The First Colony

Catalonia to Scotland and Back Again

October – December 2019

A Moment In History

The train ground to a slow stop at the station of Granollers central. Nobody got off, and nobody got on. It was not as if there was a lack of people to get on. The crowds of people outside ran back and forth between doors looking for a tiny space where they could fit. The train was packed beyond understanding. We got on at the starting point, and had been lucky enough to get a seat. It only took the second or third stop before all of the seats were filled. By the time we got to Granollers I had someone’s bag a couple centimeters away from my face. Just to my left sat a happy Catalan belly with its owner trying his best to avoid eye contact. It was the best game of human Tetris I had ever seen in my life.

I guess the people in Granollers had not thought about how many people would be on the train to Barcelona. I wonder if they had known, if they would have simply walked to Barcelona the same as the thousands of people doing so from every corner of Catalonia for the last three days. It is only another 20 kilometers to Barcelona from here. If they start walking now they might be able to reach the city center before the end of the day. It is certain that waiting for a train is completely unrealistic. They may not know this, but the last few stops have had almost the same amount of people waiting. Waiting here is nearly hopeless.

As the train doors slowly closed, the people outside became more chaotic. The least patient ran quickly between the closing doors to find any space within the train they could occupy. We still had ten stops to go before we made it to our destination of Passeig de Gracia. I cannot begin to imagine how many people would be waiting at the next stops, let alone in Barcelona proper.

The images of the city over the last couple days already showed Las Ramblas filled with Catalans. A somewhat uncommon view compared to the normal swarms of tourists from nearly every corner of the world. Today was different though. I couldn’t imagine being a tourist today, and waking up to see the most famous street of Catalonia looking more like the days when Orwell arrived to fight the fascists than the days of globalization.

A few more stops passed, and we had finally made it to Barcelona. The platforms here had even more people waiting, but now it seemed like a lot of people on the train had become sick of feeling like sardines. When the doors opened a sea of people finally left giving us a few seconds of breathing space. The people on the platform quickly occupied the space leaving us once again packed like sardines. No one really knew what we would find when we finally made it off the train. The anxiety was growing to see what that might be.

Every single age group had a representative on this train. From the primary school children to the elders who spent their childhood sleeping in bunkers waiting for the Spanish bombs to stop dropping on Barcelona. Those bombs may have stopped, but the sentencing of nearly the entire Catalan government to an average of ten years for their part in the popularly supported independence referendum was a different sort of bomb. For those that remember the real bombs, for those who remember when their language was illegal, for those that knew the people who are anonymously buried on the side of the road, I guess it is business as usual.

The European Union has up to now mostly kept its mouth shut. Two years ago when footage emerged of Spanish national police beating Catalans, and breaking down doors of schools to confiscate voting equipment, the leaders of Europe declared it a Spanish domestic problem. However, when Carles Puigdemont, the president of Catalonia, showed up on the doorstep of the European Union to try and build support for the Catalan cause, no one in Europe was quick to comply with Spanish requests to doom him to decades of sitting in a jail cell.

The politicians in the center of Europe may not have wanted to openly show support for the Catalans, but they could see that the trials were nonsense. I understand though. It’s hard to show support for a foreign independence movement when it could inadvertently legitimize the independence movements that nearly every single nation state of Europe struggle with.

Through the shouts of “Libertat presos polítics”, a yell that I am sure I will hear a lot today, I finally heard the call over the intercom that the next step would be Passeig de Gracia. We quickly began coordinating to swap spots with those standing around who would be continuing down the line. When the doors finally opened, we were swept away in the sea of people leaving the train.

A moment later we were standing outside in front of one of Gaudi’s famous houses, a bit disoriented with the difference from the normal environment. Normally there would be a line of people around the block waiting to take a tour of the house. Today the house was completely shut. The general strike that the Catalan government had called a few days ago had apparently been very effective. I suppose most of the people who normally work at the tourist spots are out protesting in the streets today. In fact, the sight of the crowd we had become a part of gave me the impression that nearly half the people in all of Catalonia had made it out for the protest.

It was still early in the day, but the streets were already a sea of people. It was not quite shoulder to shoulder right where we were, but two blocks away towards the Mediterranean it was. In the opposite direction, a sizable crowd was building up around a large stage in the middle of the street.

As we began to zig zag throughout the city, the scope of the day became more and more clear. Every street we went down had a growing crowd. Even the side streets, which normally had nothing more than a few cars moving around, had their intersections packed with people chanting and waving flags. By the time we were back to where we started, the entire street had filled with people . The two large crowds that existed earlier had merged into one.

The stages now had lines of people waiting to give speeches with the crowds eagerly awaiting said speeches. The principal politicians that had brought us to today may now all be in exile or prison, but in Catalonia, there are no shortages of people willing to step in to pick up the baton. Today is simply another step in a long line of actions taken to try and establish an independent Catalonia.

After another hour of weaving in and out of the streets our pace began to slow. No matter where we went, we were met with shoulder to shoulder crowds as far as the eye could see. The randomness of the movement from earlier had lapsed. The crowd in unison started slowly moving in a single direction back to La Rambla where the speeches had started.

There was a little bit too much excitement to stand in one place and listen to a talk. We kept on slowly moving past the stages back towards the sea. By this point the crowds became so dense that doing anything you might consider walking was all but impossible. Instead we moved in a sort of shuffle with small little steps taken, and only taking a couple every minute. It took nearly an hour of this sort of movement to move a few blocks. Finally the crowd began to clear up once again as we got closer to the sea.

After spending a few moments letting the claustrophobia pass, we finally got on the move once again. At this point a large wave of people started moving away from the speeches to find some space to breathe. Once we made it to Plaça de Catalunya the whole of the crowd broke into small pieces. They were all enjoying the day as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Some of the families that had walked in from every corner of Catalonia over the last few days were sitting around having a bit of a picnic. People from the neighborhood were skating around as they would on any other days. The tourists were standing around taking pictures of the crowds, a bit flabbergasted as to what was happening.

We only had a few moments to catch our breaths when a couple blocks away a large explosion broke the relative peace. With the noise, the whole square transformed into chaos with every single person running in different directions. Looking down one of the side streets the source of the explosion became clear as a herd of people ran towards us away from the national police station.

As the herd made it to our location another explosion went off, and we started taking off into the Gothic Quarter. After a couple blocks, we cut down a left handed street in order to get a clear view of the Police station where a crowd of energetic people were yelling with small clouds of gas dissipating overhead. At that moment, another explosion came with an immediate, more dense cloud of gas with it. The chaos that had surrounded the first two did not happen now though. They were now in the process of dumping a waste bin into the street in front of the police as a less than subtle metaphor.

We quickly scuttled away not wanting to get too close to what could turn into a chaotic scene. We moved on again winding in and out of various streets of the gothic quarter. Passing by museums, plazas, and Roman walls. We were only a few blocks away from the national police, but the atmosphere had again transitioned into absolute peace. The occasional explosion coming from another tear gas canister opening in the distance had become more background noise than anything to be concerned about.

