Barcelona, neither too much nor too little

I have had to leave Barcelona for a few weeks for work reasons. Therefore, I haven't set foot in the city for several days. I admit that I have taken advantage of this break to disconnect a bit from Barcelona's current affairs. Perhaps, for all these reasons, when I was reading the newspaper this Sunday while having a quiet breakfast in Empordà, I was surprised to find a large amount of negative information and opinion articles very critical of the current situation of the city: that Barcelona is losing steam against Madrid, that the streets are full of dirt, that there is more insecurity every day...

Afterwards, despite risking indigestion, I went on Twitter. I searched for Barcelona and the popular tweets that appeared to me by the grace of the algorithm said more or less the same as the newspapers, but, of course, with more malice: residents of Enric Granados fed up with the commotion caused by the bars that fill this formerly quiet street; citizens who do not understand that the authorities are unable to eradicate the street drinking parties that every night gather thousands of young people eager for a party or trouble, and a girl who reports that she has been robbed I don't know how many times and no longer even calls the police because she says they do nothing...

All this while Barcelona registers a historic population decline due to the pandemic ---last year almost 19,000 people died in the Catalan capital, a figure only surpassed during the Civil War and the Spanish flu---. Oh! And, to top it all, I learn that we can't even be entirely happy that, this season, Barcelona theaters host great musicals like Singin' in the Rain, Billy Elliot or Fame because, however good they may be, they are all in Spanish.

Really, if I had to draw conclusions about how Barcelona is doing based on what I have read in the press and, above all, on what I have seen on Twitter, I would think that the city has become, overnight, a mix of violent Caracas and decadent Detroit or, directly, the setting for The Walking Dead.

I close Twitter and open Instagram. I repeat the same operation. I type Barcelona into the search engine and review the most prominent posts made by anonymous citizens. It doesn't seem like the same city: Barcelonians and people from all over the world strolling smiling through the streets of a splendid Barcelona; taking ecstatic photos in front of the Sagrada Família; enjoying a sunset on Barceloneta beach under a wonderful twilight of orange and violet tones; admiring the perfection of the Eixample, from Guinardó Park; taking refuge from the city noise in Plaça de Sant Felip Neri; kissing in front of Joan Fontcuberta's photomosaic... Here, Barcelona is a beautiful, joyful, and optimistic city. The city where we like to live and which we understand marvels outsiders.

Alright. I know what you're thinking. Instagram is not the real world. The use or abuse of filters, a good framing that leaves out the ugliness from the photograph, and, above all, the need to always appear happy in posts greatly distorts reality. Surely, the real Barcelona is not as wonderful as it appears on Instagram, but I am convinced that it is not as disastrous as they paint it on Twitter either. Neither too much nor too little.