What one learns by reading The New Barcelona Post: Hispano Suiza returns, returns in a big way, and returns by placing this city in the world's first division of electric cars. The new Hispano Suiza Carmen, a true electric hypercar (of more than 750 horsepower, specifically this one will have 1,000...), is being manufactured in Montmeló, almost all its components are from Barcelona, and all this will revolutionize the market and the legend. Only 19 units will be put on sale, at the modest price of one and a half million euros each. It seems little to me for an amazing product, of a very limited series, customizable down to the last detail ---the first buyer, a Cuban mattress magnate, has already asked for it to be painted entirely in a fuchsia color that I don't have the strength to describe here...--- and that forces a careful reflection on what luxury really is and what it means.
At first glance, it does not seem that the word "luxury" and the word "sustainable" have much to do with each other. Of course, at first glance it is not easy to understand complex issues. If there is any History more paradoxical and distorted than that of politics, it is that of economics. The History of money is full of confusion and misunderstandings.
[subscribe_newsletter_esp]Let's go back in time a bit. Let's jump to 1904. That is, for example, the year in which, concentrated in a single day, all the action of James Joyce's Ulysses takes place... but it is also the year in which the Hispano Suiza company was founded in Barcelona, by Damià Mateu, Francesc Seix and Marc Birkigt, a Swiss engineer who dreamed of... electric cars! He was one of the pioneers in designing them. But he quickly had to surrender to the evidence and the market: all the business, and what then also seemed all the future, went through the internal combustion engine. Marc Birkigt accepted it, his partners accepted it. Hispano Suiza began its triumphant stork flight that delighted kings and magnates... and that would end up assaulting the heavens, but for real. Providing French aviation with the necessary mechanics to win a world war.
The Hispano Suizas were, even more than luxury cars, dream cars that perhaps, without the peculiar Spanish absence in the two great wars, would not have been born or grown here, but for that very reason, for being born and growing here, they had a premature and in a certain way sudden death. Alfonso XIII first, the Second Republic, and Franco in third place, were like lead in the wings of that marvelous industry. Alfonso XIII because he liked those cars to the point of delirium, and tried to meddle on a whim and even decide where they had to be manufactured, the Republic because it overshot the collectivizing brake, Franco because in the autarkic little Spain there simply wasn't room for such an adventure and of course, one way or another it had to be gotten rid of...
Much has had to happen and much water has had to flow under the bridge for the Suqué-Mateu family to return to their old ways and to the attack, launching themselves to conquer the Everest of brand and legendary cars, with a totally electric model that will have made engineer Marc Birkigt writhe with happiness in his grave. There are those who do not live to see their dreams on wheels, but those dreams keep rolling and rolling many years later, filling the roads and the world with light...
Now it remains to be seen, now I wonder, if the competent authorities in turn, from the mayor of Barcelona to the president of the Government of Spain, passing through the varied and pained range of people who more or less say they govern us, will be more accurate than in their day Alfonso XIII, the Second Republic and the Francoist bigwigs. If they will know how to understand that Carmen, this luxurious mischief from Hispano Suiza, is neither right-wing nor left-wing, but a product of absolute avant-garde and a first necessity.
To begin with, because sustainability is not filling everything with bike lanes and that's it. It is truly and seriously committing to the transition to emission-free automotive and economy, or on the way to being so. And that is not achieved by throwing gasoline cars down ravines, nor by forcing people to go to work on scooters. Surely the best push that can be given to the electric car is from above, from the stratosphere of aspirations. Making the rich among the rich dream of electric cars is one of the best favors we can do for this wonderful city and this great planet, with all of us in it.
But there's more. The Covid-19 crisis has painfully preyed on our vulnerabilities and forces us to awaken from many lethargies. What needs to be done with our public (and private…) healthcare system, we'd better discuss another day. Today, suffice it to say that the economy needs a profound shake-up, a total reconsideration. The distressing loss of some key platforms in the automotive industry should open our eyes. If, at the wheel of the Hispano Suiza Carmen, we take the lead in the revolution, the delusions of grandeur of a dethroned king, the fantasies of a Swiss engineer, and the unwavering industriousness of a lifelong Catalan industrial saga will have given us the best of gifts. To have a future.