As we walked past Fossar de les Moreres the memories of the past attempts to establish an independent state were incredibly visible. It was here where the last defenders of Barcelona fell to Spanish guns over three centuries ago. It’s a bit sad that September 11th, the national holiday of Catalonia, is in fact marking the anniversary of that day in 1714. The day when Catalonia’s progressive institutions were replaced with absolute power handed down from Madrid. From that day on the Catalans began struggling to reclaim their autonomy. From the bourbon’s, to Franco, to today’s events. Like clockwork, the Catalans continuously try to move closer and closer to a state of self-determination. Every time it looks like it might happen, a procession from Madrid comes in to swiftly wipe out the movement.

In the 70’s Franco and his fascist quietly stepped into the background of history. It was then when the Catalans were given a taste of freedom for the first time in fifty years. It was no longer illegal to speak Catalan, and a small bit of what was once the most progressive republic in history was reestablished within the umbrella of Spain. Today may simply mark another day where the pendulum swings back towards repression, but whether or not that will happen is still unknown. The wave of history is long and unpredictable, and what happens next is never certain.

The authoritarian tools that were once leveraged to suppress the Catalan spirit no longer exist. The years of the Spanish empire are long past with little external enemies to give Spain a uniting cause. The dictators that were once so eager to develop bombing techniques over Barcelona have themselves become relics of history. Suppression of culture and language has also become wholly unacceptable in the modern, peaceful, multicultural European Union. The central authorities have certainly become constrained by the systems of modern society, but I am sure they will leverage all possible manners to put the genie back in the bottle.

The sun was starting to set as we began moving further away from the commotion towards the closest train station. With everything going on we hadn’t even realized that nearly eight hours had passed. The areas away from the city center were winding down the day as if it were any other day. It wasn’t long before we had found ourselves on a train heading back north, completely exhausted with the events of the day. This would be the last bit of time would spend in Barcelona for a while. A couple weeks later we would be on our way further north for a quick stop in Paris.

Finding Your Place In France

I was a bit anxious to arrive in Paris. I had been once before in my life, but in the context of a family trip. Admittedly, I remember not particularly liking the city, and I was very much looking forward to challenging my conceptions of the city. For the time being it would have to wait. We first must shuffle around Catalonia as we dealt with the chaos of one of the biggest train stations in western Europe being closed.

The principal station in Paris had become an impossible destination due to it being flooded out from a series of record breaking rains. Thus the journey, which was supposed to take eight hours, was pushed to an undetermined amount of time. In fact, it took us two interchanges and eight hours of travel just in Catalonia before we finally found ourselves moved onto a French train in Dali’s hometown, Figueres.

The feeling of the train was immediately noticeably different. The trains in Catalonia all had a very modern feeling, and there was something very different about the French train. The structure itself was the same as you would find for any train built in the last thirty years. It was the small touches, such as the fabrics covering the chairs purposefully designed to match a train built closer to the beginning of the 20th century, which gave an immediate feeling of something distinct.

Even the ding of the intercom was designed to set a mood. Instead of having the chord progression move in something like G major, it seemed to move in A minor. Leaving a sort of tingy mysterious tone at the end as opposed to the typical upbeat note that you would expect. A subtle change, but something that created a very unique feeling.

The conductor shortly informed us in both French and Spanish that we would be taking a trip through Bordeaux in order to get on another track that would go to the right station in Paris. After taking a peak at the map I realized that we would be going about half way across the country in the opposite direction before we even started heading to Paris. I guess it was time to settle in, and take in the landscape before the sun went down.

Almost immediately after we crossed the Spanish-French border the appearance of what we passed by started changing. The trees were the same, the rolling hills had the same amount of vegetation, and the old villages we passed had the same style that you would expect to see in many of the smaller villages in Catalonia. It was not so much that the typical landscape had changed. It was more the sudden addition of iron structures styled to look like the Eiffel Tower sticking out of the ground. A lot of them covered the many train stations we passed through. Some of them had seemingly been built for the simple act of adding something nice to look at to the horizon.

When we got to Prepignan for our first stop in France, I finally had a moment to really absorb the details of this architecture. The entire ceiling of this train station was held up by these iron constructs. The ceiling itself was nothing more than an array of glass panes giving a view of the sky above. The sky that had been overcast for the last hour or so now had an orange tint as the sun started going down giving the station a stunning contrast between the green iron beams that held up the ceiling.

Upon further inspection, it became unmistakable how much of a piece of art the whole building was. The amount of rivets seemed to be exactly calculated to give the beams a feeling of symmetry. Everything was designed, and nothing seemed to be done by mistake. It was an attention to detail unlike anything I had ever seen.

Just as I wrapped up taking in the details, the train began moving again continuing our journey across France. Shortly after that the sun set leaving us to sit in the darkness to wait for the trip to complete with nothing to do but get up and take a quick pace down the train every hour or so. By this time we should have been pulling into the Paris metro area, but we had barely made it half way there with nearly seven hours passed.

It wasn’t all bad news though. At Bordeaux a young French vagrant got on the train, and immediately tried to strike up a conversation with us. After a few minutes of attempting to communicate he got an eye on my Nintendo Switch sitting on the table, and made a number of enthusiastic gasps in French while pointing at the device. After pulling out a bunch of Chinese from his bag, and gesturing it towards me, we were able to work out a deal without a word. The rest of the trip went by relatively quickly with shared food, and a shared bit of time with mario.

Once we finally got to Paris our new friend walked out into the night with us. He vaguely pointed into the direction of where we were staying, and then to the nearby bus stop. After that, he put on a smile, and simply said “Bienvenue à Paris” before walking off into the night.

Our bus arrived shortly after that, and we began winding through the streets of Paris. We passed by nearly all of the sites that you would typically want to see. Our trip started in the south side of the city at Gare Montparnasse, and wound straight through the center to a couple blocks behind Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel tower would be visible through the entire bus ride. Within a few minutes, we arrived at the Seine with the corner of the ancient island fortress just barely visible. As we crossed the river we passed right in front of the glass pyramid of the Louvre. Not long after that we found ourselves looping around a beautiful opera house before we quickly passed by a massive 19th century train station. Our tour came to an end as we finally went by the unmistakable windmill of Moulin Rouge.

At the apartment, an older woman met us with a large smile on her face. The apartment itself was barely larger than an American bedroom closet. The bed almost touched the two stools that wrapped around the kitchen. It was barely big enough for one person to move about. Nevertheless, it was one of the most welcoming spaces I had ever seen. She had entirely filled the walls with books, and pieces of art. On the counter, a big plate of cheese waited for us with a very nice bottle of wine.

“Je suis Français” is all I could muster when she asked if we spoke any French. Of course the statement is a lie, but it truly is all I can recall of my limited French. There is no mistaking that I am in fact not French. After the pleasantries, she showed us around the room with great enthusiasm while Anna translated to me anything that needed to be heard. The tour of the amenities was very quick, and the focus promptly turned to the books that lined the room.

