Independentista

About four weeks ago I signed up to be a part of a volunteer Catalan language exchange program. The goal of the program is to help promote the speaking Catalan. Natives and language learners volunteered to dedicate one hour a week for ten weeks to speaking. Each native speaker was paired with someone who is learning - and my partner and I have been meeting for a café at L'Espiga every Tuesday afternoon for four weeks now. It is amazing to me how the understanding of the language has crystalized for me over these 8 months, so that once I began going to classes and began to see how the grammar of what I have been hearing on a daily basis breaks down, I really am beginning to understand. Speaking still comes more slowly, but I do understand. I'm sure it is thanks to the Spanish that I already know, as the structure is similar. But hearing it every day doesn't hurt either. My conversation partner is a self professed independentista (someone who believes strongly in Catalan independence from Spain), so it has been fun to talk with him about Catalan history. Catalonia is of course a part of Spain and, final say always comes from the central government of Madrid. But it is an autonomous region and as an autonomous region, it has its own official flag. But it has another flag too, the independentista flag. It is called la estelada(the star). The star represents independence and the design was inspired in part by the flag of Cuba and their independence from Spain and from the US flag, which of course symbolizes each state and wouldn't have been possible without our independence from England. My conversation partner, who has connections, gave me a Catalan estelada flag and I promised him I would climb to the top of a mountain in the US, plant the flag and send him a picture. We've definitely caught some of the Catalan spirit. Until then, it is adorning our piso wall for our last two weeks in Catalonia. Visca Catalunya!