Barcelona, keep it simple

With the death of Ferran Ferrer, former city council manager and promoter of the campaign Barcelona, ​​ponte guapa (Barcelona, get pretty), several videos have appeared in the media reminding us of the time when being "pretty" did not clash, as a slogan, with so-called political correctness and when Barcelona was emerging from an ancestral tendency towards ugliness and dirt. Especially focused on the landscape and the rehabilitation of facades, the campaign that began in 1985 (and which later led to the creation of the current Institut Municipal del Paisatge Urbà i Qualitat de Vida, an organization designed for public-private collaboration) was a success and provided a great boost to self-esteem. Barcelona, ​​over the years, has indeed become a beautiful city. Beautiful in both senses: aesthetic appeal and social appeal, trendy, "cool." In that sense, mission more than accomplished.

The problem with people who are "cool" is that very often they end up abandoned. Or that, precisely while they are so "cool," they feel profoundly lonely and misunderstood. The balance is difficult, I know, because the price of leadership is often loneliness and contempt, or being evaluated only by the facade. When modernists imagined the most wildly creative city in the world, they undoubtedly already counted on this risk, and a fervent admirer of modernism like myself is very aware that an entire city cannot afford to look like an amusement park with dragons and princesses. Barcelona has the privilege of having a temple of hyperbolic height and unique and friendly architecture, but, obviously, not everything can be an edible facade, and people cannot be asked to live in a temple.

Barcelona, ​​besides being beautiful, must be efficient and effective and simple and accessible. In this sense, I fear that the beautiful one has remained beautiful. Like a Miss Universe with no friends, but with millions of admirers. Or like an unhappy bride. Many people desire Barcelona, but not so many people know how to love it, because it has become too complex. Too difficult. Perhaps even too focused on being the beautiful one, on being "cool." And these people are often eventually abandoned.

I insist that the balance is difficult, I know: but a city that presents itself as fantastic for investing in it, for paying for a millionaire apartment, for attending the best fairs and for partying on the best "rooftops"… but that presents itself as incapable of preserving its long-time residents, that turns out to be inaccessible to its citizens and unviable for its small businesses, and that, with so much universalist and frivolous imposture, ends up abandoning its character, language, identity, and simplicity, will never be a success story. What, on the other hand, the modernists did know how to capture from the very beginning: an architecture not only at the service of beauty, but also at the service of Barcelona's character and what makes it unique. Now, however, we have associated beauty with external canons and what others demand of us, and hence Barcelona is increasingly rapidly heading towards a blatant and still indefinable, but notorious, ugliness.

Then comes explicit ugliness, that of bad taste, that of hard squares transformed into supposed Superblocks, that of the lack of green spaces (no matter how much they are called "green"), that of the flats in Raval where eight families live, or that of the criminals who tarnish the image of the streets. There is a Barcelona that behind its facade hides ugliness that we were supposed to have come to banish, such as the ugliness of unjust evictions or that of the closure of classic establishments due to the impossibility of paying rent.

We have associated beauty with external canons and what others demand of us, and hence, Barcelona is increasingly rapidly heading towards a blatant and still indefinable, but notorious, ugliness