Province

Matthew Tree, who has lived “for exactly twenty years” (“fa vint anys que tinc vint anys”, as Serrat sings) in Catalonia, in his book Un anglès viatja per Catalunya per veure si existeix (An Englishman travels across Catalonia to see whether it exists) gives a cruel definition of ‘province’:

“What is a province? A province is a place that is not its own center. And the overwhelming majority of Catalans – for whatever reason – want their region to become its own center.”

Living in Hungary, I daily experience that there is one condition that is incomparably more sorrowful and hopeless than just being a province: when the province – for whatever reason – has finally become its own center.