From the text of Ambler Moss (Baltimore, 1937 – Miami, 2022) included in (Four) bars and stars (Símbol Editors, 2006), memoirs of this diplomat and professor, corresponding member of the IEC. Vice-consul of the USA in Barcelona in the 1960s, he supported the Catalan democratic cause. He knew Catalan, a recognized language, thanks to him, in the State Department. President Jimmy Carter, who died last December 29, appointed him ambassador to Panama at a critical moment in that American country.
(…) As a student of international relations, he aspired to be a diplomat. According to custom, the payroll of new entrants to diplomacy, after a basic course at the Foreign Service Institute, we had the option of asking for the first destination among embassies and consulates around the world. Now, it wasn’t as generous an offer as it seemed; with the limitation of open places – what was called “needs of the service” – only a small percentage of the newbies achieved the destination of their dreams. In my case, I was awarded the prize, and in the fall of 1964 I went to the Consulate General of the USA in Barcelona with my wife and a young son, who is also called Ambler, then months old. (…) As for Catalan, before reading Vicens Vives – thanks to which I got to know Catalan culture -, I only knew that it was the official language of a small state, Andorra, a fact that seemed more folkloric than anything something else (…) Until I arrived in Barcelona I didn’t really understand that it was still the language of Catalonia, the language spoken by the Catalans, that it was far from being eliminated, as had been attempted in 1939 and that Catalonia was really a nation, although in the dark. (…) I enjoyed freedom to meet all kinds of people and establish all kinds of contacts and contribute to making one rapport by the Department of State on the situation in Catalonia in the most authentic terms possible. (…) The two years spent in Barcelona were an intensive and profound education. It is no exaggeration to say that they gave me a certain perspective for all the years that followed. Later, in the years 1969-1971, he would hold the responsible position as Spanish Desk Officer – in charge of affairs related to Spain – at the Department of State in Washington. (…) From 1972 I followed the events in Catalonia from Europe. I had moved away from diplomacy to work as a lawyer in a law firm in Brussels. This gave me an excuse to go to Barcelona more often. (…) I returned to the US when the new Jimmy Carter administration invited me to join the negotiating team for the Panama Canal Treaties. After they were signed and approved by the Senate, President Carter appointed me US Ambassador to Panama with the delicate task of fulfilling the treaties that would end the existence of the Canal Zone and preparing the transfer of the canal to Panama. Later, he would be appointed again by the administration of Ronald Reagan and would thus spend four years as US ambassador to the Central American country. Catalonia, however, was not absent from my life. Upon arriving in Panama, the Catalan exile already knew about it. The first week a very old man, a well-known shopkeeper called Palomeras, called me to find out if it was true that “the American ambassador spoke Catalan”. Shortly afterwards we gathered a group of Catalan friends and, from time to time, we met at the embassy residence and they told me that I was “their ambassador”. (…)
Source: www.ara.cat
