Last week I was talking about the blatant breaches by the City Council in the limitation of groups for tourism purposes in Ciutat Vella (and the mandatory use of headphones by their guides, mostly overlooked) and also, despite some improvement in the area of police security, about the permanent feeling of helplessness that residents and pedestrians suffer in our historic center. Well, as if the fate of decadence had clung to my words, history always ends up showing that you can end up experiencing yet another alehop towards delirium. A few days ago, my costella shared with me a video that took place on our beautiful street of Sant Sever, where a group of ladies walked wildly (with headphones, mind you!) while dancing and singing the well-known choreography Explota explótame expló by Raffaella Carrà. Yes, the one that closes with the hair flying back.
It seems that the performance in question was not caused by a contingent excess of XL-sized vermouths, as the mandanga was part of an experience that some evildoer calls street musicals or, in the inevitable and perfidious Anglicism, silent disco tours. The dynamic of this sordid initiative consists of a tourist route through the most emblematic (ugh) places of the Gòtic, complemented by different choreographies of great pop hits. The experience is clearly postmodern, because in the tours in question the music (thank God!) can only be heard by the participants, with which they would want to circumvent the law I mentioned earlier; but, as even a deaf person could understand, the noise caused by the experience, between claps and the natural humming of the dance protagonists, is profoundly notorious. Therefore, if you'll allow me a rudeness unbefitting of The New Barcelona Post; that about silent, your fucking mother.
The press (what we used to call the serious press, that is) reports that the video in question has gone viral on TikTok, so, given that the world has inexorably gone mad, it is quite possible that the company responsible for this assassination of aesthetics and coexistence—it's called Bailaloco, and in this case the name has an intimate relationship with the thing—will experience an unusual boom. See how delirious the thing is, that in the aforementioned tours of Barcelona, the guide who commands each group of ballerine usually anticipates the arrival at a monument or a paradigmatic square of the neighborhood with the phrase "we are arriving at the next dance floor." As you know, at home we are of a liberal vocation, and we don't like to pry into people's lives as long as they respect our free will. But there are desperate situations that require drastic measures and the park-ification of our city should be stopped.
We must put an end to this tackiness that privatizes and commercializes the streets where there are people who have the naive pretension of living.I beg Mayor Collboni and our experienced supreme councilman, my Ateneu associate Albert Batlle, toprohibit such an attack against our city,for the much-pondered existence of my dear Mediterranean universe, and also good aesthetic taste in general. I have always been in favor of street music in Barcelona, which means ---and the City Council has often done so!--- that colleagues are allowed to play in public places at regulated times and with administrative permission. But this, no,perfavort; we must put an end to this tackiness that privatizes and commercializes the streets where there are people who have the naive pretension of living. The people responsible for this horrifying company say that most of their clients are pure-bred Barcelonians; well, even more reason to decapitate it soon, because if the natives themselves piss on the city like that... what won't the tourists do!
Authorities, a common Barcelonian speaks to you; I don't demand the impossible, like re-editing the Olympic Games, that ---in my city--- a "cafè amb gel" be a minimally understandable phrase for everyone or that the street names be made up of the glories of the nation and not by those generals who enjoyed bombing us. I only ask to walk down my street without a dreadful choreography making me lose the will to live. On my knees I ask for it, if necessary.