According to Josep Ferrater Mora, Catalan "always borders on fatuity and braggadocio". The philosopher, who thought these things from exile, and under the impact of the civil war and the experience of a policy of disasters, did not spare his self-criticism: "The preference for the façade, the irrepressible tendency to presumption, are, therefore, , the tribute of a life that avoids excess and that precisely because of aversion to exaggeration can lead to superficiality, to the vain mania of pleasing”. All this connects with some data from the latest survey of the Center d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO) of the Generalitat: Catalans are not very affable, responsible and we like rice, especially paella.
The braggart is unfriendly because he is too busy making himself important. It also happens that many shy people adopt the appearance of braggarts to get by and, to top it off, Catalan society tends to favor shyness as a substitute for the discretion copied from the old bourgeoisie, today almost non-existent or converted to employees of multinationals. The CEO survey also says that we are distrustful, a trait linked to shyness.
Although the literature on the mentality of the people is out of fashion, there is no doubt that Les formes de la vida catalana continues to be a work that must be read for collective psychoanalysis. Ferrater Mora did not have demoscopic data, but he was an observer. Now, the CEO confirms one of the clichés of the tribe: we are not nice, but we are or seem responsible. It is the sepia postcard of the Catalan as an individual only fit to work, that to go out to party it is better to get together with Valencians, Basques or Andalusians.
Given that we Catalans say that about ourselves, it is clear the harm that several centuries of foreign propaganda have done to our ability to explain and represent ourselves. We end up being what the others expect us to be and, when in doubt, we pay the round to all our friends in a bar in Madrid, so that it is not said.
That paella is the Catalans' favorite dish is something that is more difficult for me to understand, I confess. I test a pocket theory: we have believed that we are tourists in our own country. It is that of "let's have something to snack on and a little rice".
