Friday, March 25, 2011

International Papanates

One central concept to understand Catalonia is that of papanates. Catalonia, Barcelona specially, is the land of papanates. A papanates is a person who make his/her living of saying obvieties or common places. In politics it is full of them. The city mayor of Barcelona is a clear example. I was listening his speech the other day and after 5min talking, he just used vague and bogus words to define what he is going to do if he wins next election. He talks about believing, confidence, and other pseudo-religious shitty concepts recovenverted into the new dogmatic faith of his party. Papanatism. Barcelona mayors are known to be papanatas: Hereu, Clos, Maragall...until the best of all, Pich i Pon, who was so pro in the art of spoonerism that in Catalan there is a category of them called piquiponades, like when he mentioned the Nippo-Japanese war or the Anglo-English relations.
But unfortunately papanates are not only into politics. Most of them are in business. There is a universal believe that making money save one from all his sins, but this one is to big to be redeemed from. Some of the former presidents of FC Barcelona have been egregious business men, and also illustrious papanates. Nuñez, Gaspart, Reyna, Laporta...even the present one, the pijito Sandro, whose only difference is that he can utter a whole sentence without ashaming his language teacher.
However, there is a new breed of papanates invading the country recently. As a fruit of the recesion we are in, a new cult has appeared in our land, that of entrepreneurism. Even the word they are using is probably wrong (emprenedor) and a papanatada in itself. Now, it seems that the only and true credo that will save us from the recession is that we all become entrepreneurs of technological companies in a night. This is like opting for using bicycles for mass transportation: since we can't build a proper transportation system, get a third-world vehicle and risk your life in crazy-driving Barcelona. Now, since economy is totally dead, the brightest mind of the country, thouse who have an MBA or have been a posh diletant in California while at University, the sons and grand-sons of the elite, have come to think that we all must be Steve Jobs. "We have talent, and we are born leaders", they think, "and also the money", what could stop them from being successful entrepreneurs?
Catalonia exports papanates in fancy and trendy cardbroard boxed for all the world to buy; FC Barcelona, Custo, Desigual, Pans&Co. Nothing original, just better packaged.

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