/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/larazon/MEZ5FTVW7NAV7FDFFLYGZ7RIZA.jpg "Colau refuses to dedicate a sculpture to Don Quixote in Barcelona")
If Cervantes treated with special affection any city of the Spanish geography that was undoubtedly Barcelona. Her most famous character, Don Quixote, visited her in the second part of her adventures. And he was full of praise. Courtesy archive, shelter for foreigners, hospital for the poor or revenge for the offended were some of the praises he dedicated to him. In Barcelona he was defeated by the Knight of the White Moon and in Barcelona he discovered that its inhabitants recognized him, in one of those delicious Cervantes twists, for having read the first part. As well, all this is not enough to dedicate a statue to Cervantes or, failing that, to the ingenious hidalgo in Barceloneta.
Citizens have taken this proposal to the Committee on Social Rights and Culture this morning to pay tribute to “the literary work par excellence”: Don Quixote de la Mancha. They propose that a large statue of the famous hidalgo be installed on Barceloneta beach, which is where part of the knight’s adventures take place. This is how the councilor Paco Sierra recalled: “Barcelona has the honor of being the only city that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza visit”. Not with those. The proposal has been rejected with the votes of ERC, Bcomú and PSC. Junts, against all odds he has abstained.
Jordí Martí, councilor of the municipal government, has been in charge of justifying the City Council’s refusal. “I don’t think the best tribute that can be done to a writer is to plant a monument to him. And less to an author of the oceanic importance of Cervantes, who has managed to move above the political debates in Catalonia and who already has a string of tributes in the city. But it is not against Cervantes, I insist, it is against that monumentalist idea. We believe that the best tribute that can be done is to read it”. To which Paco Sierra has replied explaining that his father was a sculptor and that, therefore, “I know well what it costs, but I will not give up, I will give a sculpture to the city with the only condition that it be installed in Barceloneta” .
At the proposal of the PP, in the same commission, there has also been a debate on the recent campaign launched by the independence movement on behalf of, once again, the Catalan. There are more and more sentences that oblige various schools to comply with the obligation to teach 25% of classes in Spanish. The response of sovereignism and its satellites, such as Plataforma per la Llengua, are a series of reports that warn of the supposed social death of Catalan. For this reason, the PP, in the mouth of its councilor Óscar Ramírez, has asked that the use of Catalan languages be guaranteed, in application of the Generalitat’s plan to recover and promote the use of Catalan in educational centers. and Castilian.
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