Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 03:10:23 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam Dale
To: netepic_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2001 2:43 AM
Subject: Re: [NetEpic ML] Flaming for no legitimate reason, and in a "kind er, gentler" way...
> many norwegians fear we are losing our cultural identity
> due to ever increasing amounts of immigrants
You need to kick out the yanks. No-one else has the money to make that big
an impact.
Tour diary from a UK band I read recently (www.earthtone9.com). They hit
(can't remember which, Vienna or somesuch) european city, expecting local
culture, and they find HMV, McDead and Burger.
--> Yeah I saw them with Fear Factory in Barcelona.
Oh my God! Some Yanks have been coming the last 50 years to Europe, and we are panicking around because we feel a little invaded?
...but what happens when your local culture has to fight for its survival? not only against americanization but against its own "democratic" government. The Spanish government has been trying to eliminate all cultures which differ from the "official spanish culture". During the last 3 centuries catalan culture has been prosecuted by spanish kings, spanish government and Military Dictatorships, and nowadays still cultural genocide subtly continues. The same goes for Basque Country and Galicia, both of them, like Catalonia, have their own language and culture.
And every summer, Catalan coast gets full of american tourists, english hooligans, and other European tourists looking for "paella", "sevillanas", "flamenco", bullfights and "sangría", when NONE of these are part of its culture. Catalan culture has a completely diferent set of cultural "fiestas", folklore, gastronomy and of course diferent language. Catalan is spoken by more than eight million people (more people than the whole Denmark!).
I wonder how it could be that in the USA, the richest (and most developed? <:P) country in the world (and in some western european countries which claim for themselves the origin of western civilization :-( ), our culture it is not known but for a minory. Do English schools still teach english intervention in the spanish succession war? And what happened to Catalonia?
Actually, I think that we live very comfortable in our sofas, and the more comfortable we feel, the less we care about what happens around us, every day a little more idiot. Not only the americans, we too :-). well, just kiddin', take it easy.
Albert
P.S. Of course, I am catalan. Anyway, here I give you an adress referring to catalan autonomous government (in English, Français, Deutsch,Italiano, Castellano). If somenone wants to know more about our little beautiful country, here there is some historical information, and interesting links:
http://www.gencat.es/idiomes/index.htm
and a little game: Does anyone know what is this picture about? ( 30,7K)
(image/jpeg attachment: 4de9_minyons_Girona98.jpg)