From the article by Ramon Barnils (Sabadell, 1940-Reus, 2001) to The Vanguard (22-IX-1989). Own translation. It has been thirty-five years since the incidents that, in addition to the rain, clouded the opening of the Montjuïc Olympic Stadium on September 8. There were shouts, octaves with pro-independence content were thrown, and whistles were blown against the King of Spain and some political and sports authorities who intervened in that event. Perhaps due to pressures inside and outside the newspaper, Barnils’ irony weakened in this piece.
That in its first information about the events TV3 did not even mention the incidents of the restoration of the Montjuïc stadium shows the extent to which journalists are closed within our own limits: those of daily superficiality, those of news that is no longer news, the ones that we ourselves and our media decree exists earlier than what actually exists. (…) More than a hundred articles have been counted in a single week aimed at giving opinion, insults, advice or deviation from the incidents of the said reinstatement. In other words, not technical-architectural incidents or even political incidents accepted by the journalist’s daily routine (incidents of current politics, whose presence was logically proclaimed in the events of Montjuic). No: these hundred articles refer, precisely, to what, according to primetime TV3 and according to most journalists, does not exist: politics, facts, feelings and pro-independence ideas. (…) This same newspaper, and all those who deal with our society, often publishes surveys on the political, patriotic and identity ideas of our fellow citizens as a whole. In these statistics, and for a long time now (for language issues since long before the current regime, in other words, already in full force of the previous regime) the preferences of citizens for their status as Catalans for above that of Spaniards is clear and, worse still, progressive. Until recently reaching, for the moment, highly worrying figures: more than half consider themselves Catalan rather than Spanish, and no longer a handful of people but a couple of handfuls and, what is even worse, not exclusively teenagers, they consider that being Catalan is enough for them (and sometimes we even have enough, and I excuse the statistical manipulation). Maximum horror: identity consolidation parallels democratic consolidation. Numbers, statistics, figures, exact details have not been seen in the cavalry, more or less scowling, thrown at those considered solely responsible for the ingratitude, the extra parliamentarianism and the boycott of the greatest occasion that the century has seen from Barcelona and its advocates. But the figures exist, the data is there, the numbers sing. And the five billion of the six thousand of the cost that, according to the mayor, the State of the Stadium has paid, could for example be compared to the six hundred billion that the then Minister of Economy of the Generalitat, Ramon Trias Fargas, remarked on these same pages in a memorable and irrefutable article, the State of the country is taking more and more from the Stadium every year that passes. Figures, data and numbers about what is really there, to which can now be added, for the information of the interested citizen beyond “what there is to see”, the hundred long articles on the matter. Quite a record: the first obtained thanks to the Stadium. Very rejuvenated, indeed.
Source: www.ara.cat