The first book was a full history of Paris, which she enthusiastically turned the pages of show us where we were within old maps of Paris. The first map showed the city as it was near the beginning of its history. Only a little island fortress stood with a couple bridges sprouting out onto the opposing banks of the river. The second took us forward a millennia to show the same island with a much more formidable fortress, and a new medieval city on its banks safely protected by a thick wall. The third map was a few more hundred years later into the renaissance with a windmill on the edge of the city surrounded by fields.

She excitingly pointed out the window at a windmill on a hill to indicate that it was the same as the map. The building we currently occupied didn’t look as if it existed until we got to the final map of the late 19th century. Even then it looked like we would have been on the edge of the city with a completely different defensive wall close by.

Once she finished taking us through a brief history of the city, her attention turned to a book of Van Gough. With even more enthusiasm she turned the pages until she found a specific painting of Paris. Excitingly, she pointed out the window to a building nearby, explaining that Van Gough once had a studio in it. She then turned her attention back to the upper right corner of the painting. One room of a building in the painting was visible, which happened to be the room in which we stood.

She had a tremendous amount of pride to simply live in the neighborhood in which Van Gough had once remarked, “Paris is Paris, there is but one Paris and however hard living may be here … the French air clears up the brain and does one good.“ The French identity has been strong and unwavering for more than a century, unlike many other countries around the world. Even in the US the idea of ‘American’ is always paired with something like ‘German’, ‘African’, ‘Chinese’, etc… The French identity has been clearly defined for quite some time.

The post revolution government made sure to smash out any identities in this country that were not explicitly “French”. It really is quite remarkable how effective they were. Teachers left from the central power source with explicit instructions to eliminate all languages from the edges of France. The hope to bring everyone into the republic properly guided most policies in this time. Those that opposed subjected themselves to harsh punishment. The rest were forced to believe in the inherent ugliness of their mother tongue.

Once everyone understood how beautiful their lives could be if they simply accepted French into their hearts and minds, resistance against the policy fell by the wayside. They didn’t simply teach the French language and culture, they managed to extinguish all other cultures from the national image. Hundreds of years of history merged into one national heritage devoted to republicanism and secularism.

It was a template that would be replicated throughout the world to create a shared, and mostly imagined national heritages. When 4000 years of the Chinese empire officially ended at the beginning of the last century, the only thing those who fought in the aftermath could agree on was the need to establish a national language to keep the nation whole. When they did this, they looked onto the French tactics to learn how to do so. Where the Qing tactics on the same task had failed for multiple centuries, the French tactics proved to be successful. There is no mistake now what it means to be Han chinese. In this sense the French and Chinese share something in common, a national sacrifice of a multicultural heritage to replace it with something that can appeal to all who let it. A monolith to be communicated across the world.

When the Spanish attempted to apply the same tactics, they ended up failing miserably. With every action, there is as always an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction to Spain’s attempt to unify culture continues to this day. The modern Catalan independence movement has its roots linked unequivocally to the Franco policies that were modeled after France. The only real difference was the source of the authority. France passed down its authority through the pen, and Franco through the gun. The pen truly is mightier than the sword when it is applied with enough patience.

The following few days we criss-crossed the city multiple times absorbing the atmosphere, trying to figure out exactly what Van Gough saw in this city. Paris has been famous for generations for its atmosphere to the point where it is a bit of a cliche. Rome wasn’t built in a day though, and Paris’ reputation was not established overnight. There is something here that creates that aura, and the more time we spent walking about, the more I felt it myself.

One of our first stops was through the island that had been the origin of the city. What had once been almost certainly a series of Celtic huts, with a handful of boats surrounding it to help those ancient humans cross the river for the daily hunt, has now become an island of man made stone from end to end. Our first entry onto the island was on the north western edge where it seemed to me as if every building we walked by served an incredibly important part of French history.

The streets were absolutely filled with people. Most of them seemed like they belonged in Paris as much as we did. Simply walking down the street on this island was a bit like moving through a minefield. You had to be constantly on guard to avoid people standing in the middle of the sidewalk to snap a shot of some medieval building.

As we got closer to the other side of the island, the very familiar smell of roasted chestnuts began to fill the air. Right before we made it to the bridge that would take us off the island, a little path opened up along the river that took us straight to the elusive smell to find someone selling chestnuts with the grand old Notre Dame right behind him. It had only been a few months since the fire that destroyed the thousand year old monolith. The fire had seemingly not stopped the endless streams of tourists from around the world.

The walls were barely held up by large structures of wooden scaffolding. A wide fence ran around the cathedral making sure that no one could get very close unless they absolutely had a good reason to. Every space of the fence was occupied by someone trying their best to snap a photo of the sarcophagus. On the other side of the river, there were even more people standing in awe at the old giant. It took them over two hundred years to build it long ago, and now they say that they are going to rebuild it in five. Even in its crippled state, it was unmistakably impressive. The goal to rebuild it in five years seems to be next to impossible to me, but at the heart of the goal, there seems to be a foundational need to preserve what is worth preserving.

We made our way across the river with Notre Dame in view at all times to find a cafe to take a break after what had now become a nearly three hour walk. The cafe in question was not something that you bring to mind when you think of a classical Parisian cafe. Instead, it was a British book store filled with tourists. There is nothing more illustrative of the present momentum of European society than an English bookstore built across the river of arguably the most important French monument.

From there we spent some time making our way through the nearby neighborhoods. The streets we went down wound into every direction, occasionally ending on a large straight boulevard with a broad median for pedestrians to move down, only for another street to simply dip back into winding directions a few blocks later. At a certain point we noticed how much bigger the Eiffel tower had become in our view. It was then that we made a conscious effort to take a walk through Champ de Mars to get a better look, doing our best to dodge the people looking for tourists. Another hour later, and we found ourselves almost back to Notre Dame with a different destination in mind.

Moments later we were standing in an intersection unlike most in the world. If you did not know any better, this intersection may not seem any different than any other intersection in Paris. It was a very large roundabout with a tall obelisk in the center, not unlike many other intersections in Paris. What makes this intersection so unique is simply what happened here over 200 years ago. What is now simply an obelisk was once the gates to the Bastille. The intense need to preserve history seen at Notre Dame is absent here.

At first it seems a bit sad to know that such an important relic of world history was completely lost. After a moment of reflecting, I started to understand why it was this way, and I started to understand France more than I ever had in my life. The historic sites the French preserve, Notre Dame, The Louvre, Versailles, and the Effel tower, are all symbols of French ingenuity and culture. What happened here 200 years ago was a call from the French people to toss the system of Monarchy onto the trash heap of history.

The bastille was never a symbol of French innovation, or artistry, but of classical European repression of the masses. Versailles may have once been a striking symbol of the French royalty excess, but it is also itself a symbol of French artistry, which gave it a pass when it came time to destroy and forget the remnants of an uncomfortable past. Every aspect of French history is constantly in the process of being reanalyzed. Not simply to preserve what is worth keeping, but also to destroy the parts that are no longer worth being part of public life. As much as we like to remember what came before us, there is quite a bit of wisdom to quarantining parts of our past to the confines of a history book.

