It is explained that one day Guillem d’Efak, a Majorcan artist born in Equatorial Guinea in 1930, asked for a coffee in a bar. The waiter replied: “If you weren’t from Mallorca, I’d say you were black.”
The idea that emerges from this is that in a white place a black is seen as an element of otherness and that ‘otherness’ is not expected to speak your language. The anecdote is much more understandable in a time and place where the only black person was, precisely, Guillem d’Efak. He himself explains that the first time he saw one he was very scared.
Today, however, more than half a century later and with a completely different sociodemographic reality, there are still people who assume that “those who do not seem to be from here” (with all the complexity that this phrase implies) surely “do not understand Catalan” . And they preemptively address waiters in Spanish who have grown up in Barcelona and with whom they share a neighborhood, or congratulate young people from Hostalets de Balenyà for “speaking very well.”
The other day I called to make an appointment to get my nails done in a place I had never been before. The conversation (both on the phone and later sitting in the salon) flowed perfectly, I speaking in Catalan and the beautician in Spanish. It doesn’t usually happen to me that they don’t understand me when I speak Catalan to someone who is facing the public; the only recent place I remember is the police station to renew my passport. If you want to be a civil servant in Catalonia and not learn Catalan, you can always become a police officer.
After chatting for a while, she told me that she is Dominican, that she does not speak Catalan because it is still a bit difficult for her but that it is good for her to listen to it and that it is difficult for her to speak it because usually what people do is automatically address her in Spanish. We continued talking about other things and a client entered who, very animated, greeted us both in Spanish. When I answered her in Catalan, she switched to Catalan, but only with me. I continued addressing the beautician in Catalan and the client continued to do so in Spanish. Surely the client preferred to speak to each of us in the language in which we expressed ourselves, but for me a conversation in which all the interlocutors understand each other and each one chooses the language in which they want to speak is never an element of tension but of naturalness and freedom.
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The fact is that assuming that they will not understand us in Catalan based on prejudice and entering Spanish “just in case”, despite the fact that it can be done in good faith, has a racist basis and whoever receives the gesture feels discriminated against. These are the testimonies collected by the campaign No em change la llengua, in which Catalan speakers not born in Catalonia ask that people address them in Catalan. They also experience surreal situations: that Catalan-speaking people speak to them in Spanish when they are speaking in Catalan.
Why do we think that a person who is speaking to us in Catalan will prefer that we speak to him in Spanish? This is signed by the Manacor waiter at the beginning of this article (and from a long time ago. Either you are black, or you speak Mallorcan.