Desigual strolls through the Gòtic

It's well known that irony is one of Western culture's finest inventions — the quintessentially Socratic device, worth defending... until someone uses it to mock the thing you genuinely love. That's roughly how I might have felt after Desigual's latest ad, an apparently good-natured little film in which a stunning girl strolls through the streets of the Gòtic, breezily riffing on the neighborhood's supposed bad reputation. She swoons in a taxi and bemoans the savage traffic, plants herself in front of the Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia to pontificate that Barcelonans just adore their pigeons (with two poor mangy creatures chained up like dogs), and, on Carrer del Bisbe, on her way to Sant Jaume, bursts out laughing as she declares that "everybody wants your bag" — implying that in my neighborhood, the odds of getting your wallet stolen are pretty good.

The caricature is full of exaggerations, thankfully: an iced coffee doesn't yet cost €9.50, however much we drink it on a terrace, and, painful as it is to admit, we're not exactly the most stylish city on Earth either. That said — and to the misfortune of its residents — Barcelona's historic center genuinely isn't the safest spot in the city, let alone the planet, and the sheer difficulty of moving around like a normal human being (amid the tidal wave of tourists, the armies of food-delivery scooters, and the endless roadworks that remind us daily just how close the municipal elections are) is more than familiar to yours truly.

But it says something that a brand so steeped in local identity only lets Catalan surface when someone confronts the protagonist to fire off a wildly implausible line ("Amor, estàs al mig, deixa'm passar!"), while she herself chirps away, perfectly content, that the city is "the quietest place for a walk." I can appreciate the caricature, I really can, but the people behind this shiny rag-trade brand ought to understand that if the Gòtic's residents grumble so often, it's precisely because girls like that model are the ones pricing us out of the neighborhood with their gold-plated matcha lattes — and yes, when we run into them on the street, so carefree and willowy, it's enough to make our blood boil.

I'm sure a brand with as much of a Barcelona footprint as Desigual meant to smooth things over by making light of its own neighbors' discontent, but irony can end up as a rather crude mockery, especially for those of us living in a neighborhood where Catalan is dwindling toward genuinely alarming levels. Let's be clear: I still live here, politics aside, because I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world — there are few pleasures as wonderful as wandering every morning down the Baixada de Santa Eulàlia to the Ateneu's Jardín Romántico (where members of the Docta Casa can still get a coffee for one euro fifty) and reading there for a while over a cigar, having breakfast at Bar Haití's excellent sandwiches or Brunells' buttery croissants, taking advantage of the fact that MUHBA's very dignified exhibitions and the Fundació Joan Brossa's excellent cultural program are just a few steps from home, and, at night, heading back to Bar Ascensor, one of the most beautiful bars in the universe.

I don't know whether any of this counts as cool or stylish, but it would be worth our local businesses championing it — and, ideally, doing so from a proud, dignified vision of Catalans, who, incidentally, are the ones who built companies as big as Desigual by buying their clothes back when they were nowhere near such sprawling enterprises. The ad people behind this particular brand — who had already produced controversial spots before, like the one with the woman poking holes in condoms to get pregnant — have earned their paycheck, because these days what matters is that the content spreads and circulates everywhere, however tone-deaf it is.

But style — in clothes as in life generally — is also earned by developing a somewhat more sophisticated sense of irony. Since they're clearly up for stirring things, let's see if the folks at Desigual dare take aim at expats or foreigners next, and then we'll find out whether their irony travels across neighborhoods or only ever gets aimed at people simply trying to walk around their own block without doing an obstacle course around clueless types who don't even know where the hell they live.