I was born on the 5th of January 1941
in the maternity hospital of Barcelona.
At home everything was in sign language.
From the first minute of my life,
I learned about where we lived
and where we were in sign language.
The first thing I learned
was that in order to call mum o dad
I had to make this sign.
I didn’t say “mum”
because I knew that they wouldn’t hear me.
Instead I did this…
We use to live in
Baixada de Santa Clara Street num. 2, 7th floor.
On my way back home in the evening,
I was afraid
that a man would be following me.
So I would climb up the stairs
shouting “Mummy!”
I knew that my parents couldn’t hear me
but I thought: he’ll be scared
because he’ll know that I’m calling mum
and he will leave me alone.
When I was at home I could tell when
there was a deaf person coming up.
And I knew who it was.
I recognized their steps,
the way they would grab the banister,
the way they would pant and breathe,
since there were seven floors to climb…
Some would go up faster,
others slower, and
I would tell mum
Mrs Shy is coming up.
I knew who was coming!
Better then an intercom!
Exactly!
When I was 3 or 4 years old,
I started to go to school
because my dad wanted me
to learn to speak as soon as possible.
At home both my parents were deaf,
and so were the friends who used to come,
so it was important for me to go to school.
We also used to go to a neighbour’s house,
Mrs. … Paquita.
They were very Catalan neighbors,
of those who had lost the war, very left wing.
My dad wanted us to go to Mrs. Paquita’s house
in order to play
and speak with the voice.
My dad took us to school
and told them:
Look, my wife and I are deaf.
We need you to pay special attention to our daughters
because at home we don’t speak with the voice,
we use sign language.
And that’s how it went.
Now as an adult I remember
that at school the teachers cared a lot for us,
my sister and I.
When there was something to do,
they would say “Stand up”.
There were all the other classmates,
but no, I was always the one to be called. Why?
Because that way I would stand up and speak,
I would learn how to speak.
When we were little,
we used to go to the
deaf and mutes’ association of Barcelona.
We would go every Saturday afternoon at five.
My father was the president, or secretary,
or something like that, and my mother had her friends there.
And we used to play with the deaf’s children.
They knew very well what a deaf was.
They didn’t need for anyone to tell them
what to be deaf meant.
My sister and I also used to play with the hearing children of the neighbourhood.
The only problem is that when we came home
after playing outside, my father would say:
“A little bird told me that you did this and that…”
“How does he know? We’ve only been playing!”
My dad had gone to all the shops in the area and told them:
“Keep an eye on our daughters
because we can’t hear them.
If anything happens, let us know.”
We couldn’t keep any secrets!
We would say: “Shoot, with the little birds of the neighborhood,
we can’t do anything!”
With my sister I used to speak,
not sign.
Speaking was actually a problem most of the time.
As our parents couldn’t hear anything of what we said,
we could talk about anything
we wanted, lucky us!
And when we said:
“Teresa, what do you think? Will we be able to go out soon?”
“I don’t know. Dad doesn’t really want us to.”
“Ok, then…” And we pulled a face. My mum would ask right away:
“What are you talking about? Why?”
We were putting on a different face.
And my mum, who had been born deaf,
was very very good at perceiving those slight changes.
That’s why they often say that “the deaf” are evil-minded.
They are not.
But they know if you are talking about them.
And most of the time when the deaf person asks:
“What are you saying?”
the answer is: “Nothing.”
They know we’ve been talking about them.
I would take my granny to places
Yo acompañaba a la yaya
and one day the doctor told me:
“Could you ask for an adult to come?
because we need to talk to her.”
And I said:
“The adult who will come is deaf too
so I will be coming anyway to do the translation.”
The doctor looks at me,
and my granny was there, waiting to see what he was going to say…
“Well, so… Your grandmother has got cancer
and she needs to look after herself very well
because in four or five months’ time she will be quite ill.”
And he said it to me, a very young girl…
I must have been eleven or twelve back then.
My grandparents lived in Albacete.
They made a living by subleasing their flat.
They lived with another family because they were very poor.
