Love for colors has, like all loves, an irrational root. It can be “imposed” —like filial love — or the result of falling in love. Then come the reasons that explain and support the choice. In my case, many of these reasons have been through identification. Discovering how some of my most admired Catalans were parrots has strengthened the accuracy of my choice. Catalans from an “other” Catalonia, people of whom I admire thought, work, life and temperament. Discovering that they were militant parrots has always been the confirmation of a suspicion or a hope.
González Ledesma, Eugenio Trías, Josep Ramoneda, Rafael Metlikovez, Enric González and José Martí Gómez have been some of these confirmations of a contradictory harmonious world. Everything would be perfect if Vázquez Montalbán, Joan Manuel Serrat and Sergi Pàmies had not been wrong or if Raimon, Sisa, Marsé or Pérez Andújar (who often makes Espanyol appear in his novels) had shown a minimal interest in football. .
Martí Gómez wrote a lot and well about Espanyol. In one of the chronicles he tells us that because of the celebration of an ascent he was dragging a cervical hernia. I had carried Idígoras on my shoulders, an Andalusian player who – I was impressed to find out – also died on 22 February. In another, he remembers the day when, also in an ascent and in the confusion of euphoria, he grabbed the penis of Cayetano Re, who was coming out of the shower.
Exciting to read his chronicle of the later baptized as delapeñazo: “I spent the final half hour emitting Tuscan smoke like an old locomotive […] at the end I scratched my belly, drank a good sip of gin and put on a bolero by Amparo Montes: From time to time joys come to me”. Or when, passionately defending his love for Espanyol, he declared himself “contradictorily human. Catholic, left-left socialist, Catalanist-federalist and Espanyol ”. Take a look, his friend Armand Carabén told him, before it’s too late. Or when he talks about his grandchildren. Or his obsession (shared by many) with David Garcia.
My favorite, however, is May 5, 1988. After the 3-0 defeat in Sarrià in the UEFA final: “When I palm it, I wish to be cremated and that the urn with my ashes be wrapped in the cover of The newspaper today, which is to be expected take 3 to 0 from Espanyol to Bayer […] What will remain of me is carried by Josep Ramoneda, fellow sufferer in the Sarrià stands for 20 years in a tour of the pitch”.
