Catalina’s mother was able to travel and be with us for a number of weeks, shortly after the birth of her grandson, our son. On one of the Saturdays of her visit, the two decided to, finally, “Do the Tourist Thing”, and ride one of the big red double-decker buses around the hills and beaches of Barcelona. I was invited, but declined; they had a great mother-daughter-grandson outing, and I took my bicycle and headed north.

It was a fabulous day, and the wind was at my back. I rode along the beaches until they ran out, past a dinosaur’s hulk of the abandoned trash-burning plant, and reached the next town along the coast, Badalona, skimmed along the seaside bicycle path admiring its elegant facade and pedestrian boardwalk,  then kept riding right off of the edge of the map into my unknown.

Badalona – Mongat – El Masnou – all the neighborhoods and marinas in between. I think it was 20 km downwind, and am sure it was 60km back home.

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I’ve begun reading El Maresme – gent de terra, gent de mar, a little postcard-book put out by the regional library consortium, about the regional library consortium. It’s a delightful and unexpected cardstock reader, some four inches high by twelve wide, with each page representing one town along the coast, in ascending order as you clamber north from Barcelona, beginning with Mongat. The outer half of the page is a tear-away, an inviting historical picture of the town and its inhabitants, at work or at leisure; behind the picture, if you turn the page, is space for an address and a personal note.

The inner half of the page — the part not cut away and mailed to that friend who wants to hear of your visit to Mongat, or El Masnou, or Canet de Mar — shows a picture of the local library, its street address, its phone and internet contact information, and hours of operation; behind that, if you flip the page, are a few paragraphs written by someone from the town, about the town.

I began reading it several weeks ago, as an introduction to Catalan, and found the texts enjoyable, informative, and vocabulary-building in the way that I’d like my vocabulary to be built: words for the land, what’s grown on the land, and the sea, and life and work on the sea. The name tells you about this special part of Catalunya: gent de terra, gent de mar, people of the land and sea.

Though I love libraries, I wouldn’t necessarily pick up a book entitled Resource Guide to the Municipal Libraries of the Maresme for light reading. Maybe as a reference? No, for hours and emails I would head to the Internet. But the wide print format, the cover of peas and shells, and the poetic title make it such a curious standout, it was hard to resist.

The descriptive paragraphs were filled with demographies and histories spiced here and there with a dash of drama, and sweetened overall by the sense of nostalgia that overwhelms or underpins so many conquered cultures — for the people of Catalunya, like those of Scotland or Ireland, Québèc or the Basque Country, consider themselves an independent people whose sovereignty was wrested by invaders and empire builders.

Arenys de Mar

La mateixa matinada del dimars dia 31, estava seré, sense un núvol, ni un alé d’ayre, tant en aixís que les barques de bou s’enduguéren los aparells de sardinals, per si no podían tirar al bou per falta de vent…

That same morning, Tuesday the 31st, was cloudless and serene, without a breath of air, so quiet that the fishing boats removed their sardine gear, or they wouldn’t make headway for lack of wind…

But the wind did rise, and rose so quickly on that January day, 1911, as a migjorn blew out of the north, that with little warning the waves rose eight meters. Thirty-two dead in the Maresme alone; a page repeated in the history of poor fishermen.

Other towns were written up encyclopedic, where the tasty morsels weren’t necessarily narrative, but formed by the words themselves, a harvest of harvests, els conreus: la vinya (vinyards), el blat i l’ordi (wheat and barley), els llegums (vegetables) and el garrofer (locust, as in the bug, but also another name for carob, delicious picked right from the tree).

Cabrera de Mar

L’activitat agrícola i la vida rural han estat, fins no fa gaires anys, els dos eixos al volant dels quals s’ha configurat i definit el caràcter de Cabrera de Mar, com a poble i com a col·lectiu humà.

Agriculture and rural life have been, until quite recently, the two axes on which Cabrera de Mar turns, defining its character as a community and as a human collective.

I was as happy reading the news headlines as I was the encyclopedia. Everything new, the tough fertility of the words, the curt syllables and phrases that make everyone sound like farmers or sailors (even snake charmers, or bankers, or tailors), the dust between the teeth that reaching back to Roman ruins and before. Pleasant learning, a child’s first flavors or scents.

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Today I found a few minutes between tasks coincidental with a remembered interest in Catalá, and as the library guide to El Meresme was at hand, I picked it up and opened to where I thought I had left off, maritime tragedy or planter’s almanac or somewhere in between, and there I began to read.

El Masnou

No recordo si era ahir o demà (perquè el rellotge del nostre campanar només té 24 hores i sempre es repeteix)…

I don’t recall whether it was yesterday or tomorrow (as the clock in the bell-tower has only 24 hours, and always repeats itself)…

… ?