The rest of the week in Paris passed faster than expected. It wasn’t long before we were back at the train station. Anna was going back to Catalonia for the time being. I was making the trip further north under the English channel to spend a bit of time in London.

London

My host for my time in London was quite a ways away from King’s Cross, the famous station where the line ended. Luckily, the famous London Underground made it very clear how to get to his house. It was only a few hours after I had left Paris that I had landed on the doorstep of my next home in London, a sign of both human ingenuity, and another sign of the unbelievable political change that had occurred in the last 50 years.

I found the flat completely empty upon arrival. Without much to do there, I took advantage of the afternoon to acquaint myself with London. The large avenues of Paris felt like a world away as I sat on the second story of a double decker bus watching the streets wind back and forth while we moved into the center of town. We made our way through a couple major roundabouts before coming to what looked like a central bus terminal. It seemed as if it was a good place as any other to start exploring on foot.

I quickly got lost exploring as many side streets as I could. The streets were filled with people wearing expensive suits, and carrying briefcases. The whole of the center seems to be structured around conducting business. There didn’t seem to be too much to do if you didn’t have somewhere specific to go in the center of this city.

After a couple hours of exploring, the sun started setting, and the pubs gradually started filling with the same sort of people wearing the same sort of expensive suits. It did not take long for them to start overflowing into the street with their pints in one hand and briefcases in the other. The streets that were mostly utilitarian an hour ago are now filled to the brim, but it did not last too long.

Once everyone finishes their drinks, the center of London seems to almost completely die down. Large sections along the Thames become quiet enough to hear the urban tumbleweeds rippling as large gusts of wind criss-cross them over the streets. The eerie quietness is only occasionally broken by the sound of a crowd at a distant pub finishing their last pint before dispersing for the night. As the time goes by, those occasional interruptions of the silence become less common. The city itself then seems to fall asleep while it awaits for the business to resume the next morning.

At these times most of the senses become more sensitive after the loss of constant visual and auditory distractions through the day. It is at this time that one can observe the streets of London in a completely different manner. Wandering around between the combination of post war development and the remains of Victorian styles in that bit of time after the end of work, but before the last daily busses passed quickly became one of my favorite things to do with my time in London.

The more I did so, the more I became acutely aware that I was never really alone. Even the most abandoned Victorian alleys have a level of surveillance that is unlike anything I have seen since my brief time in Beijing. Somewhere between the Victorian greatness of the British Empire and the troubled period of the 20th century, a slightly paranoid, impenetrable England seems to have emerged. This awareness of how constantly I was being watched by an army of cameramen suddenly made me realize that works of the likes of V for Vendetta and 1984 may have been written more as a prophetic telling of trends in Britain rather than simply interesting pieces of fiction.

Whatever the future may hold, and whatever people will say about our current historical period is still unknown. What is apparent the more I explore is a sense of how much history really is contained within this city, and how many paths have crossed at this position in the world. Modern day England and modern day Italy may be about as different as any two countries can be. However, one night as I made my way to the London Bridge bus stop, I happened upon a piece of evidence of how directly linked they had once been. In front of me stood the remains of a wall built long ago by the Romans who had created this great city.

The ancient Roman wall suddenly sticking out of the ground was beautifully preserved. A friendly reminder that even though the English may be the current inhabitants of this land, they nonetheless inherited it. The Romans tamed this land long before the Anglo-Saxons called it their own. The traditions and histories of both Britain and Mainland Europe are deeply intertwined. No matter how many times the English try to escape the mainland, they will never be able to sever that deep link passed down through the generations.

As much as England’s isolated little island has always fostered a sense of independent strength, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has any basis in reality. When they showed up in China in 1793 to convince the Chinese of how equal they were to the powerful Qing, and of course, how superior they were to the rest of their European peers, it still didn’t stop the Emperor from viewing them as little more than a tribe that had inherited from the long line of Romans.

The arrogance that led to the catastrophe of the meeting with the emperor seems to have persisted to a certain extent to this day. The owners of the flat I was staying in were from Lagos. They had moved to London to better their lives by finding well paying jobs in IT and nursing. They were the fairly typical immigrant story of a family trying to improve the future opportunities for their kids, and themselves. England had opened its arms to them, but not all seemed to be that welcoming. I could not help but be horrified when Naija came home one night from the hospital to tell me about one of her coworkers explaining to her that the reason the British Empire had been so successful, and why industrialization started here, was due to the genetic superiority of the English.

The ability of someone to believe such a thing is absolutely beyond me. Apart from the obvious racism of going out of your way to tell a Nigerian this, it is absolute nonsense. There is no escaping the fact that we all have the same 10,000 ancestors from the African coastline. We are one of the least varied species on the whole planet, yet people still believe this nonsense.

Even with the constant debunking of nearly all hypotheses that aim to justify racism, it always seems that the next one is right around the corner. It always arrives just in time for a generation to regurgitate for a lifetime. We keep the train of ignorance moving for at least one more cycle for nothing more than a sense of unearned pride.

England itself has been on a steady decline as a global entity since the end of the First World War. There isn’t a single person alive anymore who truly lived in the golden years of the British Empire. As the country continues to look inward for the future, it seems more and more like they will look to the past for their sense of national pride. With Brexit, rumblings have been growing even stronger of Scotland leaving the United Kingdom, opening the door for England to potentially be truly independent for the first time in hundreds of years. With this impressive decline in power, it’s almost understandable as to why someone may turn to bigotry to justify to themselves a sense of meaning.

So far my experience in England has not really impressed me. My first little bit of exploration of London had not been very exciting, and had at most left me with an overwhelming feeling of mundanity. Even the decent food that I was able to find exclusively came from old British colonies. It makes me wonder what this country must have been like for daily life before the 1600s. No curry, no kebabs, and even the most famous British dish, Fish and Chips, half comes from Peru.

It’s hard to imagine what this island would be like without the age of globalization. From a natural resources perspective, it doesn’t seem to be physically possible for there to be enough on this island to sustain its modern population. It only makes sense that they needed to look elsewhere to obtain sustainability. The British Empire seems to have been a simple necessity in that sense. Instead of having to deal with the limitations of such a horrible environment, they simply moved that problem to Ireland and India. England dodged the famines they were destined for. It only cost the lives of a few million people in the far away colonies. Those deaths were so far away that it made it difficult for people here to care.

The ability to share the suffering amongst the colonies was itself, unsustainable though. There’s only so much death that you can put upon the rest of the world before they start rebelling against you. There needed to be another solution. Something that could resolve the problem of limited resources without relying on the subjugation of half the world.

Industrialization was the solution to that problem. The reason why this happened here first seems simply due to how much need there was. The natural environment of Great Britain required a solution to the problem of limited resources. It wasn’t some divine miracle, or a genetic superiority that caused industrialization to begin. It was the simple result of a biological population adapting to the constraints of its environment.

Even industrialization itself was only a stop gap. Today, people would be starving in the street if it wasn’t for the interconnection of the global economy. The real solution to making this island sustainable was to finally make it rely upon the rest of the world. Now, it seems the populists have collectively decided to go into an opposite direction.

