Clarissa's Blog

To be a citizen of the world, a being without tribe, homeland, or God, is to be unprotected labor up for grabs.

Rafael Chirbes, Diarios

I’m 1,200 pages into the diaries, and it’s become clear that few things annoyed Chirbes as much as the concept of cosmopolitan citizens of the world. He knew that it was all one big scam.

Chirbes thought about nationalism a lot and deeply. He explains, for example, the differences between the Basque and the Catalonian nationalisms. The former, he explains, was a nationalism from below. Basque patriotism is that of regular people, peasants, workers. The Catalonian nationalism is the nationalism from above. It’s a favorite toy of the fancy people. The regional nationalisms of regular people, such as, for example, Chirbes’s native valenciano, were stamped out by the Catalonian nationalism of the wealthy bourgeoisie.