Barcelona is a modern metropolis. It is full of all the things that make up the megacities of our times. That is, ambitious executives having lunch in the Port Olimpic, hoards of students having the time of their lives, avant-guard artists experimenting in complete freedom and tourists with the cameras having become an extension of their hands.
Somewhere in the backgound though, a metropolis cannot survive only on these kinds of people. It needs its hard-working lower class, its immigrants piling-up in their ant-like neighborhoods, that everybody detests but nobody could do without, not to mention a significant number of homeless people. Because the bottomline is that the mega-cities are to be fueled by inequalities. Their mode of function is such that you cannot have prosperity without attracting poverty, you cannot have fancy restaurants without being in need of the Algerians to work as waiters. Even modern architecture projects appreciate cheap labour.
The point is that this same machine-steering potential of inequalities erupts to violence more and more often. Last night we experienced one of this outbursts in the middle of the old city, the Ciutat Vella. People residing in occupied houses around the so-called "Forat de la Vergonya", (literally meaning "shame's hole"), started a demonstration against a plan put forward by the City Hall to economically exploit this "forgotten" zone. Actually, those who have lived there ever since this place was initially left in oblivion, just decided to be remembered. To remind to the rest of us, that "el Forat" has been there for so long before the real-estate sharks took notice of how much it has come to be worth. That it has been a neighborhood, a "barri" like all the others, with its people, its families living next to each other and children going to school every morning, before turning into the most rapidly expanding nightlife-theme-park with bars and restaurants packed one next to the other.
They took their protest to the streets. But as often happens in such cases, the mean was subject to the cause. During the protest they even fired a missile against the police and went so far as to throw paint-granades at the Museum of Modern Art, one of Barcelona's most emblematic buildings of the 90's era. Thus, as it happens with almost equal frequency in such cases of blind violence, the cause was eventually obscured by the means.
It nomore matters how these people were initially marginalized. If they choose to or if someone just decided it for them. They are now enclaved in a vicious circle, which they are very unlikely to escape, having to negotiate with that same system that they are confronting, having to put up with the exact same people they have once and for all rejected. This is a hard way they are very unlikely to take. They choose to oppose to all things they reject instead of trying to change them.
The easier way involves the rest of us. Those that get to appreciate Barcelona for what it appears to be away from realizing what it really is. But this turns out to be even more difficult. I spent yesterday evening having drinks in the middle of the Barri Gotic and had absolutely no idea about the "battle" until I saw it on today's news. It seems like we are living in our own happy "bubble" away from all that is going on. And finally, this drifting apart of the "two Barcelonas" is what makes understanding each other ever so harder.
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