Too often, to grasp what is happening right before our noses, we need the gaze of an observant foreigner. I was thinking about this while reading sociology professor Eric Klinenberg's latest article in my beloved New Yorker (The end of European summer, 17-08-2026; the author travels to cities like Paris, Milan, and casa nostra to see how these urban environments, designed under the idea of existence in rather mild or directly cool climates, are now combating the current climatic inferno), when the author notes that guides leading herds of tourists in the Gòtic are increasingly organizing night tours to prevent the congregation from fainting victim to the heat, something that—as an inhabitant of what the pretentious call "emblematic street"—I can certify firsthand. Picking up on an idea from Venezuelan-Barcelonized urban planning consultant Andreina Seijas, Klinenberg transcribes; "In Barcelona, I'm starting to see people organizing their schedules just like they do in Seville or Malaga: you stay home with the air conditioning and the blinds drawn, you take a siesta, and then, at 8 or 9 in the evening, you can emerge."
Despite suffering the rigors of the heatwave, I celebrate not having yet fallen into the Andalusian behavioral paradigm, not only because at home we are aspiring to be pseudo-middle class and I have to work during leisure months (I do it very gladly, as readers of this Stab know!). In turn, during the summer I take advantage of the mornings to exercise in the outside world (practicing the disastrous fashion of running, just when experts say it's worse; around 11... and fasting) and, despite intimately appreciating the only invention of our enemies that I adore unreservedly, in the afternoons I trick drowsiness by going to the Ateneu library, where one can devour the books and Handel oratorios that one has expressly reserved for summer boredom. However, even philosophers—lately unaccustomed to meditating on nature—have ended up admitting that the enveloping stubbornness of this fever transfigures the air and the entire environment, thus condemning the celestial sphere (traditional sign of greatness and hope) to become the main threat to spiritual tranquility.
In the aforementioned article, Klinenberg practices good journalism and chats with city officials like Laia Bonet and architect Maria Buhigas (Mayor Collboni, as is known, when it comes to attending to the truly important media of the planet, is usually in the bathroom or on vacation), who explain well the transition from the naturalist ideology of the Eixample, the pacification of the superblocks and, in recent times, the popularization of Climate Refuges (I would redefine this naming with a somewhat kinder word, as making Barcelonians feel like exiles from Kurdistan is a bit distressing), to the Radars project for accompanying the most vulnerable elderly and also the re-dimensioning of transition spaces between neighborhoods like the hopeful Oriol Martorell gardens project, thanks to which capital socialism seems to forget (I hope so!) the horrifying Stalinism of the hard squares. But as Klinenberg himself says, often the tricks of contemporary design can look very good in urban planning magazines, but they don't quite solve the problems of many residents.
In this sense, I would say that most Barcelonians do not feel very comfortable seeing how the administration directs them towards municipal buildings, no matter how cool one might be in public libraries. Like it or not, the progressive warming of the planet will tend to turn summers in big cities into acid tests for most ordinary people, and I would say that public power would do well to combine the avant-garde of design with something as prosaic as helping Barcelonians afford the cooling of their homes. I know perfectly well that the City Council, following examples such as New York's Cooling assistance benefit, has approved significant aid for the installation of air conditioning units in private homes. But I also dare to predict that aid for partial expenses —if we understand the act of breathing, sleeping, and not dying in the attempt as a basic right— will soon have to be extended to many segments of the population and with more generous spending allocations. Allow me the demagoguery, but if we have funded visits by albino monks and muscular cyclists, such spending is even more urgent.
The Mediterranean condition, alas, will seem to demand a more than radical technological transformation from us. It is quite amusing that, at a time when everyone enjoys imagining the apocalypse that AI and other nonsense will bring, the change that everyone yearns for is to be able to afford a climate gadget in their own home. Anything will be good, obviously and if you allow me a certain benevolent xenophobia, if it keeps us away from the danger of behavioral Andalusianism (in turn, any effort is justified if it means making a good impression on visits from my New Yorker siblings).