A deaf man of Albacete had told my grandparents:
“Hey, there’s a flat to rent,
go and have a look at it.”
We weren’t with them then,
it was after the war, it must have been in the 50’s…
They went to visit the flat,
it had a courtyard, a living room,
a bedroom, a kitchen,
it was perfect for the two of them.
“Yes, we’ll take it.”
They paid for the charges and everything was fine.
After ten days
the real owner of the place
came and told them: “I’m the owner.
You must pay me
the rent and the charges.”
And my grandparents said:
“We already payed, we don’t have anymore money.”
“Get out of here then.”
So my grandfather wrote a letter to my dad
informing him of what had happened to them
and that they were homeless now.
And my father, who was a very calm man, said:
“No problem, Mercè
can catch the train and go to Albacete,
she’ll serve as an interpreter for them so that they don’t end up in the street.”
I lived one year in Albacete.
I would get together and
speak with all the deaf people in town.
When we went to see the owner of the flat… (it wasn’t very big)
he saw those old folk with a young girl.
I was translating and I ended up saying:
“My grandparents can’t live in the street, poor things…” (whining).
The man said: “That’s OK, don’t worry,
they can stay in the flat.”
They hadn’t told me that in order to serve as an interpreter
I would always have to say the truth,
it would be a responsibility,
I would have to be very careful…
I hadn’t been told anything.
I mustn’t have been more than fifteen back then.
I accompanied another deaf person.
For the first (and only) time in my life
I went into the Modelo.
I was with the lawyer,
we both went into the prison.
We got into a room, with a separating mirror.
But before that the lawyer went to see another prisoner,
and the lawyer was telling him:
“Because you were… the chocolate weighed”… (so and so),
and I was thinking: “Chocolate?
They locked him up for having some chocolate?”
What did I know back then!!
Now I know that it wasn’t real chocolate
but something else…
Two moments that proved difficult for me
The first time there was a deaf man in prison,
and I served as an interpreter in court.
I knew him.
He was a good person,
but very nervous.
I had to accompany him to court.
He lived in a shack in Montjuïc.
He had gone to jail
after fighting with a neighbour and hitting him.
He almost grabbed a knife
as well but he didn’t in the end.
The other man’s lawyer pretended he had a knife
but I don’t believe him.
And the deaf man was telling me during the trial: “I swear
I wasn’t the first one to come to blows.
He hit me so I went mad, I swear to you.
I had known him since I was a child
“I swear to you I wasn’t the first one…”
I had to serve as an interpreter,
so I translated what he told me and then at some point I said:
“Excuse me, there’s something I would like to say.”
They all looked at me,
I wasn’t a young girl anymore, I was an adult.
The judge looked
at me and said: “Go ahead.”
And I said:
“Look, you have to take into consideration
that this person is deaf.
And the other one is not.
With his voice and his words
he can say many things:
son of a bitch, faggot, etc.”
I didn’t use those words,
I said “very strong, very offensive words”.
“The deaf man cannot say anything with words;
he needs to make gestures.
He needs to grab the other person,
here and there, and in doing that
he may give him a blow or knock him down.
He doesn’t yell with his voice
but with his gestures.”
The judge understood
well and the deaf man wasn’t accused of anything.
Then there was another case,
a woman. She and her husband, they were both deaf
and the husband died.
When she had to go to the doctor’s
she went with her daughter who could hear.
And the daughter asked me:
“Can you take her to the doctor’s?
Because with my mother it’s impossible.”
So I took her there.
Her husband had died of AIDS,
and the doctor was telling her that
she couldn’t have sex
with whoever because
she also had it.
And the deaf woman was saying:
“My husband’s dead,
that pain in the neck,
he gave me a hard time
and now I want to enjoy myself.”
And I said to her:
“Enjoy yourself
but use condoms.”
“Now, I’m going to use condoms?
But I don’t have my period anymore,
I can do whatever I want now…”
There was no way
to make her understand that she needed to have sex differently from now on.
And that was it.
Her daughter left.
And I would go to the deaf’s association and see her there
and I couldn’t say: “Careful, she’s got AIDS”.
