Peret walked me around the building to the door on Calle de Sant Honorat, which was much narrower and more discreet. There he muttered a few words in the ear of the two soldiers who were standing guard, and they let us in. I was surprised by the soldiers’ attitude, at once complicit and suspicious.
“A certain gentleman has offered me some money in exchange for my support for the cause he is defending,” Peret explained as we climbed the stairs.
The parliament was split into two opposing camps: those in favor of releasing the Crida, gathering an exclusively Catalan army and resisting, and those who would prefer us to submit ourselves to the approaching army of the Bourbons. As I have said, the Red Pelts had no interest in protecting the constitutions, and without a legal Crida, there could be no call to arms. So I followed Peret, and before I knew it, we were in the Chamber of Sant Jordi itself.
Imagine a large rectangular hall, high-ceilinged, with stone walls. Three of the walls were covered by grand chairs upholstered in velvet—red, naturally—in strictly kept rows. On the main table, there was nothing but a book of oaths and a small bell, all on top of a big crimson cloth. In theory, the bell was to begin and end different people’s turns to speak. I say “in theory” because when debates became more heated, the speakers didn’t care a fig for that bell.
On paper, the whole of the Catalan territory had the right to send representatives, which was impossible, when you bear in mind that three quarters of that territory was already occupied by the enemy. Things had moved into a new phase that day. With the voting rights divided out and all sewn up, both groups were concentrating on finding other ways of exerting pressure. Yes, you’ve guessed it: hiring mercenary throats to yell out their slogans and disturb the opposing speakers. Peret was a suitable candidate, because his age meant he could pass as an old patrician and because he would have sold his mother’s grave for a dish of fried squid. And the Chamber of Sant Jordi was every bit as stormy as the country itself. Not everyone who was supposed to be there was there, and not everyone who was there was supposed to be. Many members were unable to attend (they had good excuses: they were rowing in galleys or hanging from trees); others had simply abandoned their obligations.
If I remember right, this great day was July 4 or 5, and it was hot as hell. The spokesman for the pro-submission band was one Nicolau de Sant Joan. Before he started speaking, he was already being applauded. He urged people to be quiet. Solemnity was one thing, at least, he wasn’t short of.
“When strength is lacking, the natural thing is to consider the moral impossibility of resistance against power. Christian law and the law of nature both teach us, and persuade us, not to expose to the ultimate rigors of war our temples, those people of vulnerable age, those people whose lives are devoted to God. The fury of military license is no respecter of churches; nor does it have consideration for those of tender years; nor does it leave intact the sanctuary of virginity.”
At this point he was interrupted by a loud laugh. “Nor do we! Bring us a virgin, and we’ll show you how it’s done!”
It was Peret, of course. His impertinence, so inappropriate at that moment, confused Sant Joan. The Red Pelts were none too happy. “Rascals! Rebels! Silence!”
Sant Joan resumed his speech. “Our country finds itself between Castile and France; the ports to the sea, shut off by the French navy. As for the English, who have handed us over, we should feel apprehension and legitimate misgivings. So I ask you: Where does the king, our lord, have an army naval force superior to those two powers to bring us assistance? And even if they did arrive, what sums of money could he allocate to our aid, considering the war under way on the Rhine?”
“What we need are fewer rich people lining their pockets, and more cojones, you dunderhead!” shouted Peret. There were plenty of people behind him: “Boooo, boooo!”
“Enough! Rascals, rascals! Out of the hall! Out!”
Those words came from the Red Pelts’ claque, who were stamping their feet and waving their arms around. To the Red Pelts, common people were little better than riffraff who served only to get in the way between their office and the wise decisions they made. But they forgot that not everyone of their class thought the same way. And among them, sticking out like a beacon anchored in a desert, was one Ferrer. Emmanuel Ferrer.
Ferrer was a member of the minor nobility, but very popular because of the way he had distinguished himself in the administration of the city. This human rat addressing you now may have as much the makings of a hero about him as a horseshoe, but that doesn’t mean he can’t recognize those qualities, in all their magnitude, when they appear over the horizon. Ferrer lived a comfortable, peaceful life; he was wealthy and he was happy. He had nothing to gain from voting for resistance, and everything to lose. As soon as he spoke, he would have committed himself openly to one side, and when the Bourbons arrived, they would come after him with all their despotic bile.
When his turn came, Ferrer stood up and said: “I have a question: Is Catalonia any different now from what she used to be? Do our laws and privileges not give us the ability to oppose the Castilians who want unjustly to oppress us? What reason does the Bourbon have for oppressing us so severely, wanting to make our open and free people into a nation that is subjugated and enslaved? So who could possibly agree to Castilian vanity and violence being enthroned over the Catalans, that we should serve in the same ignominy they force upon the Indians?”
“You’re all crazy, irresponsible!” replied those on the side of the Red Pelts. “You’re going to bring our whole nation to ruin!”
