September 11, 2009

September 11 in Catalunya

September 11 is now indelibly linked in minds the world over with those images of the World Trade Center engulfed in flames.

I’d been living in Manhattan until just six months before the attacks, and was a regular visitor to the WTC. To see a city so familiar and so dear to my heart being brutalised shook me to the core. As ever, my thoughts go out to the victims’ families on this day.

In my now-home though, Catalunya (or Catalonia in English-spelling), September 11 has an alternative significance.

It marks the anniversary of the 1714 fall of Barcelona during the War of the Spanish Succession, when Franco-Spanish forces defeated those of the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria. The victorious Bourbon monarchy – which still sits on the Spanish throne – then set about quashing the autonomy of Catalunya and centralising power in Madrid, a source of constant friction ever since.

So when self-government was restored to the region following the approval of the ‘Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia’ in 1979, the Catalan Parliament’s first act was to declare September 11 as Catalan National Day, La Diada.

It is, the Parliament proclamation said, “A special day which, while representing the painful memories of the loss of liberties, on the eleventh of September 1714, and an attitude of struggle and active resistance to oppression, also embodied the hope of total recovery of its nationhood.”

So the yellow and red-striped Catalan flag, the Senyera, is draped from windows and balconies, and concerts and celebrations will be held today across the region, most notably in Barcelona. Whether Catalunya will ever recover full nationhood though remains a contentious topic of debate.

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