For some time now, crossing the Plaza de la Gardunya, next to the Boqueria, is something very similar to Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds. The square is usually taken over by dozens of gulls on the lookout for food scraps that tourists have eaten sitting on the benches and that they previously acquired at the market stalls. It is truly impressive, especially for those not few people who suffer from ornithophobia, the fear of birds.
I would not want anyone to understand this article as reproaches to either the market or any administrative official. The market sells food, and it is difficult for the City Council and the Generalitat to win this battle against nature beyond planning mass exterminations. Measures have been deployed to control the pigeon population and, more recently, parakeets. Progress has been made, but even so, the presence of pigeons and parakeets continues to be, at certain times and in certain areas of the city, worthy of a biblical plague.
A few years ago, a pigeon nested in one of the windows of my house. When I realized it, it had already laid two eggs and it was impossible for me to scare it away, once I ruled out the possibility of catching and euthanizing it. Just thinking about it gives me nightmares. So I resigned myself to living with these tenants until they left the nest. But since everything has its positive side, I had the opportunity to document day by day the birth and evolution of the chicks. Of course, when they left, I cleaned the window sill and took measures to prevent them from nesting again.
If we haven't been able to deal with pigeons and parakeets, we won't be able to deal with gulls that years ago abandoned their port and marine habitat to spread throughout the city and that, unlike other urban birds, have a more aggressive behavior when it comes to getting food and defending their nests. There have even been cases where a gull has dived into a schoolyard and stolen a child's breakfast or snack, with the consequent fright.
What I would like to make clear is a criticism of the behavior of some citizens that does not help to contain the problem. A few days ago, while I watched in astonishment the seagull deployment in La Gardunya, I observed two women, one middle-aged and one younger, eating portions of rice sitting on a bench. As they ate, a seagull did not lose sight of them, just over a meter away. And it was then that the older woman got up and began to distribute the remains of her lunch among the seagulls, an irresponsible attitude. It is common for the remains of meals to end up abandoned on benches or in a wastebasket. In this case, the seagulls extract them and soon La Gardunya is filled with wrappers and other waste.
The majority attitude of people is one of indifference to the presence of seagulls surrounding the benches. It even seems that many tourists find it amusing, so they use food as bait to take photos. But not everyone reacts the same way. Shortly before the lady shared what was left of her food with the birds, a young girl walking through the area with her partner was terrified, almost having a panic attack, and tearfully refused to cross the square. Her boyfriend or husband tried to calm her down and convince her that nothing was happening. At first, he even found the girl's fear amusing. Finally, her fright won out and they ended up taking a detour.
That young woman suffers from ornithophobia, which is defined as an abnormal and irrational fear of birds in general, not just seagulls. According to specialists, these phobias are generated after a traumatic encounter. Tippi Hedren herself, protagonist of The Birds, ended up suffering from it after filming some of the scenes. In fact, Hitchcock's film has been the origin of numerous cases of ornithophobia. I know very well a person who suffers from it after having seen the film in her childhood. Browsing the internet, I have learned that former soccer player David Beckham and actress Scarlett Johansson are also ornithophobic.
Carmen Maté, director of the municipal animal rights service, is aware of the problem and her department is working to adopt solutions to the problem, which she attributes to the ease with which seagulls obtain food from tourists. For this reason, they are working with the market traders and restaurateurs so that together they can raise awareness among their customers not to feed the birds or leave food within their reach. "We must cut off access to food for wild animals," she says emphatically.
For now, a reinforcement of cleaning services has already been established, which have increased the frequency of sweeping and emptying of wastebaskets, work of which I have been a witness. "If there is no food, there are no seagulls," adds Maté, who clarifies that the problem of concentration in La Gardunya and other parts of the city is not due to overpopulation. In fact, it is known that in Barcelona there are only about 500 pairs of seagulls registered. Of course, with a great capacity for dietary adaptation. It has even been found that some specimens have specialized in recent years in hunting pigeons.
In conclusion, passing through Plaça de la Gardunya these days is like seeing Hitchcock live.