What hotel are they staying at?

There is a Pujolista joke that says that when the president went to China and said ‘we are 6 million’, the authorities asked him ‘and what hotel are they staying at?’ I was reminded of this fact by the news about the chartered school Teide in Viladecans. It can be seen that it was about to close due to the drop in the birth rate, which, absurdly, to say the least, caused it to lose the subsidy from the Generalitat. But now they will be able to survive thanks to a gentleman named Ran Liang, a Chinese businessman and investor, as they must have deduced. Liang has been living in Catalonia for ten years and has decided to pay off his debts… on one condition: that Chinese be taught there. The news has sparked anticipation and headlines have been divided between those focusing the story on the investor and those adding that the children will learn Chinese, which I think is relevant.

An opportunity for the school

A year ago, to try to solve the problems, the school signed an agreement with the Chinese Cultural Center of Manresa, ceding some classrooms so that Chinese classes could be held there on Sundays. And that decision ended up saving the Teide and turning it into an enviable center. Because that’s where the relationship with Liang comes from, and Liang has made it a condition to manage him that he learns Chinese and reinforces his English at school. So, from September, some core subjects will be taught in English – as allowed by Catalan law – and compulsory Chinese classes will be held using the sixth hour. bingo Because at this point in history, this is the debate that should be had. Catalan, in view of sociological change, must be protected, yes. But the discussion should not be whether Catalan or Spanish. What should be debated and encouraged is how our students leave school mastering Catalan, Spanish, English… and Chinese. That they are not only many, as in Pujol’s time, but that is where the world economic center is moving.

Revolt of habits

Since we have lost the north we are forced to re-educate our food consumption habits. Let’s go straight to the farmers’ protests today, which, however little we have memory, we know come from far away. And from afar, in the background, there is also a social, productive, economic transformation that makes us ignorant of the natural cycle, and that fills the pantry with products that we don’t even know where they come from. With our heads down on our cellphones, unable to see beyond that frame, myopic to our surroundings, unable to sense that our individual gesture also has an impact. And if we like to eat avocados, which need water to reach the table, and we don’t know if they come from Mexico or Andalusia, we have to think about what it means to choose and buy one product or another. Buy local foods, and stay away from large supermarkets that do not respect them, buy seasonal products, adjusted to the Mediterranean palate, beyond price and comfort, making a conscious act, political if you like, of the daily purchase . Nor is it a question of placing the burden of the solution of the various evils affecting farmers and ranchers on the individual gesture, because for this we have organized ourselves and equipped ourselves with political power structures that must assume their responsibilities. The question is whether we will have time to turn it around. Because there are many elements that are linked to the same evil, from climate change, with the drought we have now, to depopulation, neglected forests, a wild fauna profile: wild boars, rabbits, roe deer, which harms crops. And reconnect these worlds that seem so far apart, the rural and the urban, the city and the countryside, the plain and the mountain. To recover the lost culture, as ignorant as we are of those knowledges that used to make us people ‘with good blood for the land that gives me breath’, as Miquel Desclot sings, and it is because of this ignorance that there are those who live .