The patients and countless readers of this Saturday Stab already know my conversion from a proud resident of the Eixample to the new task of a happy resident of Ciutat Vella. Last week I celebrated home as a good Barcelonian; complaining and protesting about the disastrous effect of pigeons on the hygiene and noise pollution of the Call neighborhood, an article for which I have received expressions of affection from animal rights activists who have been on the verge of convincing me that the existence of the critters in question is, in addition to a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, more necessary than drinking water. Yours truly is already of a certain age and knows perfectly well that there are causes as rational as they are destined for failure; this is how I am going to spend the rest of my existence cleaning avian shit from the balcony of my house and happy that the cooing wakes me up at dawn on the few days off that my self-employed status grants me.
But age and the stoicism that the passage of time entails have not melted my stubbornness, and yours truly still has ingrained in his mind the noucentista belief that we could exercise our Mediterranean condition of expansive living by also trying to ensure that silence subsists in our cities and that one can rest. I can live with all the animals that Noah put on his ark, of course, but the fight for silence becomes more tiresome when it is the municipal management itself that encourages noise. The natives of Ciutat Vella must already intuit that I am referring to the symphonies of shouting and mambo that the municipal cleaning service offers us. Cleaning a neighborhood of such antiquity and porosity as is the case, it is not necessary to say, is titanic, and I am convinced that the administration has dedicated many neurons to the matter; but beware of the eardrum, I assure you, very little.
Let's clarify something indisputable and thus preventively appease the wrath of the offended: the garbage collectors and drivers of Bcneta who work in my neighborhood sweat their shirts off and earn their wages fairly. There are streets where they pass six or seven times in a single day (often, more than cleaning, they cheerfully spread the dirt by spraying it with water, it must also be said) and in this way they manage to ensure that a historic environment that we have all condemned to be a party place generally wakes up in good condition every morning. But to achieve the feat in question, we pay an unnecessary price that falls on our ears; most of the trucks that pass through the neighborhood emit a frightening noise, the waste collection system is totally obsolete in terms of efficiency and, I must say it bluntly, most garbage collectors shout through the streets as if no one lived there.
Most of the trucks that pass through the neighborhood emit a frightening noise, the waste collection system is totally obsolete in terms of efficiency and, I must say it bluntly, most garbage collectors shout through the streets as if no one lived thereThe culprits of the noise are not the workers: I perfectly understand that a garbage collector cannot whisper when he has to communicate with a colleague who is ten meters away while holding a giant hose from which water gushes out at full speed, just as I also understand that it is practically impossible to empty garbage cans emulating the sound of a medieval harp. The problem is not the workers, but the system.Making use of perfectly viable technological advances, garbage collectors could communicate using microphones and headphones.In turn, if one wishes to avoid the unpleasant sight of garbage in the street and the noise of the bins when they are emptied into the belly of cars, a geolocation system could be perfectly devised whereby neighbors would go down to the street in the afternoon or at night just at the moment when the garbage vehicle in question approaches.
The reader will think that I am speaking in terms of science fiction, but what is incomprehensible is that in 2021 I can know exactly when a Glovo order will arrive at my house and I cannot perform an act as simple as taking out the household garbage by monitoring the vehicle that will take it away. In the absence of these resources, which should have been mandatory in any minimally rigorous public tender, garbage collection becomes a veritable machine gun of noises: at home, from bed, we already play at anticipating all its possible variety, from the beep-beep of the garbage truck when it backs up, to the friendly garbage collectors who, around one in the morning, hit the manhole cover of our building's entrance with a sordid metal, then open the water tap, and finally perpetrate the flood that is completed with the respective "¡voy!" and "¡ya está!" intoned with the emission of a high tenor.
Given my success with the pigeon issue, I am very aware that after the publication of this Punyalada, garbage collectors will write to me swearing that they lead a working existence more silent than that of a cloistered monk, and I am also sure that my esteemed The New Barcelona Post will receive very polite emails where some garbage collector will want to show us that zen life or even yoga was invented by a colleague. But despite my old age, my ears still do not fail me and, for now, my auditory apparatus still allows me to discriminate silence from shouting; and it is a palpable reality that Bcneta professionals work in a populated neighborhood with zero sensitivity for the people who rest there. If anyone minimally attentive to city life wants the neighborhood to escape its tourist label and be inhabited by Barcelonans, they should quickly formulate an alternative to an invisible but lethal pollution.
At home, from bed, we already play at anticipating all its possible variety, from the pip-pip of the garbage truck when it backs up, to the friendly garbage collectors who, around one in the morning, hit the manhole cover of our building's entrance with a sordid metal, to then open the water tapAt home, I insist, we are aware that things look bad and we are already saving on food and other minor expenses, thinking about how we can soundproof our matrimonial suite.Given the success I've had with the animal rights community, I wouldn't be surprised if tonight a choir of garbage collectors decided to spend the night under my house, serenading me with a stentorian choral anthem. If I can choose, and clemency still works, both my agora companion and I are more into Mozart than Verdi or Wagner. Thank you very much in advance.
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