The British Empire is a distant memory now, and the United Kingdom may follow in our lifetimes. The last few English generations have the legacy of having been the ones who watched the decline of their power. It’s not exactly a legacy that gives a lot of personal pride. Telling a struggling Nigerian immigrant that they are genetically superior may be the last bit of pride that English nurse has. It’s all a bit pathetic when you really think about it.

The next few days, I got intimately familiar with the layout of London. I must have walked 10 miles a day crisscrossing the city. In those few days I saw nearly every historical site that I could think of. I even happened upon Benjamin Franklin’s house out of pure chance. It was quite the experience of moving around the city like this. Nearly six hours a day on foot going back and forth between sections built over the ruins of World War II, and some of the remaining Victorian streets that have survived along the Thames.

Almost every night I found myself riding a bus away from the center back to where I was staying. It was on those buses that I really learned about Brexit from the British perspective. The topic of nearly everyone making idle conversation was Brexit. It was almost impossible to not eavesdrop on different opinions.

“Did you hear, they are going to extend the deadline again?” I heard someone exclaim one night to the person sitting next to them.

“At this rate, they are never going to finish negotiations.” Their partner replied in an incredibly irritated voice.

“Did you see that Scotland is going to try and gain their autonomy to freely hold referendums?” I overhead the next morning.

“It’s a load of rubbish if you ask me. What do they think they are going to accomplish? They are simply politicking.”

“It will be interesting to see how Boris responds. Brexit may have ended up being a referendum on the end of the UK.”

“We will see.” was all his friend responded with before changing the topic to football.

A couple nights later, I heard another point of view as someone spoke with their spouse over the phone in a concerned Spanish accent. “I don’t know what is going to happen.” She said before pausing to hear the response from the other end of the phone. “I talked to the lawyer today, and they do not know what will happen either. We need to find someone that knows what’s going to happen to advise us, so that I don’t have to leave.”

A few days later while sitting in a kebab place on the edge of downtown, I witnessed the most overt racism I had seen in years. The people who worked there spoke with a slight Turkish accent. Right around the moment I was about to leave someone came in with a thick Cockney accent.

I generally do not have any difficulties understanding someone’s English regardless of where they are from. I must admit though, there is something incredibly unique about how difficult Cockney English is to understand. The people from Turkey with near perfect English seem to agree as well as they tried desperately to understand an angry Londoner’s order.

It didn’t take long for the guy to start screaming at the poor restaurant workers of which I was able to catch small snippets such as “Learn English, ’ go back to where you’ve come from”. The insults didn’t end there though. The customer resorted to writing down his order, and waited while spurting out more unintelligible remarks. Once he had his food, he paid the bill, and headed for the door. Before leaving he gave his final word, a proud “I ‘ope they send you all back by the time vis is done wit.”

Absolutely unbelievable. If I had not witnessed it myself, I would have never believed it. I had wrapped up eating my food a bit earlier, but I had stayed to watch the whole event. Now that it was over, I made my way for the exit, before stopping to assure the workers there that the problem was definitely not with them.

It was back into the street after that. A short while later I was on the bus heading to the outskirts of the city to end the night before another day of exploring started again. At this point, I only had a few days left, but I had been making the most of my time in London. From the tower of London, to Trafalgar square, Big Ben, and the Royal Palace, in my short time here, I had managed to see a ton of historic sites. The one location I passed by the most was the National Museum, which stood proudly near the center of town.

Recently, the museum had been in the news for seemingly all the wrong reasons. The long list of countries demanding that the British Museum return their national treasures seems to be growing every day. The British Museum has made their stance on this very clear. They do not see any reason to return anything outside of human remains to the countries the artifacts originate from.

At the same time, the same people who refuse to return what their great grandparents took from the British colonies, are helping the Iraq and Afghanistan governments recover artifacts that showed up in Britain within the last couple decades. Meanwhile, Egypt has been asking for Britain to return artifacts from their sacred grounds for a couple decades with no movement.

It’s a big contradiction of an institution, that’s for sure. It is in many ways one of the most visible monuments to British colonialism that I found exploring London. It was this legacy, and my silent protest to the disregard of the original homes of these artifacts that ultimately kept me out of the museum. Regardless, when I found myself sitting on a train heading north to Edinburgh, I couldn’t help but feeling a bit of regret for not having gone.

Scotland

The train pulled into Edinburgh station well past nightfall. When I looked at the map to my apartment, it seemed to only be a few blocks away. I had spent some time in Edinburgh on a family trip years before, but most of my memories of that were spotty at best. The only reliable memories I had were of walking up and down large hills, and that part of my memory immediately proved to be correct. Little did I know at the time that those few blocks to my apartment essentially involved climbing and descending a small mountain. By the time I got to the apartment I was completely out of breath, and the few dozen pounds in the bag around my shoulder seemed to have grown to a ton. Nothing like a trip to Edinburgh to make you realize how out of shape you are I suppose.

The next few weeks went by pretty quickly. The whole city felt incredibly homely, and I seemed to slip right into a routine mixed with exploration and work. The city is by itself not too big. My apartment happened to be a stone’s throw away from the castle, and the conveniently located pubs made nearly anything I needed always within a few blocks. Even though the city itself has a small footprint, I cannot help myself but interweave back and forth between the winding streets building mental imprints of the details into my mind.

The entire city is constructed around a massive castle sitting atop a small mountain. The mountain itself appears to have randomly sprouted straight out of the ground. The shops and houses in the center of the city were placed right into the old walls. The walls themselves had clearly been built to defend against outside invasions. Nearly every path breaking through them is covered by a building with visible signs of long abandoned murder holes.

The long forgotten defensive purpose of the walls served at this point only to be a backdrop for the atmosphere that the city emits. This atmosphere had clearly made it a hotspot for people from all around the world. In a five minute walk through the center of town, you could pick up at least 10 languages from those passing by. If the language was not enough to tell apart the natives and foreigners, then the heart of Midlothian certainly helped. The reactions from all of the foreigners whenever someone walked up to hock a fat luggie on it was a never ending source of entertainment.

A feeling of historic relevance is unmistakable in the streets of the city. From simple things like the pub by my apartment aptly named The Last Drop, as a meta joke on the many people who lost their lives long ago when the primary use of the Grass Market in front of the pub was to carry out public executions. Only a few blocks away from that you can find the cafe where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter right above one of the filming locations for Trainspotting. Then there are the more complicated things like the proud statue of Adam Smith, the man whose philosophy has largely dominated the last 200 years of human civilization. It is absolutely clear that there is something about this city that has fueled a history of raw creativity.

As I wound through the streets, it seemed that every day I would come across another marker of something else important that had happened at some point in history. The cafe where JK Rowling spent a year writing the first Harry Potter was only a few blocks away from where the most famous scenes of Trainspotting were shot. Even further down the road one could find the home of the undeniably most successful video game developer in the world. All of this is tightly packed into a city of less than half a million people.

The people in this town also seemed immensely hospitable. It was not very long before the locals started making their acquaintance with me. One of the first people I met seemed to directly reflect the mix of entrepreneurial and creative drive that I was beginning to pick up here. Craig had recently left his job to teach himself coding, and my habit of finding a cozy place to sit and code had caused our paths to cross.

