Getting off at the Foc stop is in itself an act of vindication, due to the decades it took to bring the metro to La Marina. The long and wide promenade of the Zona Franca extends towards the sea and the mountains. Some early bird acrobats are already dancing on the large skatepark that zigzags a few meters from the stop and, a little further on, the end of the Fira Gran Via complex appears. On the opposite sidewalk, some of the many buildings that will fill the neighborhood with apartments and new residents are being erected. "La Marina will gain 30,000 homes in the coming years", is the well-known headline that looks towards a neighborhood now of contrasts, where old homes and complexes coexist with modern apartment buildings and offices.
The promenade has the continuous hum of construction as its soundtrack; when it ceases, even for a moment, birds can be heard populating the undergrowth surrounding the skeletons of future housing blocks. Here nature seems more exuberant than in other neighborhoods, it shoots out from under every tree, and reaches its maximum expression in the new and colossal Trece Rosas park.
Walking through it awakens hunger. Where to have breakfast in La Marina? "I've only lived in the neighborhood for a short time, but they make good bikinis there," says a neighbor. And I go to Tu Tesoro while neighbors come in, have breakfast, chat, and leave. If you have to try the bikini, you try it. "I've been living here for a year, and I didn't know they had Colombian food," a neighbor comments to the owner, who responds with something that seems common in a neighborhood under construction: "We've also been here for exactly one year."
In a new neighborhood where everything is under construction, is there anything that has been there forever? "Four steps away you have the Perancho restaurant, it's been here for about fifty years." Not fifty, many more, Gerardo García clarifies from behind the bar. The great-grandparents of the current restaurant administrator opened it 80 years ago.
Since then, they have seen the neighborhood and its clientele change, from the workers of the industrial estates and residents of the cheap houses to the current neighbors. The fourth generation, which misses more commerce in the new Marina, maintains the emblem of the Perancho, which continues to grow: a colossal potato omelet: "We make them eight kilos."
--- And what remains of that neighborhood from 80 years ago?
It sends me headfirst to Colònia Bausili. It seems to be the oldest corner of the neighborhood; no trace remains of the large herds of cattle that populated the area 200 years ago, but the mark of the textile factories still remains, which dyed the lands red with their dyes and gave the neighborhood the name of Marina del Prat Vermell.
On the way to the old colony, the streets are quiet in an almost unsettling way. Hidden behind a gas station again on Paseo de la Zona Franca, Colònia Bausili resists as the last popular vestige of the neighborhood. Intersecting stairs transport one to the Barcelona of the past, but the smell of garbage brings one back to the present. "Look, look, peek out," a neighbor whispers from the top of the stairs while sweeping her entrance, which is, indeed, spotless. Dozens of garbage bags are piled next to the old two-story building.
I ask the woman, but she has gone back into the house with the broom; meanwhile, another neighbor peeks out from the lower floor. She looks at me from an entrance door with a singular upper opening, from which she finishes a cigarette, in a ritual she seems to do daily. With a penetrating gaze framed by the smoke, the peculiar window, and the passage of time, Juana recounts how, of the 22 homes in the colony, only five remain with neighbors; the rest are empty and boarded up.
"Before we were like a family, we celebrated all the holidays and spent time together in the street, we had it full of flowers." Now they have exchanged the flowers for the garbage and incivility of some neighbors, and for the nervousness at the intention of an investment fund to convert the complex into offices.
--- How? But isn't this protected!?
The bewilderment is cut short when Maite, Juana's daughter, arrives, who lives in the same place where her grandparents settled 50 years ago, now also with her young son. Maite joins her mother's complaints and indignation, while Juana lights another cigarette, and the smoke and conversation dilute at the same pace as the memory of the neighborhoods.