I should like to be impartial. I would never say that the noblemen who voted to submit were all corrupt. By no means. There were more than reasonable justifications for not offering resistance. We had been abandoned; we were being attacked by the entire might of the Two Crowns, the French and Spanish empires combined. Voting for a negotiated solution, however little we might expect from such a thing at this point, did not necessarily imply serving Little Philip.
Ferrer invoked the name of the king of Portugal, a kingdom that was fearful of following the Catalans down the same route and who surely would help us; if we resisted, Emperor Charles wouldn’t be able to wash his hands of us without his international prestige being tarnished. England had signed a long-standing agreement; the Catalan ambassadors were traveling around all the courts of Europe arguing the case for a people who wanted nothing more than that most basic of rights: survival.
He was interrupted several times. Ferrer remained deaf to the voices of friends and enemies alike. He went over Catalonia’s history, of the pernicious dynastic alliance with Castile, and continued: “For all these reasons, let us at once take up arms and raise our flags, let us enlist soldiers without a moment’s delay. May the Fidelísimos Brazos Generales, our three honorable branches, use all the authority that God has placed in their hands; may they immediately draw up manifests to make our justice and our proceeding absolutely clear to all of Europe, and let our enemies discover to their cost that the spirit and honor of the Catalan nation has not declined a jot.”
Deep down, though, not even Ferrer was very hopeful. It was such a desperate play that it could almost have been mistaken for a noble suicide.
“May our nation meet her end with glory,” he went on, “for a glorious end is worth more than accepting demands and violence the likes of which even the Moors were never guilty of.”
My dear vile Waltraud interrupts me here, raising her great head like a cow who can’t find her pasture and asking, again and again, what my own opinions were at that time. They were not of the least significance, but very well, I shall summarize them.
My point of view sought to be as dispassionate as possible, and this was it: Both sides were right. To submit would mean losing the liberties that had ruled us for a thousand years, being transformed into one more province of Castile and its empire, sharing its people’s yoke, suffering merciless repression. Resisting, as the Red Pelts kept proclaiming, meant ruin
and massacre. We were faced with a choice between two options, each as bad as the other.
There was a vote. Submission won. By a sizable majority. Ferrer gave a leap, went over to the secretary with the small bell, and insisted that his name be noted, that there be a specific record of his vote against. It was like signing his own death warrant. When the Bourbons arrived, that would be evidence enough to hang him. And yet other nobles got to their feet and went to follow Ferrer’s example!
I was amazed. Why would people do such a thing?
We ought to examine the other side of the coin, too. Just as admirable or even more so, strange though it may seem. Because there were noblemen like Francesc Alemany, Baldiri Batlle, Lluís Roger, or Antoni València, whose consciences led them to vote for submission, and so they did. Later, things would take a turn. And they fought. They followed the will of the majority, setting aside their personal opinions in favor of the general good. Waltraud asks me why I have tears in my eyes. I can tell you: because these men, who never chose resistance, fought unfaltering for a long year of siege. They acted in support of other people’s ideas, even those people who were opposed to them. And at dawn on September 11, 1714, they sacrificed their lives. All of them. I can see València now, attacking a wall of bayonets, saber in hand, swallowed up by a sea of white uniforms.
To give you some idea of the significance of the resolution, I’d say that the noblemen’s branch of the parliament was similar to that of the English lords. More important than the number of votes, it had an intangible moral weight, and it was very common that the people’s branch simply ratified their decisions.
“It serves you right that your side lost,” I said to Peret as we headed home. “Aren’t you ashamed of having sold your opinion?”
“No, lad, not at all,” he replied. “The Red Pelts paid me to join the claque in favor of submission, but they were foolish enough to pay up in advance.”
“In any case, they’re currently at two–zero,” I snorted as we made our way across a packed Plaza de Sant Jaume. “Priest and nobility, in favor of submitting. Tomorrow the people’s branch will follow the ruling from the nobles. It’s over.”
I have never been so wrong. We were still in the square when a spokesman came out onto the balcony and did indeed inform the crowd that the noble branch had voted for submission. It was as though a frozen downpour had fallen. No one objected. Of those thousand throats, not one rose up in an angry shout. But instead of going home, they continued to camp out where they were, there in the Plaza Sant Jaume!
In my opinion, that was the real turning point. Not an act of rebellion but a deaf noncompliance. The people down there were so disconcerted by what they had heard, just as the nobles up on the balcony were disconcerted by that mass stillness and silence. What could they do? They couldn’t expel all those people. Nobody would dare, nor did they have enough troops to try. Besides, an act of violence like that could lead to just the kinds of disturbance that the Red Pelts were trying so hard to avoid.
That whole night nobody moved from the packed square. The following day, the people’s branch of the parliament assembled. The atmosphere out on the street, and Ferrer’s speech, had so fired them up that their vote went in favor of resistance, and by an overwhelming majority. This time the Plaza Sant Jaume did react, with an explosion of joy: “Publish the Crida! Publish it!”
