“What Catalans Want” has been described as a “a brilliant new collection of interviews of leading Catalan politicians, academics, artists, and activists who grapple with the thorny question of the future of Catalonia within or without the Spanish state”. Toni Strubell, MP, writer, and academic asks difficult questions of diverse personalities including former Catalan President Jordi Pujol, Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, documentarian Montserrat Armengou, and writer Matthew Tree, while Lluís Brunet illustrates the book with striking full-color photographs. Reading “What Catalans Want” is the perfect way to understand what's going on in Catalonia today.
Toni Strubell was elected to the Catalan Parliament in November, 2010. Born into an Anglo-Catalan family (he was born in Oxford in 1952) Strubell spent his formative years in Oxford and was greatly influenced by his grandfather, Josep Trueta, a Catalan-born professor of orthopedic surgery at Oxford University, who helped save thousands of lives by introducing revolutionary surgery for wounded Allied soldiers during World War II. In 1946 Trueta wrote “The Spirit of Catalonia”, a book aimed at explaining the plight of the Catalan people under Franco to English-speaking society. In some ways, “What Catalans Want” can be seen as a sequel to that book. Toni Strubell was awarded Catalonia's prestigious Saint George's Cross in 2002 in part for his work recovering Catalan documents plundered by Franco during the Spanish Civil War.