What Catalans Want

Again, I’m promoting Catalan products to you, Aussies. No worries, I’ll use next entry to explain my Catalan fellas what is a Queenslander home and why is build over pillars. I do promise it solemnly. 

But today I visited a website of a book written in english about Catalonia. Of course, targeted mainly to foreigner people. But guess what, they don’t sell the book online! And the tour presentation of the book is mainly within Catalonia! Is like writing a tourist guide of Brisbane and sell it to the same Brisbanites. Well, yes, I usually bought a couple of tourist guides of Barcelona as well, but it was for professional affairs (and is something to be aware of, some of this kind of guides lie like Jim Carrey in “Liar Liar” about history and why the places to visit are places to visit… For not to mention the restaurants to go).

Anyway, the book is called, as the title of this post “What Catalans Want“ and it went to my attention because is another sample of how we Catalans are: we want international recognition, but we don’t have any idea on how to do it and sometimes this brings to this kind of situations were a book in english targeted to non-Catalan people is bought basically by Catalan people. In Catalonia this is called “being more popeist than the same Pope”. Or even chauvinist.

Maybe the excuse of this kind of behaviour is that Catalonia is still not a proper state, and there is a lot of people who grip to that excuse to achieve anything related to Catalonia if it was the last memorabilia available in the whole world. Obviously, this is not the way. Look at the Scots, they are closer to have their own state rather than we are, and with the good look of the British Parliament! (something unthinkable with the Catalan case!).

Anyway, my point of view is that if you are doing something for the foreigner market, instead of encouraging the sells of the product with advertisings and banners of the style: “buy it for the friend who came with an Erasmus scholarship and left still thinking that he was in Spain” (this really happens and is very sad, actually), encourage directly the sells of your product to the foreigner market! For God’s sake, send a copy to the NY Times or to the Courier Mail (er, no, better don’t send it there. They are quite worried right now with all the Murdoch’s Hackgate affair) or the Sydney Morning Herald for a review! Sell on the Internet, instead of the traditional bookshops! Go to Amazon! To iTunes Store! The book version for Kindle is not enough, yet!

And if you don’t have any money with that, it is no excuse! You can always make a video with some grace and hang it on Youtube! Look at the people from Ok Go: their two videoclips that made them famous cost them no more than US $50 both! (the price for the videotapes).

Ok Go – A Million Ways to Be Cruel

Ok Go – Here It Comes Again

Who says you can’t make something like this for your product? Oh, come on! If the most crowded lip-dub ever was a catalan pro-independence one, you can do something as well!

Lip Dup per la Independència. Obrint Pas – La Flama

As I say to my friends when they want to be notorious or want to promote anything: Make your time and money worth!