17.06.2014 - 08:57
With a firm voice and a measured voice, Jaume Sastre speaks to us for a few minutes via telephone. It’s been a few hours since his support team announced that he had called off his hunger strike in defense of Catalan schooling, just as the forty-first day was beginning. He had a little bit of broth and some fruit and now will begin his recovery at the Casa Llarga, the center that hosted him during the strike. Over the weekend, doctors warned him that the consequences were beginning to be irreversible. The people closest to him—and also people all over who joined and supported the cause—were urging him to give up the hunger strike, as he finally did. Sastre’s state of mind is “enviable and dignified” said his support team. He’s giving up the strike, but the educational struggle continues.
One has to be very brave to do what you have done.
Not so much. It’s a matter of will power. They told me a bit how it was going. They isolated me from daily life, and I had wonderful support. I have had extraordinary support that I appreciate and that helped me. With respect to my physical state, these last days I had a headache and we were controlling the sugar. And no, I didn’t want to eat. We have resisted.
You risked your life for your language and for schools. Why?
Because all of this is threatened. If we have been able to enjoy Catalan schooling all these years, it’s because there were people who sacrificed themselves at some moment. And now the PP and Bauzà, but also in the Valencian Country and in Catalonia, they are testing us. And we have to win. We have to come out victorious. If you want fish, you have to get your butt wet, as they say around here. That is, you have to take some risks.
What do you think the hunger strike has been good for?
For me, this break after 40 days was a strategic break. Like when we stopped after the third week of the strike for the language. That is, we stopped so we could come back more strongly. Now, we’ll recover. This year, we have experienced the battle of the European elections, and I think it came out very well, both in Valencia and the Balearics and in Catalonia. And now we’re getting ready for the battle in 2015. There will be autonomy-wide elections in the Balearics and we have to finish off the job. We have to remove the PP and José Ramón Bauzà from power. For me, it was a very important experience and I see it as training to make us stronger. We have to return time and again to civil disobedience, peaceful and passive resistance, hunger strikes, and I hope that people see that these strategies are more accessible and that they are there to be used when the moment is right. This coming year and the one after will be very important.
The government was unable to react to your hunger strike.
I’m not at all surprised by Bauzà’s attitude. I believe that we are wrong when we think that it’s up to them and that’s it. That comes from Madrid. In the same way that Rajoy’s PP doesn’t want to negotiate with Catalonia and denies that we are a people. It’s an attitude that already demonstrates a lack of democracy, and that’s the same thing we find with Bauzà and the educational community in the Balearics. So, I’m not surprised that Bauzà didn’t budge. But we wanted to show him up in front of the whole population, including his voters and supporters, and I think that goal was achieved. Now we just have to finish off the job.
And what about the educational struggle?
The educational struggle continues stronger than ever. The big debate in the high schools at the end of the school year is how to frame the battle in 2015. From this experience, educators and the educational community will all come out stronger. with a spirit of renewed struggle. And everything that is happening this year has established human ties among educators that can’t be broken.
