There is a conversation that repeats itself in Barcelona with almost liturgical punctuality: what does it mean to be Catalan today? And every time someone tries to answer it, three or four voices arise to complicate it even further.
Well. Let's complicate it.
For decades, we have confused identity with origin. As if Catalan identity were a recessive gene that either you have or you don't. As if it depended on your grandfather's surname or the town where you were born. This idea, comfortable and reassuring for those who fit it, has been causing silent harm for years: it excludes those who have built their entire lives here and embraces unconditionally those who left without looking back.
Identity is not a notarial archive. It is a daily practice, sometimes uncomfortable, always active.
Barcelona is now a city where more than 180 nationalities coexist. This is not an urban management problem. It is a cultural reality that must either be integrated with criteria or left to rot in nostalgic complaint. And Catalunya, with all its history of resistance and its ability to survive what has been thrown at it, has more than enough resources to do it well. If it wants to.
The problem is not diversity. The problem is that part of Catalan society still expects its identity to be recognised from the outside, rather than exercising it from within. Respect is demanded for the language, but it is abandoned in uncomfortable conversations. Culture is claimed, but the cart is filled with global products and the local bookstore is closed. There is talk of country, but votes are cast with the wallet.
This is not a moral reproach. It is a description of the real tension that exists between identity discourse and daily practice. A tension that, by the way, is not exclusive to Catalunya. But here, where identity has long been a political battleground, it is particularly costly to ignore.
Those who choose to stay, learn the language, and pay taxes here deserve to be treated as what they are: part of this. No asterisks.
What is genuinely Catalan —and worth defending tooth and nail— is the ability to create community from difference. The neighbourhoods of this city have been doing it for generations: people who arrived with nothing and built something. This should not become a merit of the past that is cited in speeches. It should be the model of the present.
Catalan identity does not need guardians. It needs practitioners. People willing to speak Catalan even if the other responds in Spanish. To vote in local festivities even if their candidate does not win. To defend an independent bookstore with the same energy with which they defend a sports team.
As long as we continue to wait for others —Madrid, Brussels, the neighbour across the street— to validate our identity, we will keep wasting time in debates that lead nowhere. Catalan identity, like any living identity, is built every day or it is left to die of starvation.
The choice, as always, is ours.
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