A Coffee with…

The second article in the series covering my interview with another well known local man:

Salvador Pallarés Brull

- Town Councilor of El-Perello, representative on the National council for Convergence, business entrepreneur and a family man.

Salvador was born in El-Perello and is proud to talk about his ancestors having family roots in the village traceable for several generations. Currently he has Great Uncles and Aunts, as well as many of his parents’ generation taking an active part in village life.

“Since childhood, my life has been based in El-Perello” he told me “even during the time that I was Deputy and Vice president of the Council of Tarragona”.

He spoke of his full and busy life during which he has built a significant business, given time to follow his political and social beliefs for both his village and his country and, importantly he has brought up a family within the community and municipality of El-Perello. Leaving the village proved to be necessary in order to complete his education in Tortosa and then, later at university in Barcelona. He started work in 1962 and still works a full week in his businesses and other activities.

He is a fit and mature man who looks younger than his years and he has gained a great deal of experience from his varied and interesting careers in business and politics and his travels. This helps him to see ” the bigger picture” of life and he is totally sincere in his aspirations to see Cataluña becoming a significant force in Spain and, indeed in the whole of Europe.

When it comes to food, Salvador enjoys the simple way. He has a broad smile when her describes himself as “plump yet polished” and credits his wife’s good cooking with the reason for this.

Dinner may be a simple salad or a full dinner with a good local wine to wash this down and good company to enjoy it with. That´s enough. Although he has made efforts to try and enjoy foreign foods he still comes back to the Mediterranean style of cooking as his favourite.

THIS CURRENT COUNCILLOR of El-Perello is well travelled and he knows all of Cataluña very well and most of Spain quite well. He has visited almost every other European country as well as the US of A and several countries of South America. He would still like to see more of the different African countries.

I asked him for what made him go into politics and local government and he replied to the effect that he believes that in a democracy it is a fundamental element of modern life to have active politics in order to encourage and allow the people to pursue and develop their objectives. He chose to join the Convergencia Democratica de Cataluña (CDC) party because he believes that they support and propose the most beneficial ideas and proposals for development of the towns and villages of Cataluña.

OBVIOUSLY, I WANTED to get to know the man rather than the politician so I asked how he spent his time when relaxing and he surprised me by saying that he still plays football and 5 a-side indoor football and enjoys motor bike racing. On the less strenuous side he likes to read and he is an active member of the El-Perello Choir. He is also attempts to write poetry and study history and literature.

Salvador Palarés Brull has lived through a period of immense change and development of the region and he hi-lights things like telecommunications, technological development, changes in the lifestyle of ordinary people, big developments in infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, tourist facilities as well as the obvious changes in roads and rail links.

Also an evolutionary change in energy production based upon greater attention to the environment. In Spain generally there has been a large increase in immigration which has been necessary but badly organized nationally, it should be reconsidered with a view to modify the overall plan to suit our ever changing society. El-Perello has experienced, understood and accepted the integration of different peoples and cultures and has achieved integration with the most harmony possible.

REGARDING INTEGRATION AND acceptance of foreigners, including the British, into Catalonian society he commented that in the end, Cataluña has a history of living together with different cultures and El-Perello is a perfect example of this with inhabitants from all over the world. There are apparently, within the village community, many family nicknames which are based on these historic migrations.

The French, the Peruvian, the Caraqueno, the Mano and many others, all originally Spanish (Castellano) speaking. Perello has developed an open society and has an excellent ambiance for different races and nationalities to settle here.

He went on to say that he thought that due to the recent rapid evolution it is necessary to restructure and reorganize the administration for the new society in which we live.

This must be done without detriment to the local language, history or culture. We need a great effort to integrate without losing all the experience and customs that enrich the tapestry of our life and this includes those who have come to live in El-Perello more recently. Certainly some of the newcomer nationalities have a majority of older generation who are retired and do not want to work but thanks to international agreements this does not place any economic burden on our government.

CONTINUING THIS THEME, Salvador indicated that the local people can take from these older folk their experience, their values and understanding. We all need to make efforts to get involved with and help new arrivals to be involved in social activities, sports and cultural awareness.

And the politician within him had to break the surface when he said that…. his political party had initiated a complete program of co-existence, with reciprocal exchanges between people to share the knowledge of each other’s culture and ways. This will allow us all to act and to behave in a sympathetic way to each other but above all, to ensure that our language and culture are positively encouraged among the newcomers.

Then I asked him for what he saw as a positive step by “us”, the foreigners may be to help this integration. His reply took me by surprise… that he saw a lot that we could do but probably most importantly, simply to join with the local activities and along with the virtues and the defects in our daily lives, live in harmony in the village day by day.

Finally, I said to him that a source of disgruntlement among some of the immigrants was lack of information about local activities and events. He didn’t fully agree saying that he had been a visitor in France last year and had made the effort to visit various centres of information like town hall, chamber of commerce, library etc. and he learned a huge amount about local activities cultures, laws etc., but he had to make the effort.

As mayor of the village (El-Perello) for sixteen years he established the centre of information in the ajuntament with staff who have a working knowledge of English, French and German.

Not many families come here and actually ask for reliable information direct from source. Most English ask other English who have been here for a while and who promote themselves as knowledgeable and the Germans ask the Germans, the French ask the French etc.

It ends up with those who don’t know very much, teaching the newcomers who then know very little indeed and what they do “know” is usually wrong.

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ONCE AGAIN HE surprised me by his firm belief that, and this may well be true, that many immigrants, of all nationalities would seem not to want to integrate in the real sense of the word. He thinks that the newcomers should all make efforts to gather our information about all aspects of local life, from genuine and reliable local sources. Not necessarily formal advice offices but circulated through schools, companies, shops etc.

So to sum up, this man, Snr. Salvador Pallares Brull, an entrepreneur, a politician, a family man and a councilor on the National Council for Convergence, is knowledgeable about corporate concepts, economics and social activities.

He eagerly offers his experience to help develop good relations between all people in the area. You may wish to say “Bon dia” one morning, in passing.

Mike Clark

(No political preference is inferred in or by this article. It is written to help English speaking immigrants to understand more their indigenous hosts).

Short URL: http://www.chroniccat.com/?p=530

Posted by editor on 2010-08-18 Filed under August 2010, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry