Liz Castro on Catalonia - Intro

Hi, my name is Liz Castro. I'm a computer book writer. And I'm born and raised in the United States. I've lived here most of my life. But I spent 6 years in Barcelona in the late 80's and early 90's and I've been going back and forth ever since, for 6 or 8 weeks, sometimes less, sometimes more. Catalonia is in my..., it feels like it's part of me. In fact, my husband is from there, my children and I, we all speak Catalan. It's become part of my life. And one of the things that I've always wanted to be able to do is explain my American-ness to my Catalan friends and family and my Catalan-ness to my American friends and family. Last week, this guy from New York, he put up a video on Vimeo about his experience on September 11th, in Barcelona. He says he was there by accident and found himself in the middle of this huge demonstration, a million and a half people marching for independence and he really inspired Catalans. All of a sudden, his video went viral, 140,000 people saw it. It was kind of amazing. I think that the key was he made people believe, he made people understand, or see, no... he made people feel that they were heard. He made Catalans feel that somebody saw them for what they were not for Flamenco dancers, or for bullfighters, or for sombreros, which they actually sell in Barcelona but for what they really are, for their own Catalan culture. He really touched a, he really touched Catalans, and made them... It was special. And he's only ever been there once. And it made me feel like, me as a person who's spent the last 25 years trying to explain Catalonia to Americans, it made me think, "Wow, maybe I'm going about this all the wrong way. Maybe I need to, maybe I need to make videos." And you can tell, I'm not a media person, I'm doing this on my iPhone. I'm going to do it the simplest way possible. But I'm hoping that, you know I've been there more than once, and I know a fair bit about it, and maybe I can explain things in a way that Catalans can't explain to Americans and Americans who've been to Barcelona just a short amount, or not at all, can't [otherwise] understand. So that's my hope. And we'll see how it goes. Maybe it'll be really boring. I hope not. And maybe not.