Miquel Segura’s story
I cannot say how old I was when I noticed that I was different from all the other children about me. In my home, as in all the Xueta homes, it was forbidden to speak about it, hushed not to mention it. Anyway, I recall a quaver of mystery, something shameful and hidden that popped up here and there during conversations: Silences, movements, cut-off words, a tension unknown in our otherwise apparently happy lives.
My father, a merchant, curious and optimistic, dragged along his entire life some indefinite fear. Of course, I could not discern it until in his old age he uncovered weaknesses that I hadn’t known of before. Today I am sure that his identity as a Xueta and his mother’s absence (she died when he was a child), were the two singular causes that cast a pall upon his life.
My first exact and tangible memory of being a Xueta arose one day in July. I was nine or ten years old. That day we were supposed to travel to a beach cabin that my father bought where we spent part of the summer. I recall that shortly before that day I had related to him that a boy in my class cursed me during the procession in our town in honor of the Holy Virgin. His response was similar to his earlier ones:
“You should have answered him that one who calls you a Xueta is actually calling you “Mister.”
The Xuetas of my generation adopted three approaches towards their situation. Most of them chose silence and internalized suffering because they thought that time would finally bury their and their families’ the mark of disgrace. Others attempted to find explanations based upon historical rationale. They said, “We’re all Xuetas, and argued that are many more Jewish family names in Majorca than the 15 recognized ones. Then there were others, and I am among them, who tried positively processing what was stamped upon our childhood through study, thought and publicizing the problem (as in my case). I present it as a topic dependent upon Majorcan society that defines itself as open and tolerant. This approach releases us on the one hand from excommunication and invective: If I should proudly declare that I am a Xueta, I cancel the word’s humiliating connotation. But this brought me to be considered as a strange bird by other Xuetas, though luckily enough, lately this attitude has been steadily changing. My Xuetan militancy changed this great mark of shame in my life through a long process of learning, thinking and publicizing. However, nothing can erase the fact that this process, that I lead with the help of a small number of Xueta friends, could not have taken place before the establishment of democracy in Spain.