(Folk songs from the history of Catalonia)
All national communities, apart from using flags, gestures and their own codes for self-identification and for distinguishing themselves from other nations, also use sound, whether in the form of songs, hymns or rhythmical melodies. In that sense, the songs are, on the one hand, the voice of a country's historical memory, enabling us to remember who we are and what pathways we have taken over the centuries. On the other hand, through their contrast with our present, those songs help us to safeguard our future, through assessing our most immediate present in the light of the past and thus seeking not to fall back into episodes we have already been through. To sing the past is to portray the present and to mark out a better future.
(Extract from the Introduction to the book)