A real Catalan hero
I was even presented with a bunch of roses, which made me feel a bit awkward
I’VE been lecturing in Barcelona. You may think that Catalonia is not the wisest place for a gentle English plant-lover to visit just at the moment, but the natives could not have been more friendly. I don’t speak a word of Catalan, so I gave my presentation in Spanish, which, of course, everyone understood because horticultural audiences are typically fairly elderly and everyone had to speak Castilian until some years after the death of Franco in 1975.
Horticulture isn’t a big industry in Spain. Well, actually, that’s not quite true, because Spain’s fruit and vegetable industries are the most sophisticated in Europe and keep our supermarkets stocked high with strawberries all through the year. However, ornamental horticulture isn’t the big deal that it is in France, Germany or Britain and Spaniards are usually not so potty about gardening as we are.
However, the Catalans are— or like to think that they are. Horticulture was one of the industries they considered part of their national identity in the years leading up to the civil war.
There was, at that time, a rose-breeder called Pedro Dot (but now we have to call him Pere, the Catalan name for Peter, instead of Pedro), who gave us that spectacular climbing rose Madame Grégoire Staechelin in the 1920s. Dot’s work was classified by the Republicans as being of national importance because most of his roses bore Catalan names and won prizes in trials all over the world, so public parks and gardens through-out Catalonia were planted up with his roses.
Most of them disappeared after the emergence of Franco, but, curiously enough, the best collection of Catalan roses in the 1970s was in Madrid. Why? Because the Spanish government regarded Catalonia as part of Spain, so the proper place to celebrate Dot’s achievements was in the Spanish capital.
Barcelona today considers itself a show house for every imaginable Catalan endeavour. The gardens have been restored and Dot’s roses are revered as symbols of Catalonia’s glorious past as are the gardens of Antonio Gaudí, the architect of the Sagrada Familia basilica, who’s now on the road to canonisation.
Money has been poured into new gardens, where all the creativity of their Catalan architects is displayed for our genuflection. The new botanic gardens high on Montjuïc hill to the south of the city have the most striking design of any in Europe—and the plant displays and standard of maintenance are excellent, too.
I was treated to total immersion in Catalan culture. Much of that is gastronomic: esqueixada and butifarras, of course, but what about a gratin of sea urchins for a change? Not to mention bottles of cava and some freshly-pressed Arbequina olive oil for the journey home.
I was taken to visit Dot’s nursery up in the hills—rather a remote spot, a high valley surrounded by forests of pine and arbutus—where I was introduced to his grandson Albert, who is, at 64, the last member of the family to grow roses commercially.
He wasn’t inclined to speak Spanish, so we didn’t exactly connect, but his manners were formal and gracious, almost Castilian, in fact. I was even presented with a bunch of roses, which made me feel a bit awkward—it’s not the sort of gift an Anglo-saxon chap instinctively knows what to do with.
How did I navigate the question of Catalan nationalism? I said that I was a simple Englishman and refused to be drawn by questions about Brexit and Scottish independence. My lecture was about rose gardens in Europe and I was loud in my praise of gardens in France, Germany and Britain.
My only contribution to the debate about national identity that obsessed my hosts was to offer them a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘And speaks all languages the rose.’ The thought intrigued them. What did I mean by it? And what did Emerson himself mean?
I replied that it was most kind of them to allow an Englishman to lecture to a Catalan audience in Spanish.
I returned home with my car full of rose bushes bred by Dot and his descendants. I don’t recognise any of their names and I’m fairly certain that they are the first of their kind to reach England—but whether they’re Spanish or Catalan roses, I really cannot say. Next week Snowdrops