Except for the classics Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, I must warn that the world of vampires, so fashionable for some time along with zombies in literature, cinema, and television, does not attract me at all. I admit, however, that the sensual Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn was about to be an exception, but I quickly got over it. Despite everything, I have decided to make a parenthesis in my vampiric disinterest and visit two exhibitions on the subject that coincide in Barcelona.
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Let it be known that I took it very seriously, as an entire city separates them. One is in CaixaFòrum, and the other at the opposite end, in the Fòrum, in the triangular building by Herzog and De Meuron, the headquarters of the Museu de Ciències Naturals. They are very different. Vampires. The evolution of the myth, the exhibition at the cultural center of the Fundació la Caixa co-organized with La Cinémathèque Française, is truly spectacular and manages to envelop the visitor in the atmosphere of vampires mainly through the world of films.
The faces that in cinema have given life to Nosferatu, Dracula, and other myths of vampirism are the unsettling welcome to a gloomy and shadowy journey. Posters, books, comics, videos, and costumes used in cinema immerse the public in the universe of these legendary bloodsuckers.
The second exhibition, Vampirs al Fòrum, is much more modest and occupies only a corner of the museum. But its great value is that it reveals Joan Perucho's important contribution to fantastic literature. It focuses on his novel Les històries naturals, a vampire story published in 1960 in Catalan and translated into a dozen languages. Perucho's imagination places the action during the First Carlist War. The protagonist is a Catalan Dracula, Onofre de Dip, who takes on General Ramon Cabrera.
I will avoid spoilers, but it must be highlighted that the exhibition, within the framework of Any Perucho, is curated by Julià Guillamon, a specialist in the writer and who has a wonderful book, Joan Perucho i la literatura fantástica, highly recommended reading.
I launched myself into this route of vampiric exhibitions because I have decided to become an activist for culture as an engine for Barcelona's post-pandemic reactivation. The city needs to recover culture as a reference because it is one of the great assets of global cities competing in the first division of metropolitan leaderships.
It is proven that cities with relevant cultural activity attract investments and drive projects that consolidate their economy. Various studies corroborate this. One of them concludes that for every 100 euros invested in culture, 250 are added to the GDP, and for every three jobs created in the sector, two more are generated in the private industry as a whole.
In this sense, the case of Detroit is very illustrative. The American city once bet everything on the automobile industry. When local engine production went into crisis, the American dream ended, and the city entered a pronounced decline. Today in Detroit there are abandoned, almost dead neighborhoods, where homes are sold for a dollar. The absence of a strong cultural sector contributed decisively to this crisis.
Barcelona faces a challenge on which its future will depend. Everything must be bet on economic and social reactivation, and culture must be one of the axes. The Catalan capital and its metropolitan area must once again be a reference in the fields in which it has proven to be so since the '92 Games. Not only in tourism, which has shown its feet of clay when facing a global crisis like that of the coronavirus.
Go see even the vampire ones, even if you're not into that kind of thing. There's no need to exaggerate and go with a stake and a silver crucifix either.For all the above, it is important that the people of Barcelona get involved in culture. When conditions allow, we must return to concerts, opera, and all cultural manifestations that repopulate the agenda. We must be cultural activists and break taboos by visiting exhibitions even if they are not about our favorite topics. It should be a kind of moral responsibility. Go see even those about vampires, even if you're not into that kind of thing. There's no need to exaggerate and go with a stake and a silver crucifix. In any case, a handful of garlic in your pocket just in case, you never know.