I have many stories in Catalonia, very beautiful ones. I walked through Lleida, working the fruit: pears, apples, and peaches. This is just one. From the countryside. The peaches were hard because of the heat, which was extreme for a Canary Islander, and because when you brushed against them, they stung desperately. And up those ladders, perched in the trees, scratching wasn't easy, and if you started, there was no end.
I was in a bar in the village, and the farmer came to hire us for the following week. I was building a house of cards on the table, and it caught his attention. Some farmers were already watching me because I had put together quite a few decks, and it was already a good size. Then, half-joking, half-serious, and doubting how far I could go with my castle, I made him an offer. If I get the castle to the ceiling, you pay me for the week, and I don't work, but if I don't make it and it falls before, I work for free. Ha! It was a series of floors. So, imagine, people crowded around, the revelry began, and they egged him on to accept.
We had to collect cards from all over the village. I threw away what I had and started a new one with a large base on a couple of tables that we put together. No one breathed and they even guarded the door so no draft would come in. Nobility. I succeeded: I "conquered" Catalonia with a castle. And all the agreements were respected. Did you hear, my king?
I liked those villages where, no matter how much you told them about the Canary Islands, they would end up telling you that they had an uncle in Menorca. I loved that. There was hardly any TV, and La Graciosa wasn't paradise. I was fascinated by their ability to organize. Suddenly, the church bells would ring, and all the farmers would go to meet: apparently, someone wanted to lower the price of the fruit. Later I learned that this happened in every village and in every region in unison, and soon they had a common and unwavering position before the other. Then I realized why we called them penny-pinchers. We preferred to see them as misers instead of people with a level of coordination and socialization far above ours. That's called envy from the poor and unease from the rich.
I loved the sunsets; they were incredible day after day. And I liked even more sliding naked through the current of the irrigation ditches, kilometers and kilometers, and then walking back naked among the trees so that no one would see us, almost without light. In that, they are very similar to the rest, the naked body is worse than the uniformed body, even if with sticks. We slept under the trees naked because the heat wouldn't allow you more and you didn't need an alarm clock: at dawn, the deafening sound of thousands and thousands of little birds gave no option to continue sleeping.
Already at that time, they were fumigating everything in a brutal way, so I doubt there are many birds left; in that, we are also very similar. And surely the police would have kicked me out if I had gotten edgy in preventing it. And they would have cheered against me. But yes, I especially like the Catalans and the Basques, their people and their countries. Whether they are the most independentist, I don't know if it's a coincidence or not.
Then you would go to Barcelona and it was another world. The mundane one. There I met citizens and rarely more. But, my king, I was a child and the castles were of old cards. From what I see, my king, you are also a child, but your castles are of thick walls and weapons to take. Yours, the one you have to build, your own, not the one of the king in the painting with which you covered yourself, is to achieve the unity of this country and you can only know that if, like me, you can travel freely through paths, ditches, roads, highways and places to transit. But, above all, that each of your countrymen can do it in peace. Because each floor of the house of cards does not carry the same cards. But each floor fulfills its function. And if everyone blows or does not respect the doors, well... I say it is your mission as King; for me, I would send you to the peach orchard.
By Ginés Díaz Pallarés