I think I must have been about six years old, because I remember that I was already going to school. That day I stayed home because of a cold or something similar. My maternal grandmother, named Rosa, had the good habit of assisting my mother when one of us - my sisters or I - fell ill. She was very dedicated and affectionate. He stayed next to the bed watching while I practiced the art of “crocheting” and, at times, he would put his hand near my forehead to check if I had a fever or, he would also get up to bring me any resource, from a glass of water to a Orange juice. She was born and lived in La Alquerieta, a district of Alzira in the past that would end up being a neighborhood; so her Spanish was not as fluent as her Valencian. Sometimes, she told me stories that almost always included a song that she had learned from her parents and her grandparents. There was one that he told me many times, the story of “Mig pollostre”, a popular “rondalla” that tells the adventures of a chicken in love with a princess and his fight against the King who tries by all means to prevent it.
In the story there is a phrase that my grandmother repeated while singing it: “I'm going to get married with the king's girl, I'm richer than not.” She did it so many times that, decades later, her interpretation still comes to mind when I remember that good woman. Years later, as an adult, I discovered that the publishing house Tàndem Edicions had published this story in a compilation book of the formidable work carried out by Enric Valor to recover “the Valencian rondalles”, still very present in the popular culture of many Valencian regions. Another publisher, this time from Alzira, Bromera, has also published some compilations of works by other authors in several editions. And it is still emotional to know that there are thousands of Valencian boys and girls who know these popular tales thanks to the work of these publishers and the teachers who in the classroom tell them the formidable stories that are part of our identity as Valencians.
The curious thing about this whole story is that in the published texts I observe that the story of “Mig pollostre” is narrated and written just as my grandmother told it to me, without any variation. So after listening to the Valencian vice president, Vicente Barrera, last Monday, I have doubts about whether my mother's mother, who acquired her popular culture at the beginning of the last century and who never traveled to Catalonia, was a Catalanist against the identity Valencian for telling me those stories, or was she a Valencian who passionately loved her culture and her land? Or if Bromera or any other Valencian publisher, for disseminating this popular culture among children, deserves to be punished by cutting resources, that is, for disseminating in books what is one of the great treasures of our culture as Valencians. Maybe what happens is that everything is simpler: some love Valencian and others don't. And one fact: these “rondallas” recovered by Enric Valor have also been published in Spanish
