Catalonia Notebook

We sang a hymn called ‘Poble en Marxa’ at the beginning of Mass in the working-class parish of Sant Blai. ‘Marxa’ was not a reference to the bearded prophet of revolution; it’s just the Catalan way of spelling marcha. People on the march. There was a lot of it about. In Barcelona, a million (the Catalans say two million) had marched to demand independence from an economically incompetent Madrid. In broke Madrid there were ten demonstrations in one day, with teachers and firemen being bused in to hold up banners and shout and blow whistles. The anarcho-syndicalists made a particularly brave showing. But that was all on the television. Here in Tortosa, in the parish of Sant Blai, there wasn’t much marching, just lots of hanging around. The black Africans hung around sadly, as they often seem to, singly or silently in pairs. None of their women were to be seen.