El Poble Parla (Our "Hardly-Scientific" Poll)

As commercial advertising around Barcelona gets overshadowed by two small dos-letter words, SI and NO, political booths from nearly every party are put up on Las Ramblas. Gisele and her little white bunny rabbit may still reign over Via Laetana, but she can hardly compete with hundreds of triangular structures wrapped around countless light posts that read “space reserved for political propaganda.” The time has finally arrived to vote on the famous, 27-years-in-the-making Estatut de Catalunya. So BCN WEEK asked the people. Hola people. Are you ready to accept the version of the Estatut the government, under Zapatero (“zeta pe”) and his PSOE party, sent back looking like panBimbo with no crust? Or, are you Catalans indignant, unsatisfied, and willing to fight another 27 years for those clauses Madrid cut out? What’s it going to be? SI or NO?
In our poll of 20 Spanish citizens of voting age, 12 felt that the Estatut would be a positive step forward for Catalunya and told BCN WEEK they are going to vote YES. Only one of them said he would vote NO, and two more voters remain undecided. Of course, that leaves five voters unaccounted for. These five told us, in one way or another, that they wouldn’t be voting. A few of their reasons included: “I don’t know what it’s about. When is it?”; “All politicians are mangis, mafiosos, chorizos... like in Marbella”; “I don’t think I’ll vote. The truth is it falls on Sunday and on Sundays no suelo hacer nada”; and, “I suppose not because I haven’t read it.”
That last reason brings us to another interesting question. Have you actually read the Estatut? Of those polled, a fat 12 haven’t read any of it. That’s more than half. Only one of the other eight citizens interviewed claimed to have read more than 30% of the document. A common response to the question from the other seven was, “por encima.”That basically means, “I glanced at it,” which we take to mean, “Not really.”
That aside, it seems the significant majority of those planning to vote are going to vote YES. Will YES be the clear winner? Not so fast PSOE!! While you and your Estatut have won the majority of votes in our little poll, there is one thing working against you. No, it’s not the fact that almost everyone thinks your propaganda is “false”, “pesada”, “ugly”, “attack[ing]”, or, “like an ad for laundry detergent.” But what really might foil your plans is the fact that of the 20 constituents interviewed, half didn’t know the voting date. They might be planning on voting YES, but if they show up late, it isn’t gonna help you much. Try less attacking and more educating.
And lastly, it occured to us that guirismight care to share their opinions on the Estatut. However, finding guiris who know about this historic legislation is like finding a thin person in Ohio. Get lookin’! After receiving a “what are they doing?”, a “huh?” or two, and a “Fuck! I don’t know”, we finally found a couple of transplanted foreigners who felt the Estatut would affect them. How? The guiris who’ve assimilated into the system here will face a proliferation of the Catalan language. More and more universities and other institutions will be operating in Catalan. So on June 18th, if the real citizens vote yes, we guiris will have to ask ourselves, “Parlem catala?”