A subversive hand opened the balcony doors. Seeing them open, the people downstairs thought the matter had been decided: “The Crida! Announce the Crida once and for all!”
But the most inveterate Red Pelts still had one cartridge left. Together with their friends the Black Pelts, they had drawn up a list of theological-legalistic arguments. You can guess which way these were arguing.
Their Vatican eminences enjoyed considerable respect. They were perfectly capable of turning the tables. The nobles had already changed their minds once. Nothing prevented them from coming back. And a little sermon from the priests might be enough to make many delegates on the people’s branch have a bit of a think.
In order to have the greatest impact, they decided that the text should be read by their most talented rhetorician, a marble Demosthenes. He was admired by those of his profession, the men at law, and he had only lately decided to enter politics. Well, this great man was none other than Rafael Casanova, the lawyer who was dealing with my house, and who now walked into the chamber wearing the long red gown of the Catalan magistracy.
“You!” I cried the moment I clapped eyes on him. I leaped up, and with three strides I was beside him. “Damn it, Casanova! I’m absolutely fed up! Do you hear? I put my father’s inheritance in your hands! And I want the inheritance from my father! I have a right to it! Defend the damn thing once and for all!”
Since most of those present were educated people, when they heard “the inheritance from my father,” they interpreted this as a reference to “the inheritance of our forefathers,” a frequent theme of these debates. Those who were not yet on their feet were spurred on by my attack.
“The lad is right! Enough is enough! A hundred generations of Catalan heroes are looking down upon us from heaven. It’s time we drew up the Crida!”
Despite the high passion, the two sides had been jeering from their seats. But now, following my example, dozens of people piled in around Casanova, either to rebuke him with me or to shield him from me. Casanova, losing his balance, tried to straighten his red velvet cap, but I got away from Peret, and from everybody who was getting in my way, and I went back to jostling him.
“But this is violence!” protested Casanova, like Caesar receiving the first stab wound.
“Violence my foot!” I cried, indignant. “We pay you to defend our interests, and all you do is fob us off!”
“He’s right! Enough of this delay! The lad is right!” shouted all those opposed to submission. “We should be ashamed that we need a kid to show us the way. The enemy is approaching at a forced march, and we’re wasting our time on useless debates!”
At this point, Emmanuel Ferrer took the initiative. And it was a shrewd, brilliant initiative, as he was the first person to notice that the decision was hanging by a thread, a thread that was within reach of only the boldest. He walked away from the commotion and over to the bespectacled secretary with the little bell, who had remained in his place, with a haggard expression, and ordered him, pointing a finger, imperiously: “Write!”
The man needed to choose between chaos and a firm guiding spirit. For a moment the secretary thought about it. Then he dipped his pen in the inkwell.
Ferrer dictated a few hurried lines. Before the ink had dried, Ferrer stamped it with the government seal, grabbed the piece of paper from the secretary, and raised it in the air, proclaiming: “The Crida! I have it!”
Debate over. Ferrer was lifted into the air and carried out into the street. Outside, he was given an ovation from the crowd, frenzied and ecstatic. I could see this all perfectly, because rather than following them out into the Plaza Sant Jaume, I stepped out onto the balcony.
I saw Ferrer carried aloft on someone’s shoulders, showing the paper with the Crida to the crowd, who swirled around him like a wheel on its axis. I simply couldn’t understand it: They were weeping for joy because now they could go to a desperate war.
All those people carried off Ferrer — or, rather, the Crida—plunging into the city streets. The square was left deserted, covered in debris after the prolonged encampment.
The mentality of your average Catalan shelters one single moral principle, which is as flawed as it is endearing: They are always certain of having right on their side. They aren’t the only people to feel this way. What is extraordinary about the case of the Catalans, however, is what they deduce from this: Given that they are in the right, the world will end up realizing this. Naturally, things aren’t like that. The movement of a train of artillery depends not on truths but on interests, and they are not up for debate: They impose themselves on you, they crush you.
I remember that there were just two sentences. The first of them, to my mind, being the most exquisite, limpid, and beautiful yet written in the Catalan language.
Having on this sixth day of the present month advised this city council to resolve to defend the Liberties, Privileges and Prerogatives of the Catalan people, which our ancestors gloriously achieved at the cost of their own blood, we shall on the ninth day of the present month make order of the public proclamation for our defence
Marshal Starhemberg was surprised to hear the call to arms when he was right on the beach, just about to set sail. From the mouth of the Besòs River, he could see Barcelona’s western walls. He asked the reason for such a ruckus of shouts, drums, and trumpets. “A reckless enterprise,” he said, apparently, “but brave.”
He struck the ground twice with his walking stick and boarded his ship.
He ought to have formulated his words the other way around: a brave enterprise but reckless. And how! Or, rather, he should have said what he was really thinking: “You’re staying here, poor bastards.”
11
The historians tell us that at the start of the Third Punic War, the city of Carthage went through a military fever. All alone, with no friends and hurtling toward a certain end, the entire might of the Roman Empire was hurled upon them. And yet its citizens threw themselves into laboring for their defense with frantic ardor.
Something similar happened in Barcelona in 1713. A warrior passion overtook the whole city. The foundries beat out a frenzied rhythm. The workshops were turning out rifles, bayonets, projectiles of every size. Most surprising of alclass="underline" The Barcelonans faced up to their dangers with a happiness that was quite in opposition to their circumstances. Children ran about the battalions, and — in an inversion of the natural order of things — women threw compliments to the soldiers.
There was a reason for this new mood. Barcelona’s popular classes had always felt that dynastic war between Austrians and Bourbons was something basically apart from them. But now war was approaching their walls and threatening to destroy the regimen of freedoms they had maintained for as long as they had been Catalans.
I’d add one more thing besides: By attacking the Barcelona of people like Amelis, Philip V was committing the most unforgivable mistake a tyrant can make: attacking the houses of people who have no houses. They will defend home tooth and nail, for that is the final redoubt of those who have nothing else. My Amelis had spent her life as a wanderer, her sex as her only refuge, and now that she finally had a home, this lunatic despot was threatening to cut her future short. And not just my Amelis; Barcelona was the refuge for the dispossessed from all over. The place where they had at last found four walls and a wage. How many of the heroes born in our siege were foreigners! And now that all the doubts about whether the fight was just and necessary had been dispelled, Barcelonans of all kinds were throwing themselves into this war, their war, with the kind of revelry that doesn’t happen even during carnivals. Just this once, rich and poor, men and women, were united in common cause. The happy were fighting for their happiness, while the unfortunate joined this common cause hoping that, in the struggle, their afflictions would disappear.