Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
This Tirolean archaeologist funds his vision with money from Brussels.
and Catalans raise their hands together to proudly celebrate their ethnicity.
A Catalan person in Barcelona told me, “Catalunya is Spain's Quebec. We
don't like people calling our corner of Iberia a 'region' of Spain...because that's
what Franco called it. We do not accept subjugation as a region of Spain. We
are a nation without a state.”
What's going on? Barcelona is less threatening to Madrid. Edinburgh
doesn't scare London. Brittany gets along with Paris (and I don't mean Spears
and Hilton). As power shifts to the EU capital of Brussels, national capitals
recognize and accept that their authority is waning. And the European Union
supports transnational groups in the hopes of reminding big nations that
they have more in common than they might realize.
A friend of mine, Armin Walch, is the “Indiana Jones” of Tirolean archae-
ologists. When Armin wants money to excavate a castle, he goes to Brussels.
If he says, “I'm doing something for Austria,” he'll go home empty-handed.
So instead, he says he's doing something for the Tirol (an ethnic region that
spans parts of Italy and Austria, ignoring the modern national boundary)...
and gets funding.
Europe's “stateless nations” live in solidarity with each other. h e Catalan
people i nd Basque or Galician bars a little more appealing than the run-of-
the-mill Spanish ones. h ey even make a point to include the other languages
on their ATMs: In Barcelona, you'll see Catalan i rst, then Spanish, Galego
