We are everyday citizens. We have never asked ourselves what language we speak, where we feel from, nor what flag holds more space in our hearts. We simply want to be happy with our loved ones. To keep working for our children’s future. To keep enjoying the reconciliation our parents and grandparents fought so hard for. It has taken us a great deal of work to get here. And this is why we are not willing to be stripped away of all we have accomplished together.
Everyday there are more of us that are outraged by what is happening. Those who want to divide us are destroying our social harmony. Because of them, these last days we have argued with people we love and with whom we still want to count and we have witnessed the increased tension that has taken hold in our land. They are wrecking Catalonia.
And we are fed up.
We are fed up because this divide takes its toll on our daily lives. We are fed up with not being able to freely and peacefully express our opinions. We are tired of being pointed at when we voice what we think and when we express what we feel. We are fed up with others speaking in our name for too long. Tired of having our rights taken away. We have had enough of them wanting to silence us. But they will not silence us.
Because we are more. We are more Catalans that are tired of politicians that have only worked to divide us instead of working to solve our real problems.
We are more Catalans that believe that putting up borders is not the solution. That in the 21st century you do not build walls but bridges.
We are more Catalans tired of not having our children at school taught how to think but only told what to think.
We are more who want to leave behind this damned economic crisis and that companies do not have to leave Catalonia because of irresponsible politicians that want to disconnect us from the world.
We are more Catalans that felt the thrill of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and that cheer the goals of our Spanish National Team. That admire Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, Machado’s verse, Dali’s art, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Not caring what language they spoke or where they were born.
We are more Catalans that want to keep dancing the ‘rumba catalana’ and giving each other books and roses on Saint George’s Day.
We are more Catalans that don't want to see our friends and families in the rest of Spain becoming foreigners in our own land. In their land. And we don’t want anyone to take away from us Granada’s Alhambra, The Way of Saint James, or the Concha of San Sebastian.
We are more that are convinced that the solution lays not in changing passports, but governors.
We are more that want to remain Catalan, Spanish, and European. And we will not let them to break our hearts.
You are not alone. We are more and they will not silence us.