"Come, open your eyes, extend your hands, contemplate and touch what you were not capable of dreaming." These are the words of Joaquim Cabot, president of the Orfeó Català, on February 9, 1908, at the inauguration of the Palau de la Música. Words addressed to so many skeptics, cynics, distrustful, pessimists, and mediocre souls with senile spirits who doubted that the illustrious Barcelona jeweler would carry out his obsession. But the Palau was built, despite bureaucratic and urban planning obstacles, despite economic difficulties, despite non-compliance with Domènech i Montaner, despite having had to resort to small personal donations and above all to the guarantee of all his patrimony: Cabot achieved a palace for the singers and for the people, not elitist but equally luxurious, stately and plebeian at the same time, open and sophisticated in equal parts, universal and Barcelonian simultaneously. Without a single real of public money. With no more guarantee than faith and tenacity.
On Thursday, November 10, we presented his biography at the Palau, an initiative that I would not have thought of completing if my watch had not broken a few years ago. Today, the Soler Cabot jewelry store is located in Plaça Sant Gregori Taumaturgo in Barcelona, and there, on the customer service tables, there are some old closed books that contain not only the long lineage of Barcelona and Mataró goldsmiths, but also the poem that Verdaguer dedicated to one of our most complete leading figures of the early 20th century (and who, later, would promote the construction of the monument to Mossèn Cinto). From there came the idea, not only to talk about him but above all to talk about us and how everything has changed.
We are not only talking about the architect of the construction of the Palau: also about someone who presided over the Chamber of Commerce, the Fira, the Banco Comercial or the Centre Excursionista, collaborated in the "tancament de caixes", was a provincial deputy, writer, poet, art critic, director of La Veu, translator, winner of a Jocs Florals award… There is a part of the merit in his character, no doubt, but the central theme is not this: the theme is that there are times when culture, business, politics and society pedal in the same direction. This is impossible without people with authority to push, of course, but it is also impossible when the mental framework that surrounds us becomes small, selfish, skeptical and cynical: too full of people who, as he said, are not capable "not even of dreaming" ambitious projects, let alone materializing them. Today in Barcelona, not only are great collective ideas missing, but also great executors. What is abundant, however, are excuses and posturing.
Today in Barcelona, not only are great collective ideas missing, but also great executors. What is abundant, however, are excuses and posturingThen come the destroyers, of course: fifteen years later the Palau would be closed by Primo de Rivera, at the same time as Barça, because of a match where one anthem was booed and another applauded (and also because of the success of the Orfeó's visit to Rome). Sometimes what seems universal is exactly what makes you more provincial, and vice versa: closing the two entities with the most personality in the city is, precisely, closing the city to the world instead of opening it. Everyone knows that in Barcelona the same type of people have always built and the same type of people have always destroyed, and now I am not referring to concrete ideologies but to attitudes: there are people who widen and there are people who wall up, there are people who let things happen and people who obstruct. Then there are those who always look for culprits or simply make a mess.
Among the latter, we have another president of the Orfeó, Fèlix Millet, an example of how to pervert the initial intention of a project that was not for the rich, or for an elite, but for everyone. But if there is a Millet case, which is the bad news of the city, there is also the Cabot case. Who, in the same speech, hammered the point home: "And do you know why it occupies such a preeminent place? Because the action of the Orfeó, all love and generosity, has been directed not like others to a specific class, be it of scholars, of students, be it of intellectuals or artists, but to all the people; it has not tried to conquer intelligences, but feelings; it has not been directed to the head, but to the heart of the people; and we all know that wounds of the heart are mortally fatal." And here we are. With the wound wide open.