In the microcosm of Barcelona's Call, we know that tourists have arrived (en masse) when, from home and close to eleven at night, we hear a visitor shout "Heeelp! My whaaatch" while the tourist in question sprints desperately and sterilely down Baixada de Santa Eulalia. The race will be completely futile because, thanks to a prodigious technique acquired in the best faculties on the planet, the professional thief will already be running the other way and, taking advantage of the street cobwebs of Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, in a few seconds we will have him dancing sardanas around the Cathedral. All this will happen as a spectacle that the neighbors, attracted by the shouting and morbidly glued to their windows, contemplate until the session ends, just when the unfortunate tourist returns to the scene of the theft and only has the consolation of chatting with some other half-drunk traveler about how much he is going to miss his very expensive watch.
Although police presence in the streets of Ciutat Vella has ostensibly improved with the current municipal administration, most nights continue to be an example of agent absenteeism in the nooks where they are most needed. The Guàrdia Urbana and the Mossos patrol more, although almost always inside a vehicle or on a motorcycle, but they continue with the same sickly allergy to nocturnality. If our neighborhood were lit as God intended, the feeling of dread would be much scarcer; but some of our streets are still twinned with some villages of mythical Transylvania. If one wants to be fair, the municipal administration must be congratulated again for actions that affect and improve the neighborhood, such as the evident acceleration of works on Via Laietana and La Rambla, but the issue of insecurity continues to make us feel somewhat helpless. More agents are needed and with more effective guidelines.
Tourists are back, we said earlier. We also know this because, despite the limitation on groups applied by the City Council (in our case, in Neri and on Salomó Ben Adret Street), this rule becomes a dead letter with the same joy as the Third Additional Provision of the Catalan Statute, cut and in force. Often, one sees a couple of very friendly civic agents walking through these places, dressed in a reflective vest and a very professional demeanor; but never, ever, and it's a coincidence, have I seen them admonish any agglomeration of tourists in the neighborhood. This overcrowding of our home is not an anecdote; it prevents us from walking without the obligation of being skilled in the art of slalom and stuffs Barcelona's old streets with unsustainable predation. The regulation also requires guides and tourists to use microphones and individual audio to avoid noise; the law, I have verified, is only complied with by the Japanese.
We already know that administrations are a bit slow to react, but it's quite ironic that the City Council has just approved (!!!we are in the year 2025!!!) a rule that aims to de-stress the agglomeration of tourists through stricter control of souvenir shops and establishments that are tourist traps. The ruling would seek to avoid the appearance of mobile phone case shops, temples where they claim to care for feet and nails, as well as cannabis establishments; I celebrate that councilor Albert Batlle has worked hard on such a mission, but the regulation ---which will begin to be applied in 2026, if the press does not deceive me--- arrives too late, just when these shitty establishments have already inexorably dirtied streets like Boqueria or Cardenal Casañas. We have not taken care of the neighborhood's landscape for too long, and I would say that wanting to preserve local commerce at this point will be more than complicated.
The "guiris" have arrived, dear neighbors, and this means that ---perhaps even more than during the rest of the year---, when we go to the (very few) terraces left in the neighborhood and ask for "un cafè amb gel", we will surely be forced to return a latte, an Americano, or who knows if even a daiquiri. The "guiris" have arrived, for goodness sake, because our blessed street of Sant Sever presents a quota of young ladies who compulsively shout "oh my gosh!", of Japanese couples on the verge of marriage who photograph themselves in the corners of the neighborhood with that face of modest happiness with which they face their first conjugal copulations, and also because the city is about to receive the worst plague with which God has wanted to subject a people; namely, Argentine waiters. However, we remain in the neighborhood, impassive and stoic, because ---despite all the grievances on this list--- this is still a beautiful place to live.
But hurry, because only the resistant ones are left here. And every day we are fewer… and poorer.