District 01

You can now show expiatory temples and lavish modernist residences to tourists, but when they truly surrender is when they set foot in the Barri Gòtic. It's not that Modernism doesn't amaze them, wonderful, beautiful, crazy, but there's a different aftertaste in the stones of district 01 that makes them enter exactly the dimension they were looking for. It's exactly from there that we Barcelonans try to escape, because we've ended up considering it either our particular Ripoll or too chaotic to set up a little house and garden, but it's precisely there that tourists find Barcelona to be most Barcelona.

You can spend hours talking about Gaudí's hyperbolic towers, about the Magic Kingdom that is the facade of the Hospital de Sant Pau, about the Sleeping Beauty castle that is the Casa de les Punxes, about the feast of Sacher, Sara, and Massini cakes that is Park Güell, or about the delirious Wonderland that is the Palau de la Música, but when they truly feel they have reached the heart of the city is when they cross the nonexistent wall that separates them from Plaça Catalunya downwards. It doesn't matter what stories you tell them: suddenly, a kind of Spanish guitar background music and the smell of petrified sun have penetrated their ears, as if they had been invaded by a Vicky Cristina Barcelona syndrome that wasn't looking for the whims of industrialists but for the footprint of kings, the wine of taverns, and the sweat of artisans. To be clear, the Barri Gòtic, despite being the quintessential Catalan neighborhood, would be their Poble Espanyol.

All this for the tourist, obviously. We have been around for some years, we have trodden a thousand nooks and crannies and we know how they have changed, how they have wanted to domesticate the district with hard plazas and Raval ramblas, how they have wanted to expel all vestiges of the Barrio Chino and all remnants of bohemian wineries or historic establishments that have passed away, and how little by little a particular gentrification of the neighborhood has been forged that, unlike the others, has not consisted of pacifying its streets (sufficiently car-free) but of pacifying its soul. It has not been fully achieved, of course, and especially in the Raval, where very often it seems that any attempt at interventionism is swallowed by the still dark and complex social dynamics around Salvador Seguí square. It has been more successful in the Gòtic, where before you could feel a certain fear approaching the narrowest alleys, and now all that's missing is for them to paint the streets with tactical-urbanistic colors.

The young Obama with a backpack would have no place, nor budget. You talk to the Amics de la Rambla and the obsession continues to be that Barcelonans don't want to live in Ciutat Vella, that they barely want to trade and that, if the invasion of terraces with sangria is complete, this is due to a lack of a better idea. This and the price of apartments, increasingly difficult to contain because most have too much protected history: having history takes its toll, more than ever, even if many of them don't have an elevator. That there is insecurity in the vicinity of the Boqueria doesn't matter, some politicians already say that insecurity is just a feeling. Come to Barcelona if you want to lose your watch at knifepoint, or your bag at snatch-and-grab point. Feel Barcelona, ​​live Barcelona. Feeling of insecurity, feeling of living.

But leaving aside the backstage of daily life, which we know because we couldn't ignore it even if we wanted to, the surprising thing is that the most attractive facade for tourists turns out not to be the edible architecture, but the medieval walls, the streets with trade names, and the Sant Felip Neri squares with shrapnel holes ideal as a set. Which should be a goldmine to culturally connect visitors, not with Javier Bardem apprentices worried about the fate of Tibet, or with purveyors of universality with a sherry flavor, but with the true roots of the city. Barcelona should not only be known for burnt containers, obviously, but also not for the innocuous "Hola!" Olympic that inaugurated Collboni's campaign.

The corners of the Gòtic not only link with the splendor of the Catalan counties, but they also do so, directly and skipping three centuries, with all the intentions of Modernism and with all the dream of the Eixample (at least until it reaches the Upper and transforms into Zona Nacional). I mean that Woody Allen had to endure our nagging to please introduce Catalan quotes in his film, and a master's degree in Catalan culture, and Basté looking at paintings in the MNAC or Paco Mir or Joel Juan acting as extras, when in truth the extras are the tourists and the protagonists of the Gòtic are us. I don't want to act now as the flame of the Fossar, but the protagonists are those buried in the Born or in the tombstones of the Cathedral, just as centuries later were the creators of the Universal Exhibitions or the masters of the trencadissos with crocanti. The tourist is the extra and we are the beautiful one in the movie, but I want to go beyond that: Penélope Cruz is also an extra. Just as the protagonist of Montcada street is Picasso, and not a Moco museum that in its fuchsia advertising doesn't even bother to accent Dalí.

All this is the antithesis of "cultural co-capitality" with Madrid, of the misunderstood Barcelona Brand or of the artificial bilingualism that seems to have been imposed in the city council's communication policy. Our District 01, if it is really identified by tourists as the most "authentic" district, must act as such: if they tell you they like you, be yourself, don't respond that your nose is too big or that the tenora makes too strident a sound. They are looking for you, and you offer them cheap imitations of what is done outside. Just in case we had forgotten: the Poble Espanyol is not authentic. It is a recreation. It is an attraction. It is a lie. This is what the Gothic Quarter should not become, and this is the ever-present risk. Tourists are allowed to be deluded, undertakers are not always so.