I Pity the Poor Immigrant
I thought I would introduce my blogger-ego by way of a travelogue, since I happen to be traveling. Apologies if it's light on domestic politics and humor. I'm so tired that I cried over my chicken-and-chips while lunching at my favorite old haunt, the Rincon de la Ciudadella.

Landed at the Barcelona airport at 7:45 this morning, January 15, and rode a train to the center of town as the Mediterranean winter dawn broke late over the eastern foothills. Debarked at the Plaça de Cataluña, a sprawling square-in-the-round in the geographic belly of the city. This is where the tourists cluster and hustlers meet each morning to plot their dull strategies. The trashmen, diligent men of BC/Neta, the world's most sophisticated and efficient public works department, are finishing their meticulous sidewalk scrubbing. Standing in the midst of a sea of pigeons, I can see the El Cortes Ingles and FNAC buildings facing off across the Plaça, each representing Europe's Wal-Mart (until they're snuffed by encroaching Wal-Mart). To the South I can also see the leafy entrance to La Rambla, a shabby pedestrian Broadway of dubious reknown where confidence men and bird peddlers battle for the attentions of confused, camera-draped Germans and greasy, be-denimed families of Frenchmen. To the west, behind the El Corte Ingles, is Antoni Gaudi's dribbly postcard church, Sagrada Familia.

But Plaça de Cataluña is best known as the site where the Catalan militias made their last stand against the Francisco Franco's advancing "Nacionale" coup in February 1939. Across Spain, thousands of populist "Republican" militiamen - socialists, Communists intellectuals, internationalists - died in the futile fight against Franco's army. It was a noble and doomed battle in which the Catalans were wretchedly outnumbered, and when Franco wrested control of Plaça de Catalunya, the lights turned out in Spain for the next 37 years. Cataluña suffered the most vicious federal reprisals for its unwillingness to surrender, and Catalans have since earned a reputation across Spain as a stubborn, snooty, sometimes cold people.

Later this morning, I thought about Franco and the tragic Catalans when I strolled to the tiny square I moved to way back in the week before 9/11/01. The square, with a tiny community fountain and coffee shop, borders a lively Arab slum. After the terror attacks in New York City, news reports place Mohammed Atta at a meeting of the Al Qaeda minds in the nearby town of Tarragona. The Spanish government, led by a conservative with a soup-strainer mustache named Jose Maria Aznar, conducted massive, arbitrary sweeps of the Arab quarters and rumors spread of countless Arab men gone missing or shipped back to Morocco and Algeria and Egypt. Unburdened by any significant civil liberty protections, the round-ups went on without judicial oversite or even much popular protest. In my square this morning though, the Arab presence appeared stronger than it had ever been. Where before fewer than ten or fifteen Arabs would loiter (in a boisterous, menacing way in which Arabs seem to specialize. Ahem. Excuse me.), there were hundreds, gathered in tight circles, kicking soccer balls. A waft of hash smoke passes. Stubborn motherfuckers. The nail-stiff Catalans beat at them like vermin and they relax and multiply. Imagine that...
- posted by The Long Shot @ Saturday, January 15, 2005