Last Wednesday, our colleague Francesc Soler wondered here in The New Barcelona Post what has become of Barcelona's underground culture of the 70s in our present and fired this very opportune question as a result of the exhibition programmed by the Palau Robert under the title Underground and counterculture in 70s Catalonia and curated (to say "commissioned," and even more so when referring to a generation of progres, would be too police-like) by Pepe Ribas, the creative soul of the mythical magazine Ajoblanco.
I write and insist that the question is opportune because, like all libertarian and groundbreaking movements, the counterculture of the 70s should not be analyzed solely from the G-spot of its historical explosion, but above all by the results it obtained, in the same way that, on a very different political level, the important thing about 1-O will not be so much its power as an event of anti-repressive resistance, but in the longing for freedom that the referendum (not applied by our political elite) manages to inspire in my generation and how it transforms it into something tangible and practical.
I differ from Francesc on a basic museological issue because, although this is a much more exhaustive exhibition at a documentary level than what the Palau Robert has accustomed us to, the simple accumulation of objects and texts, however interesting they may be, do not become an exhibition, something that requires not only a fundamental thesis but also a presentist reading; because any story, let's not be naive, is always told from the present.
In this sense, Pepe Ribas has limited himself to compiling a lot of documents from his compis, has placed them on panels designed by the demiurge of old Zeleste, Dani Freixas, and has summarized the landmarks of the era (from the InstantCity project to the hooliganism of venues like Jazz Colón and Les Enfants Terribles, passing through the omnipresent Canet Rock) with prototypical Wikipedia texts. In fact, the only moment of strong cultural shock comes at the end of the exhibition when on a panel we read a crashed letter that reads: "Time continued to pass but, individualism, fragmentation and corruption, made this story end here."
Each generation boasts its particular outburst of madness, which results in a tremendous desire to change the world, and it is normal for a specific cohort to claim it directly, thinking it was unique, but Hegel already reminded us that culture must always be analyzed at its point of decline. And it is in this sense that the very timely question of "what became of all that?" cannot be dismissed with a slogan like the one I just wrote. Who fell into individualism, dear Pepe Ribas? The progressives of the 70s who ended up embracing the market economy and even working as bankers? And corruption, who perpetrated it? Was it perhaps the same socialist politicians who grew up in the corners of libertarian athenaeums and whom most of you continued to vote for when they had abandoned Marxism for Olympic construction megalomania? These are the timely questions that a brave exhibition that went beyond a collection of postcards would have openly posed, the questions that hurt (that is, the relevant ones) and that, if answered, might tarnish the glamour of the libertarian movement of the 70s.
Due to my curiosity and the dedication that generational narrative has always awakened in me, I have been able to meet some of the protagonists of that cultural history, a movement that, as fellow columnist Ramón de España recently wrote, was not Catalan, but entirely Barcelonian and, I add, that has ended with many of its inspirers, cosmopolitans and progressives, on the lists of Ciudadanos and selling the idea of a Barcelona, that of the 70s, that they liked simply because it was much more Spanish (they never claim that of the previous 20-30 years and the Civil War, coincidences of life, because in that city Catalan culture, and in Catalan, dialogued with the other cultures of the world on equal terms without problems). De España is very honest when, recalling those times, he writes: "I had a great time and did what I could, but I also felt, like the characters in Bowie's song Oh, you, pretty things, part of a group that was driving their fathers and mothers crazy, who had survived a war and only aspired to live peacefully and not go hungry (whether they had won or lost it)".
Each generation boasts its particular outburst of madness, which results in a tremendous desire to change the world, and it is normal for a certain cohort to claim it without hesitation, thinking it was unique.In fact, I believe it would be interesting to reproduce a habit that is already customary in most artistic centers around the world and that would turn this simple exhibition into a proper one, and that is to have it curated by a person who is not part of the generation being claimed and with whom no accounts are settled.Let no one be mistaken, I am not advocating for a reading filtered through revanchism, but simply for something as straightforward as an artistic and documentary exhibition that does not air interesting questions with a simple poster.I add, dear readers, that if I never end up curating an exhibition about 1-O and in the end I finish it off with a sign that reads "time continued to pass but, due to those little things in life, the vote was worth nothing and the corrupt scoundrels ignored it" I give you permission to come to my house, cover me in tar and feathers, and dedicate much harsher articles to me than this one.