The manual for the corny columnist says that today, no matter how many toys the Three Wise Men (now we should refer to them as "democratically unendorsed, racially orientalized monarchs") may have given you, the true wish of the day should focus on ideals such as the cessation of war in Gaza or Ukraine, a much more egalitarian society, or the definitive annihilation of flu viruses that shoot our body temperature up to Valhalla. As the last representative of the Barcelona religion, I have asked the kings for objectives that are theoretically much more achievable. I haven't done like today's kids, who don't even bother to remind Their Majesties of their good behavior, limiting themselves to writing an order for gadgets (it must bother them to have to write it on paper, they who were born in the digital age). Simply, I have tried to avoid free trade for a day and focus on radically local matters.
Indeed, I have overcome the temptation to become a corny feather duster, becoming instead a frightfully nostalgic being for a city that surely never existed. Therefore, first of all, I have asked the Kings for two very simple things for Barcelona. The first is silence; I have no damn idea what place we occupy among the noisiest cities in the world, but I do notice my eardrums more and more affected every day by what we now call acoustic pollution (and which in less finicky times was called "noise"). I would love, if only for a few moments in 2024, to live in a city of Nordic silence where everyone ---whether it's pedestrians shouting into their mobile phones as if the rest of us inhabitants cared about the content of their call, most of the tourists on the planet, and even the night shift garbage collectors--- had the delicacy to do the damn favor of lowering their vocal decibels.
I know the first wish is already something out of science fiction, but to the vain pretension of silence I add the desire to be able to walk through my city again without feeling like I could be run over at any moment by a multiplicity of vehicles: first there were bicycles, then scooters were added, and now the city's bipeds move on contraptions whose names I don't even know. This happens especially to us indigenous people of Ciutat Vella, who stubbornly maintain the habit of strolling peacefully through the streets without Mr. Glovo or one of his three hundred variants giving us a heart attack thanks to a cyclist circulating around us at the speed of light. I'm not asking for Barcelonans to become those North Koreans who applaud the dictator in a terrible rhythmic unison; but I would say that striving for fellow citizens to learn to walk again without bumping into each other is not impossible.
See how Barcelonan my letter is and, in turn, briefly modest. I have not included unattainable wishes such as the completion of the works on Via Laietana, that the limitation of tourist groups in the Call neighborhood be met, or even that the City Council put an end to the disastrous custom of allowing teenagers to cram into Avenida del Portal de l'Àngel, simply because they want to rehearse a dance and upload it to TikTok. Nor have I demanded that Their Majesties give me a group of councilors capable of devising a city model that goes beyond a paradise for expats, who have the decency to alleviate the exodus of Barcelonans who are leaving their homes because they can no longer afford the rent and fill the fridge with hake, and even that they do everything possible so that Catalan is not very soon just another souvenir deposited in tourist shops.
All of this I have already left in the drawer of what I don't dare to ask for: I would simply be content with a little less noise and a more leisurely walk. I believe in the Kings (they are real; the most blatant lie are the parents), and today I will burst into the street again with the illusion of thinking that someone will deposit some silence and a walk without scares at the base of the small Christmas tree we bought in Santa Llúcia. I will start by checking my success with a small, radically humble journey, to buy the tortellet at Can Brunells: again, as every year in a mathematically persistent way, I will end up choking on the fava bean.