The man from the subway

Despite suffering from the lletraferit virus, a not very recommendable flaw, I retain (from my mother's side) a certain fascination for engineering. Far from focusing on museums and landscapes, when I visit a city I always rush to its subway and stop to peek at those factories that have survived gentrification. The Western citizen looks at the subway with a certain distrust, because the idea of cramming oneself into a car to go to work in the morning is certainly a torturous experience; but I am still fascinated by the genius of those madmen who, despite living in a slow world, anticipated the present by imagining the swift skeleton of cities. My favorite web, of course, was invented by the great William Barclay Parsons, who had a time machine in his head and ---at the end of the 19th century!--- already thought that New York's City Hall should be connected to 145th Street, all the way to the wild land of Harlem.

On the platform heading towards Diagonal, like many other Barcelonans and passers-by, is where I met the subway man.

Like any pioneering capital in the world, Barcelona anticipated the arrival of the subway through urban railway lines; the year London inaugurated its subway (1863), we launched the Sarrià Railway line, starting in Plaça de Catalunya, which crossed Balmes in full view of the common citizen, configuring a splendid modernity. Curiously, the first Barcelona tunnels were designed before the subway existed; we city dwellers have the grace of foresight and, during the construction of Via Laietana, around 1908, our engineers designed a subterranean corridor there, in anticipation of a future line that would not arrive until decades later. The first line of our subway system ---the Gran Metropolitano, the currentgreen lineit was invented by the distinguished Santiago Rubió y Tudurí, who connected La Rambla with Lesseps Square through four stations that covered the daring three kilometers.

All this I'm telling are old stories from our most remote history, but the important thing is that the City Council has decided to celebrate the metro's centenary as it should, and beyond the commemorative historical event, it must be remembered that underground life forms a very important part of a city's spirit. Things happen in the metro, from the seduction of a glance to robberies plotted with maximum discretion and musical performances (generally, of terrible quality). The metro creates cultural heritage and our authorities have acted most saintly by decorating the Passeig de Gràcia station, embedding century-old advertisements that, pictorially, are an absolute delight. This will always be my favorite station, not only because it forms the hottest crater of the Eixample, but because on the platform heading towards Diagonal, like many other Barcelonans and passersby, is where I ran into the metro man.

There will be dozens of readers who will share my experience and heard Julibert sing for many years in Passeig de Gràcia

The metro man was a gentleman of cathedral height, dressed quite decently but with noticeably disheveled clothes, whoreceived passengers from the green one singing something similar to opera at the top of his lungs.He compulsively and quixotically paced the end of the station, going up and down, intoning fragments of disconnected melodies that he often crowned with a stentorian falsetto. Gossip had it that the subway man could spend up to eight hours singing in the underground, and that's why ---if you entered the station at night--- you would see how exhausted he was. Most people, upon seeing the spectacle, always made fun of the poor soul, but he always evoked great tenderness in me. Often (although I barely exchanged four words with him), I would join his singing and he seemed happy. All of this happened about ten years ago, when he suddenly disappeared.

Some time later, thanks to the film L'home del metro by the esteemed documentarian Joan Vall Karsunke, I learned that the subway man's name was Ramón Julibert. I am sure that there will be dozens of readers who share my experience and heard Julibert sing for many years in Passeig de Gràcia. I highly recommend this film, which I will not spoil because Julibert is not only a character from the freaky Barcelona that we miss so much, but a half-crazy actor who ---now that the Yankee academy is very woke in its nominations--- would deserve to win an Oscar. Years and even decades can pass, but when I enter the Passeig de Gràcia station, my eardrum still brings back Julibert's voice and his unique gestures, addressing himself with a pen and stretching his arm towards infinity. Everyone has their underground story; it would be necessary for this centenary, I insist, to also focus on this collective memory.