Less tears, more subscribers

The reader will be well aware of the veto by PP and Vox (Valencian sectoral branches) on the magazines Camacuc, Llengua Nacional, Cavall Fort, El Temps and Enderrock in the Burriana library, under the excuse that the publications in question actively promote separatism. I have spoken out a thousand times against any type of censorship and in favor of importing the American libertarian model of free speech, so you can imagine that the news does not seem pleasant to me. But I must also say that I have written for and still participate in some of the mentioned magazines and, indeed, the Spanish right is absolutely right: they are initiatives in Catalan, with a national vocation and, contrary to what my third-way friends say, any form of Catalanism must naturally entail the longing for a free state. I do not buy censorship, far from it, but neither do I buy this timid habit of ours of pretending to be neutral.

That said, the position of most fellow citizens on the issue seems to me to be of a repugnant hypocrisy. People only remember Catalan magazines (to the aforementioned should be added the recently defunct l'Avenç and other ancestral products like Els Marges and Serra d'Or or more recent ones like 440 Clàssica and El món d'ahir) when they die or thanks to censorship. Our magazines, to put it clearly, need far fewer tears and far more subscribers. If the reader is concerned about the future of Sàpiens or Valors, please do the damn favor of subscribing. It is the best guarantee for their survival and the most optimal way, ultimately, to ensure that their promoters (and their columnists, while we're at it!) can do that much-needed thing of eating and surviving. Tears don't help to print, bind, or write. Paying does. 

Apart from our taxes and the paltry percentage that the administration dedicates to culture, Catalans have always had to pay for our own party. A thousand doctoral theses can be written about the injustice or historical anomaly of this idea, but the fact is the fact. If for every tear and every ounce of anger over the veto in question a subscription to one of the censored magazines had fallen, believe me, their managers today would be jumping for joy and bathing in champagne. During these next few weeks of campaigning, you will hear many Catalan politicians (and fellow citizens) compulsively repeating Joan Fuster's saying that you must create culture so that it is not created against you; these are the same leaders who have no problem promoting the bilingualization of the country in public media that are increasingly Castilianized and who would struggle to cite more than three magazines in Catalan.

If for every tear and every ounce of anger over the veto in question a subscription to one of the censored magazines had fallen, believe me, their managers today would be jumping for joy and bathing in champagne