This is a difficult book to review. Because whenever you try to do a review around topics of identity, nationalism, the ideas that surround the concepts of nation, country, etc., there is always some people (or a lot of people, if I want to be precise) that will jump at the instant they hear whatever they feel like criticism and stop listening to put themselves in a 'we have to fight for our believes and identities' mode. But as Cruanyes, who I have been watching for years on the news, has jumped into the identity arena, I will jump too and see where his book has landed.
And I have to say that the book has turned out to be quite interesting. It is all a little bit over the place (there are chapters (or stories) that come out of the blue or the reasoning behind their presence is tenuous at most) and it is obvious this is not a book written by someone who votes for a non-Catalan political party (sigh, one's own identity being a topic that no one seems to be able to judge in a detached and more or less unbiased way), but Cruanyes does a lot of critical thinking that is welcomed and necessary in a topic that has put Spanish politics in some difficult situations in the last years (on top of some weird (let's put it that way) decisions by governments in Spain, Catalonia and the European Union). He does an Ok analysis when it comes to what really means to be a person in Catalonia (again, one of those questions with no answers), he does a good, almost very good, job in pointing out some shortcomings in the understanding of the Catalan identity by all political (one would like more space for an analysis on some pro-independence (or pro-referendum (or against all of that)) organizations) parties and by some individuals, but also we won't, while reading it, be able to shake out the feeling that more self-criticism should be made by some who are in favor of... (insert here all identities). In the end, we will close the book with the feeling that having a conversation with Cruanyes about Catalonia would be worth our time.
The best: a look like this on nationalism, patriotism and identity is always welcomed; some analysis (particularly when he gets into the history behind Catalan identity or when he differentiates between having an identity or feeling a privilege at having an identity) are quite good
The worst: some of the chapters seem to be there more because Cruanyes feels an attachment to the topic (LGBT+, for example) than for its relevance to the topic at hand (even if the chapters per se can be interesting, they feel shoehorned; anyone reading this can see where Cruanyes comes from politically (it is biased, yes, but everything is (here Cruanyes seems humble enough to recognize that)); the smell of privilege that permeates the stories and the anecdotes (again, that doesn't mean Cruanyes hasn't worked hard to get where he is right now; privilege and effort are sometimes mixed and misunderstood)
Further reading: "Banal Nationalism" should be on anyone's reading list when it comes to this topic, even if just for the questions it raises; papers and books around agonistic dialogue or memory and reconciliation would also be worth reading
6.5/10
(Catalan; original)