He seemed very interested in just about all things related to coding, and the possibilities that it gives to life. He was particularly interested in how I had managed to spend three years freelancing and traveling around the world.

One night, once Anna had arrived from Spain, we all met up at one of the many bars that line the edges of the Royal mile for a quick drink before he had to get up the next morning for a run. He filled me in on further details of his newest project, which seemed to be off to a massive success. It didn’t take long for the topic to move into Brexit, with him introducing me to a new perspective that I had not thought of.

“I am sick of all of the politicking.” He said, responding to my curiosity. “I voted to remain, but it was something I had to accept. No one thought we would still be negotiating the exit four years later.”

“It does seem like everyone is a bit fed up with the whole process.” I thought back to one of the conversations I overheard a couple weeks back on a London bus. “Do you think they will manage to finish the negotiations by the end of the year?”

“Almost certainly not. We have already missed five deadlines, and I do not see an end in sight. If we get out by the end of 2020, I would be surprised.”

“It at the very least has been interesting to observe, and I feel lucky that I really don’t have any skin in the game. I am curious to see what will happen with the Scottish independence movement after this.”

“Honestly, I hope they give it up.” He said while clearing his throat. ”We have gone through so much with Brexit, and I cannot imagine having to go through the whole process again. I want us to get on with it, and move forward into the future. The SNP has built their entire platform around Scottish independence to the point where I don’t know what they want to do afterwards. I wouldn’t be opposed to independence provided we had a plan to make something better. I’m not convinced that’s the case.”

“I don’t know too much about it to be honest, besides the bit I see from the outside. What is really interesting to me is the idea that Scotland could end up as a state within the European Union.”

“I am not really sure if it matters all that much though. The European Union is not going to stop trading with us, or prevent us from travelling. I don’t see a reason to throw away nearly 400 years of history for a possibility of a better unknown future. For as much as I wantedq to stay in the European Union, I also have to recognize the flaws. They say it is a union built with democratic values, but I don’t feel that we have a lot of power to influence policies.”

“There are definitely a lot of problems with the European Union.” I said, reflecting a bit on what he said. “I still believe that it may be a start of a sort of shared European identity.”

“That could be. The problem with the union is that it was formed as a simple economic union. Now it has its hand into all sorts of categories of policy. If Europe wants to be more than a collection of countries, then we need a more robust union.”

“I wonder if there will be a push for more democratic reforms, and maybe in another thirty years Scotland will find itself back into the union in some form.”

“Well if that happens, then I would very much welcome that.”

After a couple weeks of absorbing the city, and on one particularly grey day, we decided that it was time to get some education on what was around us. Right on the edge of the city center stood the national museum in a beautiful classical building. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to fill in some of the holes in our knowledge of Scottish history.

Upon entering the museum, we were greeted by a big sign pointing straight at a nice looking squat lady indicating that there was a tour about to start. As we approached, she looked up at the crowd of around a dozen people, and with a little squeak said “Well it looks like we are all here, shall we begin?”

We all followed her upstairs to the main hall while she filled us in on the typical topics. This included the year the building was built, the different pieces given to the museum by kings, and what the various halls were filled with. When we got to the more modern part of the museum, our guide turned around and started walking us through a map on the wall while laying out the itinerary for the day. The museum’s history section fills the west wing with every floor themed around a distinct era of Scotland. Below us was the early history, next to us was the Scottish kingdom, and above us was the modern era.

After her little explanation of the museum, we found ourselves downstairs standing in a large room with a mud hut in the center. Our guide quickly made her way to one specific item within the exhibit, and cleared her throat before beginning to speak. “This room is built to demonstrate what you would have seen if you had been in Scotland at the beginning of history. Unfortunately, the early Scottish did not keep a lot of history. Most of what we know about them is through oral history, or from Roman accounts. This item in particular is very important to us.” She said pointing towards a large stone.

The stone in question was ancient. On each side was a detailed carving. One depicting the bloody conquest of a people by a superior force, and another depicting some sort of domestic event. In the middle was the unmistakable script of ancient latin. “What we have here is what was once the end piece to Antonine’s wall. A lot of people are familiar with Hadrian’s wall, but Antonine’s wall was the true edge of the Roman empire. This piece in particular was on the east end of the wall. It was found northwest of where we are. It is designed to show the power of the mighty Romans to any outsiders. You can see depictions of conquering of the land, and natives falling to the Roman legions. It is a warning sign to keep Barbarians out.”

She paused a bit admiring the stone slab before continuing. “It did not work very well though. Only a few years after the wall was completed, the Romans abandoned Scotland due to the constant raids by the native celts. They retreated to Hadrian’s wall, which sits near the modern border of England and Scotland. That became the new border of the Roman Empire.” She turned to face us all, and with a slightly mischievous satisfied smirk wrapped up with “After that retreat, the Romans were never able to invade Scotland again.”

After our inspection of the Roman end-piece we went back to the main floor. This hall is aptly named the Kingdom of the Scots. The first stop here was an old, tattered, and beautiful Scottish flag hanging from the wall. It looked as if it had flown over the castle for well over a century. After a quick inspection of the flag, our guide wrapped up a brief explanation of it before turning on her heel while saying. “Now if you would follow me over to the center of this room, we will find one of my favorite pieces in the whole museum. Does anybody know what this is?” She asked as we all inspected a large intricate chest.

“I think this is the Darien chest?” piped up a Scottish accent from the middle of the group.

“That’s exactly right!” Our tour guide replied in a very enthusiastic tone. “Few people outside of Scotland know this, but Scotland once had colonies. The first expedition party brought this chest with holding nearly all of the wealth of the kingdom of Scotland. The then established New Caledonia in a little strip of land in Southern Panama. Does anyone know why Southern Panama is so unique to this day?” She asked, looking around with bright eyes.

“It’s one of the most dangerous parts of the world, and one of the only parts of the world that does not have a road.” I responded, knowing this mostly obscure fact purely out of happenstance of the time I looked into driving from Montevideo to Milwaukee.

“That is exactly right!” She responded with more enthusiasm. “When the Scots left to establish New Caledonia in 1698 the land was just as inhospitable as it is today. They tried growing crops that you might grow here, they tried trading with the locals, and they tried to create a global port, but everything failed. The first group of colonists didn’t tell anyone of the true conditions. When the second expedition came a year later, they found malaria, and starvation. After two years the remains of the colony returned to Edinburgh carrying this chest completely empty.”

“It was the biggest disaster in Scottish history, and it ended up leaving Scotland on the complete verge of bankruptcy. Does anybody know what Scotland did to fix this new problem?” She asked, looking around at everyone’s relatively blank look before continuing. “Well, they went down to London, and they said to the English ‘You have an empire, we want an empire. You want a more secure island, and we could provide that. Why don’t we work together?’ The English thought about it for a little bit, but not very long. Very quickly the two kingdoms came together to draft the Treaty of Union. Since then, Scotland and England have both been married in the United Kingdom.”

On that note we spent a few minutes inspecting the intricate details of the chest’s locking system before making our way through the remaining parts of the museum. We weaved through every era of Scottish history with brief explanations on everything that could be of interest. Our guide perked up a bit when we entered the modern part of the museum from the third floor. She turned to face us as we stood on an overhead ledge above what looked more like a giant toy room than anything else.

“Welcome to my favorite part of the museum! We decided to dedicate this hall to Scotland’s contribution to the modern world. Now as some of you might know, a large amount of scientific work comes out of Scotland. My favorite of these recent achievements is right in the center of this room.” She said as she pointed to a sheep sitting on a platform in the center of the room.

“Is that Dolly?!” One of the people that had spent the majority of the tour in the back spoke up excitedly in a thick Kentuky accent.

“That is precisely right!” Our guide responded in a bubbly fashion. As excited as she was to hear that someone knew what the Darien chest was, it seemed that she was doubly excited that someone could spot Dolly without a detailed explanation. “That little sheep down there is one of the largest modern prides of Scotland. It was the first successful clone of a mammal in history, and we keep her here in the center of our modern hall, so that she can keep watch over us as we look to the future with our research advancements leading the way.”

Our tour had seemed to have reached its end. We had seen everything from what the dirt huts looked like when the Romans showed up, to how the ancient nation reached its end, and finally a brief image of what the future might hold. Before the tour was over, we made one final stop on the roof where a light snow had begun. From there, even with the snow, nearly all of Edinburgh was visible before us. From the ancient castle standing watch eternally with the threat of the English long extinguished, to the universities where they were no doubt conducting bleeding edge research. The city had stood proud at the edge of Scotland for generations. It is very clear that it will serve as a jewel of the Scottish for centuries to come.

Loch Ness

My appreciation for the city could not grow much higher by this point. After a weekend in Glasgow, getting some more feeling for the larger Scotland, and seeing the end date of our time here quickly approaching, it seemed like it was time to go see the famous highlands. Luckily there are plenty of companies eager to take people to catch a surprise glance of Nessy. Of all the companies available there was one specifically that stood out to me that would offer us a tour catered on telling the history of the Highlands.

As the tour began pulling out of the city center, the overhead speaker crackled to life. The conductor didn’t waste too much time with the greeting though. As we were driving past the Christmas market, he immediately began a story about what we were driving by. What is now a park, and the oldest train tracks in Edinburgh was once an artificial loch for 600 years. It served as a near perfect defense against the English, as well as an excellent suicide spot, execution pool, and feces reservoir. A long gone Scottish king built the old Loch. It remained a smelly trait of Edinburgh until it was drained well after the Scottish crown ceased to exist.

As we wound our way north, the conductor would occasionally make himself heard to tell us of another historic event. Most of these seemed to all share the common thread of some sort of conflict between the English and Scots. A last stand here, and a crushed rebellion there. On a rare occasion, he would mention that one of the events had turned out in favor of the Scottish, but that was the abnormal event. Even in those rare cases of victory, the follow up was always a delayed Scottish defeat years later.

The further away we got from Edinburgh, the more the landscape got wilder and wilder. After a while we seemed to solely find ourselves weaving in and out of mountains along rivers and seasonal river beds. Our first stop was at a small town where we picked up a couple pies filled with neeps and tatties, something that I had become quite fond of in my short time in Scotland.

After the first stop, the trip became quiet as everyone ate their breakfast. This lasted for a couple hours when out of nowhere the overhead speaker came to life. “As we keep on winding up to Loch Ness, we are going to be going by a few spots that are very important to the Scottish. One of those will be coming very soon, and we will be making another stop there. Before we get there though, I would like to tell the story of why it is so important to us.

“Near the end of the 17th century there was an uprising in Scotland by a group called the Jacobites. The Jacobites were Catholic and they worked to restore the Catholic monarch. In 1688, the English deposed the Scottish Catholic monarchy, and replaced it with an Anglican monarch. In this time Scotland and England were still separate countries with separate legislatures, and laws. The Union of the Crowns of 1603 kept these governments separate, but gave us a shared monarch. Thus, when the Anglican king ascended to the English throne in 1688, he also became the king of Scotland. Many people in Scotland did not like this very much.

“The Jacobites then began a rebellion against the English loyalists who had the primary political power in Scotland at this time. England was preoccupied fighting France around the world. The Jacobites took advantage of this conflict to try to remove the Anglican church from Scotland once and for all. Even with the English distracted, the Jacobites were never able to make much of an impact. With a fairly disastrous 1690 for the Jacobites, the Scottish government extended an olive branch to them. The government wanted to end the rebellion as soon as possible, so that they could move their focus to France.

“This all lead to John Dalrymple, the secretary of state of Scotland, offering the Jacobite chiefs £12,000 to swear allegiance to the king of England. With much deliberation the Jacobites did decide to accept this agreement. Once the agreement was met, there was a royal proclamation offering a pardon for anyone who swore an oath of allegiance before the first of January 1692. However, due to internal Jacobite fighting, the notice did not arrive to some clans until the 28th of December. They then had to rush off to the fort in order to get there within a few days.

“Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding with the logistics of where the Jacobites were supposed to go to swear allegiance. All of this led MacDonald of Glencoe to arrive at Fort William on the 30th of December, only to learn that he had to travel to Inveraray, which was a two day excursion in good conditions. To make matters worse, this all happened during a wicked snow storm, which guaranteed to slow him down. Colonel John Hill, the governor of Fort William, gave pity on MacDonald. Hill thus wrote a letter advising Sir Colin Campbell, the magistrate of Inveraray to accept the oath of loyalty. Campbell accepted MacDonald’s oath when he arrived to Inverrary on the 6th of January. MacDonald then returned home believing that he had avoided further problems for the clan of Glencoe.

“What Hill and MacDonald did not know was that the fate of their clan had already been sealed. A month prior on the 2nd of December, John Dalrymple, under pressure from William of Orange to make an example of the rebels, had already written a letter to John Campbell instructing him of the intentions to have the clan of Glencoe rooted out. MacDonald’s oath was thus in vain.

“Now as we wind our way around this next curve we will start having a much better look at the three sisters, a set of mountains that overlook Glencoe. In a few minutes we will be stopping, so that we all can get a closer look at them. The mountains play an important role in what happened after MacDonald had returned home.

“In the first week of February, a regiment of 120 soldiers from Invergarry had shown up at Glencoe, requesting quarter. The clan of Glencoe greeted them as cousins. They graciously brought them into their homes where they shared everything the glen had to offer. The soldiers found such hospitality, that they ate better than they would have had they stayed in Invergarry while the clan sparsely ate to accommodate the regiment. Of the regiment, the only person who understood the purpose of their visit was Sergeant Barber. The remaining soldiers enthusiastically mingled with the clan.

“Everyone was very relaxed until the 12th of February when the wind started to blow in a winter storm. Throughout the day, the regiment completed countless drills and marches. The members of the clan who had been skeptical of the regiment began to point out the change of the mood of the soldiers, and everyone went to bed weary that night.

