Heart of Jesus to the French saint woman, but it is something, nevertheless. The people from Gibraltar are happy and proud of those visits and the Spanish government is deeply upset, feeling that the nation’s honor has been wounded. I had already been taught about it when I was in high school and we had to sing a very patriotic song that, speaking about the rock, lamented that 
                     “hoy tus rocas son holladas por el asta the un exttraño pabellón”
 and our teacher was telling us in a very low voice that we could say  “cochino”  instead of “exttraño”.
           And we had already been told by the minister of Foreign Affairs of the first socialist administration  that the vindication of Gibraltar  was “ the spine of the Spanish foreign policy” and that iy would be so whether that original fact had happened either two, or three, or four hundred years ago. Because it cannot be tolerated that today’s sovereignty over a land be due to a military occupation that happened at the beginning of the XVIIIth century.
          I strongly agree. A few years from now – in 2007 in the old kingdom of Valencia and in 2014 in the old princedom of Catalonia – we will commemorate that three hundred years ago an equivalent and simultaneous occupation, similar in its outcome, happened here, and the hard-boiled Spaniards will tell us that we suffer from a trivial historical affliction. They feel themselves to be insulted and wounded by the simple visit of a British minister. Who knows which kind of visit will we receive when we “celebrate” our three hundred years, who knows where will we go to protest. And who knows if, like the Quebecois, we will fill up our villages and cities with posters and little flags. Long live, therefore, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, long live Quebec.
                                                                                Joan F. Mira

DID  YOU  KNOW  THAT…?
+++  The Israeli writer Amos Oz and the Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh have shared the International Catalonia Award 2004 granted by the Generalitat of Catalonia. The two men were awarded the price for their work towards peace, As an active member of the Israeli left wing, Amos Oz is one of the signatories of the Geneva Agreement of 2003 to end all violence. His political points of view in favor of an acknowledgement of the Arabs in Palestine have been put together in essays like “CONTRA EL FANATISME” and “ LES VEUS D’ISRAEL”. The philosopher and politician Sari Nusseibeh has a strong attitude against terrorism. He would like to see there two neighboring states, without colonies of one in the hand of the other. He has worked in the document “LA VEU DEL POBLE A FAVOR DE LA PAU”.

***  Marta Marín-Dòmine, translator and professor at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada,  has published TRADUIR EL DESIG. PSICOANÀLISI I LLENGUATGE, a revision of her PHD thesis. It has been edited by Eumo Publishing House working with four Catalan universities. The author applies psychoanalysis to the study of translation. She thinks that the theory of translation must admit that language, in fact, also translates the wish of the subject, often unconsciously expressed. Enric Berenguer says in the prologue that the book is a good introduction to psychoanalysis, especially for people who come to it from an experience in translation.

***  The University of Barcelona has published a  GUIA DE CONVERSA UNIVERSITARIA ÀRAB-CATALÀ . Mercè Viladrich, who coordinates the Mediterranean Policies of the UB Group, writes in the introduction of the GUÍA that “it does not matter the level in Catalan of the readers. The GUÎA will help them to use the best words and sentences for each situation from the moment of they arrival in Catalonia. Viladrich says that the newcomer will find there what to say when looking for a place to live, registering at the university, requesting medical help, or asking for some information in the library.
***  Eumo Editorial, from the University of Vic, has published MANUAL DE PRONUNCIACIÓ, by Anton Castellanos i Vila. That is a very daring enterprise, if we keep in mind the debates created by nuances in the diverse dialects. It was a necessary study because of the repercussion of the work of those who use the oral language as a tool. The book includes a CD where diverse exercises are proposed for the different chapters, with examples in the diverse models: central, north-occidental, Valencian and Balearic. Castellanos i Vila has placed interesting exercises in every step of this manual.
***  The publishing house ARA LLIBRES has published a book that, according to them, will turn children into great readers. The book is called M’AGRADA LLEGIR, and has been written by a group of pedagogues, writers, critics, and literary advisers. The book offers clear and efficient help to achieve that reading be a part of the everyday life of the children, so that they may be able to enter, on their own, into the magic world of books. The volume includes a quite extensive list of books in which all ages are considered. The authors of the guide are Jossep M. Aloy, Jaume Cela, Teresa Duran, Pep Molist , Anna Nolla, Joan Portell Rifé, and Montse Segma.