And that’s really hard.
It’s very hard to serve as an interpreter for your family.
Like translating for your parents who are arguing
and want to separate.
Because you translate for them and defend one or the other
according to your own experience.
I’ve always said
that it’s better that the parents
don’t use their children as interpreters.
Living with children
but interpreting for parents
should not be done.
The deaf community, signs of identity
I feel comfortable among deaf people.
Look, they even make me want to cry.
I love them,
they are exceptional for me!
When people say: “The deaf are different”,
it’s not true, the deaf are the same as us
but their way of communicating is different.
There are good,
friendly, stupid people among the deaf, just like us!
When I used to go
to meetings to the local government
they would often say: “The deaf are very difficult
and we have problems getting through to them.”
“Oh, because when it comes to the Football Club Barcelona
you all agree, do you?
And in politics you are all the same, are you?
Well, deaf people are no exception,
they are people
just like us.”
I feel at ease with them.
Of course they have a few special,
distinctive features because they are deaf
but not because they are different to us.
For example there’s no need to shout with them.
You can talk normally,
looking at them.
There are a lot of people
who lower their head when they have a deaf person in front
of them. Then they don’t understand anything.
Also there’s something that we the hearing people do
with the deaf is to grab their arm.
I know it’s a sign of affection
but for them
it’s like
covering up their mouth.
A blind person needs to get hold of your arm
to make sure that you are near them
or to sense if you are tired
or something through your breathing.
But don’t ever grab a deaf person by the arm.
Here’s another example.
When something falls to the ground,
the deaf person will remain still.
Someone will say: “He didn’t budge.”
It’s just that he didn’t hear!
Besides, you can tell by the sound where it fell
but the deaf person will have to bend down and look for it.
He will have to see where it fell.
There are many more examples like this one.
These are little things that the deaf perceive distinctly
and in that respect they are different,
but apart from that they are just like us.
The deaf people quarrel,
they are happy,
they play, like everyone else!
On Christmas day
at home there would be
my parents,
my grandparents,
my aunt and her husband, all deaf.
My sister and I
were the only hearing people.
We all signed.
One of them would tell a joke
and they would all go “hahahaha”,
but my sister and I would say:
“What nonsense!
Now we want to tell you a joke too.”
And we told one that seemed funny to us,
and our parents went:
“Really? Hang on, explain it to me because I haven’t understood…”
And we would end up saying: “Look, you know what,
we don’t understand each other!”. It’s true, their humour is different.
In the 30’s and 40’s,
the films weren’t like the ones we see today.
They weren’t mute anymore,
but the Italian films with Anna Magnani
or Sophia Loren, they had lots of gestures (hahaha)
and the deaf used to enjoy them a lot.
When the American films started
they all ended up with a pencil in their hand
so that not a single gesture escaped them.
And the face!
Before, when television started,
my mother used to watch the news.
But now the presenter can be saying:
“Fifty thousand people are dying of hunger blocked on a boat…”
without making a single gesture. Not a single one!
It seems they are not allowed to lift a finger.
They say that the deaf are not grateful at all.
Well, of course! Why should they have to make all the efforts?
The society can do something too.
Gosh, it’s not that difficult!
To make gestures like sleep, eat, handsome, ugly is easy
but nowadays it’s gone out of use.
Technology and deafness, clarity and darkness
Why should one get operated?
To be better?
To hear better?
I don’t think it’s necessary.
My daughters and my four
grandchildren can all hear.
But when I gave birth, I didn’t ask
if my daughters would be deaf. Not me.
My husband lit a votive
candle praying they wouldn’t be.
But my daughters have always told me
that it wouldn’t matter to them.
Because they’ve known their grandparents
and for them they are normal.
To be deaf is not… the end of the world!
There was a time during which
they said all deaf people were “curable”
thanks to a medical operation or a little device,
I can’t remember its name… A cochlear implant, yes, that’s it.
In the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital
there was a speech therapist, an elderly man.
He happened to be married to
one of my father’s sisters.