“After nightfall, in the wee hours of the 13th of February, the regiment began systematically wiping out the clan. The snow covered the screams of the night, and prevented anyone in the clan from organizing a defense. Nearly all of the members of the clan were wiped out that night. A few were able to escape through a secret pass up in the mountains that we see ahead of us. Of those that were able to make it to the mountains, most of which were children, many starved or froze to death. A handful were able to make it out of the glen alive.

“The survivors then spread the word of what had happened. It was not long before the news had spread across all of Scotland. People were absolutely horrified to hear what had happened, but it did not change the outcome. John Dlrymple was forced to resign as secretary of state shortly after. However, he only lived in disgrace for his actions until 1702 when Queen Anne restored his favor. He then played a vital role in negotiating the Acts of Union, the basis of the United Kingdom today. Scotland would then lose control over its laws for nearly 300 years. This lasted until 1999 when we were able to once again establish our own separate parliament.”

Shortly after that we pulled off the side of the road and all piled out to snap a few pictures of the site of the long gone massacre. The grade of the hills outside were only slightly apparent from within the bus. Taking a moment to really appreciate the landscape made it incredibly simple to understand how utterly harsh the terrain was. It became even more easy to imagine how cruel that night all of those years ago must have been. After the bus emptied out of tourists, the guide himself stepped out and began stretching his legs.

“This really is an incredibly beautiful part of the world.” I said to the guide as I approached him.

“That it is. I grew up near here, so I spent a lot of time hiking in the highlands.”

“Is that so? Are there a lot of parks around that you can stay in?”

“No need. All land in Scotland is free for public use. You can stop anywhere you like as long as you are respectful to the land. It’s been like that for almost 20 years now. It is forbidden to pitch a tent in the middle of a field of crops. As long as you leave no trace you are still able to cross through even the most privately owned fields. It is our right to roam.”

“That’s quite a bit different from how it is in England isn’t it?” I asked, realizing that I had not seen a single lot of closed off countryside besides cattle pastures, since I had crossed into Scotland. Even those almost exclusively had the style of fences that allowed for anyone to pass through.

“That it is. It was one of the first laws that went into place when we got our parliament back. We are very proud to have been able to regain control of our parliament after so many years. There has been lots of progress in recent times to reassert our national body, but we still have a long way to go.”

“What else do you think needs to happen?”

“Well, we want our full independence. A lot of people in Scotland believe that our future is more in the European Union and not the Union within Britain. We are being pulled out of the European Union completely without our consent. It’s completely absurd. The English spent hundreds of years persecuting us. Then we landed in a union where we were second class citizens. Our laws have been dictated to us from Westminster for almost three centuries. Now they are pulling us out of the most important union in European history by no fault of our own. I believe that we have hit our breaking point.”

“Did you vote for independence in 2014?”

“No, not then. I wasn’t convinced of independence. The last couple years have changed my mind though.”

To the west across the ravine, the point where the kids went to hide that night was facing directly towards us. We both dazed off to that point together for a moment, before the guide continued.

“All of this; is simply history. No one can change what happened in the past. Independence for me is about making sure that we can choose our own direction for the future. In that respect, I believe that we have hit the limits of what the United Kingdom will allow from us. I will be enthusiastically voting for independence as quickly as I possibly can.”

A few minutes later we were back to winding down the road on our way up to Loch Ness. The speaker came to life again for our conductor to inform us that the next stop would be the Loch. He then very politely began to sing.

Oh, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o’ Donald.
Oh, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald

They came in a blizzard, we offered them heat,
A roof for their heads, dry shoes for their feet.
We wined them and dined them, they ate of our meat
And they slept in the house of MacDonald.

They came in the night when the men were asleep,
This band of Argyles, through snow soft and deep,
Like murdering foxes amongst helpless sheep,
They slaughtered the house of MacDonald.

Some died in their beds at the hand of the foe;
Some fled in the night and were lost in the snow;
Some lived to accuse him who struck the first blow;
But gone was the house of MacDonald.

Most of the bus drifted off to sleep with the song. A couple hours later we were all standing next to the legendary Loch Ness, which somehow seemed to be way less interesting after the tour. There was only one stop left after that in a sleepy little town to stretch our legs. Shortly after that we made it back into Edinburgh to rest after a long day.

Back to Catalonia

The time was now quickly running out in Scotland. Christmas was approaching, and it was time to end my British adventure. I bought my ticket back for the next week, and got everything ready to make my way back to Catalonia.

It had now been two months since I had been in Catalonia, and I was very anxious to see what the mood was when I landed. Before I left I made it a point to enjoy that famous Scottish hospitality one more time. A bit of Scotch, some neeps and tatties, and of course some haggis. I had fallen in love with the city in a very short period of time, but it did feel good to be returning to someplace a bit more familiar.

I was leaving Scotland after an incredibly insightful trip, and I had no reservations on whether or not I would return. What was unclear was whether or not the next time I went I would be entering the EU, or even the UK.

The establishment of the United Kingdom was almost entirely for economic interest. The settling of a few hundred years of political turmoil seems to have been more of a side effect than anything else. The conflicts that have arisen in recent days within Europe seem to me to be less a problem with the idea of the European Union, and more a symptom of the fundamental structure of the union hitting its limit. For all of the faults of the UK, there has been a general interest in reforming within when conflicts have arisen, and maybe that’s really why Brexit has happened.

For all of the good the EU has done, they seem very keen to centralize power without taking the political responsibility that it implies. The EU needs to make a true effort to resolve these internal conflicts that have plagued Europe for centuries. A structure cannot stand for long if the cracks in the foundation are not mended. It’s hard to imagine that European politics could ever go back to what they were 70 years ago. It’s almost completely absurd to imagine that they could ever fall back to what they were like 400 years ago. It can happen though, but if the EU is brave enough to move forward in the direction they have charted, these conflicts may really become history.

Regardless, the future of Scotland and Catalonia seem to be more uncertain than they have in a few generations. Maybe that alone is enough for the next chapter in the long history of both these states, and greater Europe to begin.

Sources and Other Resources

Spanish Government – Tsunami Democratic takedown notice

Takedown noticed issued from the Spanish government to application distribution networks for the application organizing protests throughout Catalonia.

View Takedown

TRT World – Spanish police move to prevent Catalonia independence vote

Article detailing and recording the actions taken by the Spanish national police on the day of the independence referendum.

View Article

Wikipedia – Vergonha

Wikipedia article about the process of the historical elimination of minority languages in France.

View Article

Henri Grégoire – Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française

Translation (Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language). Report presented to the French third republic about why and how to eliminate minority languages in favor of French.

View Report

Sapiens – La Guerra del Francès: la Catalunya napoleònica

Translation (The French War: Napoleonic Catalonia). Article detailing Catalan history while it was part of Napoleonic France with emphasis on the political system established.

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Enric Prat de la Riba – La Nacionalitat Catalana

Translation (The Catalan Nationalist). Essay establishing the fundamentals of Catalan Nationalism from 1906. This serves as the origin point of modern Catalan identify.

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