The general tedium that besieges Barcelona experiences two apparent annual exceptions due to controversies that already go beyond the tradition that underpins them: the Christmas nativity scene and the Mercè poster. Any commotion that is calendared, according to the prudes, ends up being the most tiresome and predictable thing in the world. As for the Mercè poster, one knows that if an illustrator's product decides to dispense with caprgrossos and senyeres in the final product, the tribe will accuse him of castrating the Catalan identity of the capital's main festival. In turn, if the quotas of folkloric imaginary are mixed with issues of social order such as poverty (as in the current poster), it will be argued that yes, all good, but that the socialists intend to equate the strength of national imaginary with the victimizing discourse of pauperism. All critical theory will already be remade like a Big Mac, it will fill the polemicist's stomach, and tal dia farà un any.
Like any administrative commissioned work (in fact, like any work of art), the current Mercè poster cannot get rid of political overinterpretation and, postmodern as we are, it will be unable to present itself to the common people with an artistic meaning that surpasses the avalanche of interpretations that the city's cultural critics will write. If the photo in question ---very well conceived by the production company CANADA--- were part of Jeff Wall's exhibition Contes possibles, the same reviewers who have criticized it would masturbate commenting on how brilliant the contrast is between this racialized child of an unhappy life and his gaze towards the society of the spectacle with a mixture of naivety and fear. But Jaume Collboni and the PSC are not star photographers and the recipients of the proposal, citizens affected by narcissism, only seek to find what small detail has the audacity not to represent their creed.
Beyond this everyday metaphysics, the political-cultural intention of this poster is all too evident. In organizing La Mercè, the Barcelona City Council understands the helplessness of a single mother when it comes to entertaining or lulling her marginalized child to sleep. No matter how much this young lady doesn't have a single euro to go out and have a beer in a Chinese bar in the Raval, the Municipal Council will sneak through her house windows (because administration is like a gas, it reaches everywhere) and will get the child to stop being a pain while admiring the gegants and the fireworks in the sky. It doesn't matter if you can't leave the house, queen, we will help you, and if you need it, Xavier Marcè himself will come out of Leopoldo to give a candy to the little one. In short, nothing new under the sun and 90s socialism as always: the city is a party and, no matter how much you miss it, we will force you to be a happy Barcelonian.
I correct myself, because the political substratum of the poster hides an interesting gesture, focused precisely on the figure of the child, a kid whom the society of spectacle will end up lulling to sleep but who, as a victim of the poverty that isolates him from the city, when he grows up what he will want is to make money and, unlike his mother, go out and spend a good seventy-euro dinner at Bacaro. My mother voted for Barcelona en Comú, poor thing; but I will get out of that damn neighborhood. In this sense, it must be said that the editorial of Barcelona's socialism has a certain malice (at home we are always in favor of being a bit mischievous) and regurgitates the protest of recent years in Barcelona to transform it into a rather paternalistic message: we know, when you were a baby you didn't have a cent and your classmates laughed at your eyes. But, thanks to socialism, in a few years you will be able to live in the Eixample.
The thing doesn't give much more of itself. That said, to me the poster (and the corresponding video) seem more than correct. Deep down, when I let my guard down, I am still a child of that sociological Olympism made by Pasqual that they now return to us in a much more vulgar and frothy version. I hope the child does well in the future, but I would say that ---within a few Mercès--- he will continue in his shitty neighborhood and, at most, will become suspiciously friends with his heroin-addicted neighbors. Perhaps, after all, it's better for him to stay home with his crying mom, thinking that the gegants and kings are real.