I should know his name but
I can’t remember. He was a speech therapist,
and all that had to do with the sign language was out of the question!
When a father who could hear came with a child who was deaf…
Make signs? Never!
A school for the deaf? Never!
They would tell him: “He or she will speak
and be able to communicate with everybody,
it will be a normal person”…
But no, personally I don’t agree.
It will be a normal person
if he or she starts to learn and understand the sign language.
Signing is their first language.
And from there they will learn any other language.
But to start speaking without knowing what things are?
Without having any understanding,
without knowing their surroundings and with who they live,
without knowing who they are themselves?
Imagine when they are older,
when they gather with other young people…
I see them get together, they go here and there…
A deaf person will never fit in perfectly,
even though he or she can lip read
and has acquired a “good voice”
and you can understand them easily when they speak.
Their parents might be very pleased and say:
“Can you hear how well my son speaks!”
But their son won’t know a thing.
I get a WhatsApp message,
I look at it and I cry again:
they are signing me (in a video) about that 40th anniversary party.
And I think to myself,
if my mother had seen that…
My father used to write letters to
deaf people in France, England, United States,
but at that time he would write by hand.
Nowadays, thanks to Internet and all that,
all the deaf must be communicating
with everyone everywhere.
When I saw that, I thought how great it was!
Now I don’t “speak” with anyone anymore.
Just with hearing people.
When my granddaughter was a child,
she’s eighteen now, I wanted to teach her
how to interpret sign language. As a game,
like my daughters had done with their grandmother,
my mother. But my granddaughter refused,
and nobody has carried on…
Hearing parents, deaf baby
I would have liked to see
the creation of an organization that
would help parents
to accept their deaf child,
to understand that he or she isn’t ill,
that it’s just a normal person
who needs
visual communication.
The only thing they need to do is
to play with the child.
Play with signs.
Invite him or her to make signs too,
and then the moment will come when they will teach their parents those gestures.
That’s how it goes.
The parents have to learn to work on the gestures.
Why? Because orally
the child will be able to say the same things I mentioned earlier
pronounce all the words perfectly, but the meaning, the cognitive part,
what things “are”, that will not be known.
They don’t learn that without signs, it’s impossible.
I once saw in a nursery school in Girona
a boy aged three or four years old,
who was explaining to another child
what he had seen on television.
He had as much vocabulary or even more than a hearing child.
He was saying: “There was a man in a car
who was attacking them with a machine gun,
then the car
fell off a cliff, it crashed…”
To explain that film the kid was using as much vocabulary as a hearing child or even more.
“...was driving with difficulty, then he went crashing into
the wall and the bonnet opened itself,
the other ones in the car were screaming…”
Hearing kids of three or four years old don’t speak like that.
This way he will learn
what a machine gun is,
the tanks, whathever…
The best solution is to invite those parents
to visit a school for the deaf so that they can see
how those dialogues take place between deaf kids
in sign language.
They will see the difference,
especially if after that they go to another school,
with more “formal” children,
where there isn’t as much communication.
The parents should know the sign language.
There’s something that has saddened me deeply
is to be communicating with a young deaf person
and then have her parents tell me
that they envy me
for the way I speak with their daughter.
They should learn.
If you go to Germany, you should learn to speak German
in order to work and live there.
When it comes to deaf children it’s the same.
For the hearing parents and the deaf child
to be able to communicate,
the parents have the obligation
to learn the sign language.
They should sign with their children.
Some parents want their children to learn foreign languages.
The first thing they usually do is to take them to the French Institute
because that’s where they will learn French
in the most “natural” way,
or here in Sant Cugat,
where there are nursery schools in English.
They want their children to be familiar with English
from the earliest age so that they can learn it easily.
Why don’t we do the same with deaf children?
They will learn with signs,
and life will teach them to speak and communicate,
with no need to learn another language.
That is to say: they will have to do exercises in order to train their voice
but they will already master
the comprehension part. It’s the same.
The important thing is the thinking,
the cognitive aspect.
The really important thing is to let the deaf child learn a language
in a natural way so that he or she can access all the other ones.