There was so much shouting, and it was so passionate, that they were no longer merely expressing a desire. It was a threat and an order; fail to comply and anything could happen. And more of the noblemen changed their votes! But it didn’t end there. The most intransigent of the Red Pelts placed a thousand legal obstacles in the way. They alleged that the branch of aristocrats had expressed the change in their intentions out in the corridor, not in a session that had been convened legally, and as such, it was not a binding decision. Their strategy, as it’s not hard to deduce, consisted in drawing out proceedings for so long that the people outside grew tired and went home. They did not succeed. Two days and nights had gone by and the Plaza de Sant Jaume was as full as ever, or fuller. Generosity always has this bitter side to it; those most willing to give everything are those with the least to gain by a victory and the most to lose from a defeat. Over the course of those two days, the debates ran aground.
On July 9, Peret wanted to go back to the Chamber of Sant Jordi.
“Again?” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe the pro-submission party has been so foolish as to pay out again to people who betrayed them at the last minute.”
“No, lad, no—you see, I gave such a convincing performance the other day that now those on the side of resistance have offered me a bit of money to yell even louder.”
“But the pro-submission party knows you; they’ll stop you from getting in!”
“No, they won’t, because I’ve informed the submitters about the offer from the resisters, and they promised me twice as much if we join the claque in favor of peace. I shall vote for submission. Long live peace! Want to come?”
When we went in, we found the Chamber of Sant Jordi a madhouse. The blessed altar of Catalan parliamentarianism transformed into a grocer’s store! As they were sitting in rows in front of one another, the yielders and the resisters were protesting, waving their hands before them like the tentacles of an octopus. Those in favor of fighting were shouting from their seats: “The constitutions and our freedom! Let’s draw up the Crida!”
“Peace and good sense!” came the reply from the other side.
Ha! As a spectator, I was getting irritated at the Red Pelts and their oafish sycophants. Hadn’t the vote gone for resistance despite all their schemings? Well then, if that was the freely expressed will of the people, the Crida would have to be drawn up. (As far as I was concerned, this would mean dashing out of the city as fast as I could go. No one needed to tell me, of all people, what a siege of such a big stronghold would mean!)
“Seny!” yelled those who favored submission. “Have you lost it? Seny!”
I should explain this seny business, the seny they were invoking. Isn’t that so, my dear vile Waltraud?
The Catalans are the world experts in useless spiritual inventions. You might describe seny as an attitude of calm, reasonableness, peacefulness. In theory, when faced with a serious problem, a man who is assenyat should react with a restraint altogether opposed to the chivalrous passion of the Castilians. The problem was, there was an army bearing down on us, and it was led by Castilian hidalgos. To their warrior mentality, seny was incomprehensible, a despicable trait of Jews and hucksters who sought to resolve their differences with words because they lacked the bravery to do it with swords.
As I said, the Chamber of Sant Jordi was overtaken by a cacophony of roaring. The Red Pelts had kept two coups de théâtre for that final day. They took the first one out of the grave.
An old nobleman, nearly blind, tottered into the chamber, one hand on a stick and the other leaning on the arm of his great-grandson. Did I say old? Ancient! He must have gotten up from bed at least four times a night to pass water; and just think, I get up three times myself.
His name was Carles de Fivaller. As with those old senators from the Roman republic, his moral potency came not so much from any position as from his experience and the respect he had earned over a long life of public service. Fivaller had an honorary seat in the chamber. Being such a wreck, he had not been present in any of the debates. But the Red Pelts had gone to fetch him out of bed, which he never left, to come in and advocate on behalf of seny.
There was something much more than a crooked old man entering the chamber. With Fivaller came Catalan parliamentarianism itself. Rather than taking his seat, Fivaller stopped in the exact center of the Chamber of Sant Jordi. Everybody knew his words would have a tremendous impact. Both sides stopped, reverent.
“My sons. The ruins of my age prevent me from being of use to my country,” said Fivaller, looking around in the way the blind do, at everyone and no one, his chin up. “Which is w
hy I beg, I implore, this august chamber to grant one final wish, which I hope will be granted me.”
He had to stop to get his voice back. There was such silence that even the shameless Zuvi avoided swallowing so as not to make a sound.
Fivaller brought a trembling hand to his face to wipe away a tear and finally said: “Now that my hands can no longer bear the weight of a rifle, I ask you, please, in this fight we are forced into, to use my body to take the place of a fajina in the battle.”
Oh, the cry that went up then! Unexpected joys are the noisiest kind of all. Even some of the Red Pelts were moved, giving in. Perhaps Fivaller wasn’t quite so senile after all. Or so blind or so deaf. As he had crossed the Plaza de Sant Jaume, the square filled to bursting, he must have understood what was going on.
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!”
Victus Page 32
