A free sandwich, a free tour, a free TV channel and free orange juice can be the proof of Francesc Pujol’s prediction: Catalans will have everything paid for.
Francesc Pujols, a fairly unknown surrealist Catalan philosopher from the early XX century, concluded his philosophical theory predicting that catalans would have everything paid for when traveling around.
I remember Salvador Dalí telling a story about a Catalan eating in an expensive restaurant in the future. The waiter would come and ask him: -Sir, are you Catalan? Then everything is on the house.
We may not quite be there but there are some things that make me thing that Francesc Pujols may be right.
In my recent trip to San Francisco I happened to sit next to a Scottish girl who was on her way to El Salvador to act as an observer on the upcoming election. She had been in Barcelona working and had taken some Catalan language lessons in Glasgow. She could speak some Catalan and she even knew how to tell the time in our language (more than most people from Barcelona). She offered me her sandwich (this might have something to do with her being vegetarian).
When I got to San Francisco, Lisa, a colleague of the company I was going to work for, came to pick me up. She told me she was of Italian and Catalan origin, being her grandmother from Barcelona. She showed me around the City with her car.
After the tour I checked in at the hotel and when the concierge saw my name and passport he said right away: -Is this a Catalan family name? He recognized a name that didn’t quite match with a Spanish passport. It didn’t sound Spanish to him and he happened to know something about Barcelona. I got a corner room with a view on a high floor with free HBO.
The next day I had breakfast at the fancy arabic-fusion restaurant at the hotel. The waiter there, a moroccan who has been living in San Francisco for the last 20 years asked me where I was from. When I said from Barcelona he replied right away: -Oh you’re Catalan I see. He told me that he’d been in Perpignan visiting one of his friends and that’s how he knew about Catalonia. I got extra fruit salad and extra orange juice.
I don’t know how long it will take until we get everything for free but we’re sure on the right track.
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