It is well known that irony is one of the great achievements of Western culture, the quintessential Socratic invention to be championed... until someone uses it to mock what you hold dear. That is how I might have felt after Desigual’s latest ad, a seemingly light-hearted film in which a lovely young woman walks through the streets of the Gothic Quarter, making light of the place’s supposed bad reputation; she faints in a taxi and complains about the wild traffic, stands in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia pontificating that Barcelonians are very fond of their “palomas” (with two poor pigeons chained up like dogs) and, on Carrer del Bisbe, heading towards Sant Jaume, laughs as she declares that “everybody wants your bag”, implying that in my neighborhood you have a pretty good chance of getting your wallet stolen.
The caricature contains plenty of exaggeration, fortunately; iced coffee still doesn’t cost us €9.50, no matter how much we drink it on a terrace, and, much as it pains us to admit it, we are not exactly the most stylish city in the world either. Indeed, and to the misfortune of its residents, Barcelona’s historic center is not the safest place in the city—or on the planet—and the difficulty of getting around like a normal human being (amid the endless tide of tourists, armies of food-delivery scooters and the construction work on so many streets, reminding us every day that municipal elections are drawing near) is more than familiar to me.
But it is significant that a local brand only brings Catalan into the ad when someone confronts the protagonist and hits her with an utterly implausible line (“Love, you’re in the middle, let me pass!”), while she cheerfully declares that the city is “the quietest place for a walk”. I can understand the caricature, I insist, but the people behind this colorful clothing brand should understand that, if people in the Gothic Quarter often grumble, it is precisely because girls like that model are the ones making our neighborhood more expensive with their gold-priced latte-matcha and yes, when we run into them in the street, as carefree as they are sinuous, we may well find ourselves overcome by a fit of rage...
I am sure that a company with such a strong presence in Barcelona wanted to soften things by trivializing the discomfort of its residents, but irony can end up becoming a rather crude form of mockery, especially for those of us who live in a neighborhood where Catalan is increasingly being pushed into a minority position. Make no mistake: I continue to live here, militancy aside, because I consider it one of the most beautiful places in the world. There are few luxuries as wonderful as walking down Baixada de Santa Eulàlia every morning to the Romantic Garden of the Ateneu (where members of the Docta Casa can still have an iced coffee for €1.50), reading there while smoking a cigar, having breakfast with the splendid sandwiches at Bar Haití or the buttery croissants at Can Brunells, enjoying the fact that the excellent exhibitions at the MUHBA and the outstanding cultural program at the Fundació Joan Brossa are just a few meters from home, and, at night, returning to Bar Ascensor, one of the most beautiful bars in the universe.
I don’t know whether any of this qualifies as cool or stylish, but our homegrown brands would do well to reclaim it—and, if possible, from a powerful and dignified vision of Catalans (who, incidentally, have built great companies such as Desigual by buying their clothes back when they weren’t quite so mammoth). The advertising people behind the famous brand, which had already made controversial ads such as the one featuring the woman poking holes in condoms in order to get pregnant, have certainly earned their salaries, because in our world what matters is that information gets out and spreads, no matter how shitty it is.
But style, when it comes to clothes and life in general, is also about cultivating a somewhat more sophisticated level of irony. Since they’re making such a song and dance about it, and showing how brave they are, let’s see whether the Desigual kids dare to take on the expats or foreigners, and then we’ll know whether irony is a matter of neighborhood—or whether it is only aimed at people who, alas, are trying to walk around their own neighborhood without having to make heavy slaloms between pretty idiots who don’t even know where the fuck they live.