They certainly deserve respect and admiration for producing many wonderful and talented people such as the architect Gaudi, with his buildings which look like either enormous melting ice creams or had been designed by someone who had visited Disneyland once too often. Let's face it, any race of people who can make a going business out of a half finished church (La Sagrada Familia) have really got it together.

Their national dance is also a display of Catalan culture, it's such a pity it can't be just a little more lively and less like a paranoiac, morose version of the Greek Sirtaki. It usually takes place in front of the church in the village square where they all dance in a ring on their tiptoes, after the women have carefully placed their handbags in the middle, to the sad, mournful tones of a special wooden clarinet whilst vigilantly keeping an eye on their valuable possessions in the centre of the circle. I am never really sure why they all look so miserable while carrying out this ritualistic folk dance, I would like to think they are absorbed in deep reflection on their national heritage but it could be, since it is usually Sunday morning when they are hopping round in these gloomy circles, they are thinking about the traditional Catalan sausages and haricot beans they still have to cook. I quite like a good old heel stamping flamenco myself, with its wonderful classical guitar, and bull fighting can be a bit gory and it is most advisable to leave before the unpleasant, gruesome part when they finally get round to killing the poor beast, but the grace and elegance of the preliminaries to this ritual are incredibly and undeniably stirring.

All this radical nationalistic struggle is all really quite understandable if we stop to look for a minute at the history of this land - years of control, repression, censorship, and torture - it is easy to grasp the reasons, if not sympathise with, their need to identify as a separate nation and not want to get mixed up with those responsible for their years of suffering. However, I have never thought two wrongs make a right and although they should never completely forget the torment and misery of the past, they should perhaps concentrate their physical and economic resources on making this a better, more welcoming and forgiving society than before instead of trying to retaliate by taking vengeance on the errors of history.