Since my Castillian is imperfect, and Portuguese is the closest guess I have to the melted pot of Catalan vocabulary, I easily doubt myself. I had to reread this one. Something was missed in translation, or in dialect.

Yet piecing it together dictionary in hand, and stretching it as far as I could, there was no hint of demography here, nor geology nor most other Ologies. I backed up a step or two and took another run at the hill.

El Masnou

No recordo si era ahir o demà (perquè el rellotge del nostre campanar només té 24 hores i sempre es repeteix) quan les meves cinc germanes, els meus dos germans, un gos amb barba que s’anomenava Camila i una gata antifranquista sense nom que es passava el dia piorant por alguna tristesa que no coneixíem, vivíem en una casa groga a la carretera de Teià amb la meva mare i el meu pare.

I don’t recall whether it was yesterday or tomorrow (as the clock in the bell-tower has only 24 hours, and always repeats itself) when my five sisters, my two brothers, a dog with a beard that we called Camila, and an unnamed Anti-Franco cat that passed the day crying over some sadness that no one knew, lived in a yellow house on the road to Teià with my mother and my father.

That was one sentence. As suddenly as an eight-meter swell I had left the reference section, and indeed the realm of library science as a whole, and been washed ashore in some Wonderland of Library Art. I reread this passage again, not because I doubted myself but (shaking off the inhibition that self-doubt unfailingly engenders) to enjoy myself.

Una part de la casa era sempre fosca, per l’ombra dels pins de Can Guarino, i l’altra era plena de sol, i escoltàvem a qualsevol hora el gall de Can Jordana. Els diumenges, el meu pare, que era cec, ens preguntava si preferíem anar a passejar cap amunt o cap avall. A baix vèiem, a l’horitzó, una franja d’aigua que cada dia canviava de color. A dalt, uns turons que fregaven el cel i que sempre estaven molt callats. Sempre triàvem el mar i la muntanya.

El pare ens explicava que si triàvem el mar no podíem anar a la muntanya, i viceversa. Com que la María Luisa era l´única rossa, ella podia decidir el desempat. I com que era més bonica que nosaltres, triava unes vegades el mar i unes altres, la muntanya. Perquè vivíem al Masnou, que és un dels pocs pobles del món on, si vas per les carreteres, la de Teià o la d’Alella, hi veus l’ombra del mar i l’ombra de les muntanyes (el Pi de l’Indià, Sant Mateu i les que no sé com s’anomenen), que s’ajunten com si fos un mirall que es mira en un altre mirall.

Al mar hi ha una platja plena de nens, casetes de bany, i unes sirenes que canten molt fluixet i que només sent el meu pare, i a la muntany hi ha nens que enterren la sardina, homes amb pèls a les ungles i, des d’allà, es veu com és de gran el mar, igual que des del mar es veu com de llargues són les muntanyes, que són com dones amb els pits al sol.

One part of the house was always dark, shaded by the pines of Can Guarino*, the other was full of sun, and we heard the rooster of Can Jordana at all hours. On Sundays, my father – who was blind – asked if we would prefer to walk right-side-up or upside-down. Below us we could see, at the horizon, a fringe of water that changed color each day. Above us, hills that scraped the sky and were always very silent. We always chose the sea and the mountain.

My father explained to us that if we chose the sea, we couldn’t return to the mountain, and vice versa. Since María Luisa was the only blond among us, she could decide the tie. And as she was prettier than we were, sometimes she would choose the sea, and other times, the mountain. Because we lived in the Masnou, one of the few towns in the world where, if you pass through the streets, down the Teià road or the one to Alella, you see both the shadow of the sea and he shadow of the mountain (the Indian’s Peak, Saint Matthew’s, and the ones I don’t know what they’re called), coming together as though a mirror that looks into another mirror.

At the sea there is a beach full of children, bathing huts, and some sirens that sing very softly and that only my father can sense; and on the mountain there are children that bury sardines, men with hair on their fingernails and, from there, one can see how huge is the sea, just as from the sea one can see how broad are the mountains, like women stretched with their breast to the sun.

* A mountain-like structure of a house (who knows how many family members or families lived in each, alongside or above their herds or flocks?) like agricultural castles dotting the countryside. They’ve been there for many generations. “Can” and “Mas” and “Masía” must be words for unique things — why else a new word — but all seem to point to the same solid architecture.

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With such a literary and literate population, I suppose, I should not be surprised. But new is new, and like any child whose eyes are opened on an unknown flower, or adult who rounds a bend on an unexplored road to find a vista… sunrise… birds and breeze of summer… bells taking the hours… quiet stands opposed to the dramatic.

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