Next on the Paulisario Front's list of would-be nations is Wales, whose claims to independence are not so much plucky as actually deranged.
Like Portugal, the Welsh have long suffered under the jackboot, thumb and ultimately checkbook of their colonial oppressors. This experience has left them keen to emphasise their cultural distinctness from England, and to solicit large grants to etch slogans proclaiming that difference on a stretch of disused waterfront (or "Cardiff", as the Welsh call it).
Hailing from neither England nor Wales, the Paulisario Front can't help thinking that the Welsh have latched on to the wrong indicia of independence (perhaps someone should have shown them the Montevideo Convention). Claiming that your "country" puts a slightly different blend of offal in its sausages, has a different recipe for fruit cake, serves its beer a degree or two closer to simmering, or laments the failure of a different rugby team does not a nation make. No amount of sloganeering, local government, and grandiose claims that "Roald Dahl was born here (before making a swift and stealthy escape)" will get you over the nationhood hump, Wales. For that, you need to focus on what makes you truly and deeply strange. The Paulisario Front, being comprised entirely of ex-debaters, has identified three such factors:
1) The "Welsh" "Language"
Like the Portuguese limp, the Welsh language is either an elaborate practical joke, grounds for sincere sympathy, or both.
When faced with an entire nation apparently brought to you by the letter L, the Paulisario Front's initial reaction was one of incredulity - surely a modern, first world nation couldn't have committed so absolutely to such an impossibly convoluted and unpronounceable language. A few hours observing Welsh industry at work convinced me that my first instinct was both correct and irrelevant.
[To be continued...]
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